What took your earnings to the next level?

[ashivasw]

A few points:

1. Ad placement and positioning play a key role. I saw around 20% increase in my revenue by re-arranging Ads alone. (This is applicable only if you are relying on advertising as a source of income)
2. Content - The higher the quality, the better it is ranked. Over a period of time you will realize that content is king and everything else (backlinks, earnings, etc...) are just "Byproducts".
3. A great website is easy to navigate and hence more and more visitors will like it. This means more revenue.

Cheers!

[Denny]

An increase in earnings should be viewed, I believe, not in isolation but in conjunction with the risk associated with those earnings.

I'd answer a slightly different question if I may: "What took my business to the next level?"

It was diversifying away from a reliance on Google (serps + adsense + adwords + everything else). It brought me stability, peace of mind and lower risk. I stopped obsessing with my Adsense stats, stopped obsessing with my SEO and actually got productive work done elsewhere.

Clinton; I understand your feelings about SE's. By "productive work done elsewhere" do you mean such issues as links and other monetisation methods? Thanks

[Clinton]

Productive work is whatever you want it to mean. For me, finding a site to buy, reaching agreement on the terms and executing the transaction is one type of activity I'd refer to as productive work.

[KenW3]

If it is possible to pin point one movement or change you made, what made your earning jump from "nice bit of change" to income replacement?

This is something I think a lot of people are interested in but it never gets mentioned.

The first big change for me was when I started managing myself as an employee. I had no other employees, and there were things that were put off or avoided. It was easier to relax after a hard day at work, have a beer and watch TV, than work on a new business to escape being an employee. Daily task lists of things that had to be done made the difference, because nobody else would do them and I recall starting to get the lousy tasks out of the way first. Completion of the daily task list, regardless of time or difficulty, was what finally made enough money and led me to think I could quit working for others.

Little did I know that being in business didn't allow me to quit working for others. It only gave me multiple bosses instead of just one. It's been over a quarter century and sometimes I still miss the ease of employment, but wonder if that's a 'grass is greener on the other side' type of thought.

The second big change came when I realised the difference between running a company as a business and running a company as a job. Even so, delegation of authority is still difficult sometimes.

[inplainview]

Stopping doing everything myself and outsourcing more.

Also, hiring VAs gave me time to actually explore more income sources, which transformed in two more legs for my business.

[Genie]

If it is possible to pin point one movement or change you made, what made your earning jump from "nice bit of change" to income replacement?

This is something I think a lot of people are interested in but it never gets mentioned.

Trying something different made my earnings jump from "nice bit of change" to a whole new level. I have added website development to my list of small income generators and it has been the best decision I have made thus far - in terms of making money. The income I earn from a single transaction is on a larger scale than any other thing I do.

[ScottJ]

Something else I would add in reflection, over the last few years I have tried to make sure that when I do work .. I get paid for it over and over again. I don't mind long hours and a lot of work be it laborious/boring/intense as long as I can do it once and then benefit from it many times over. So this covers many things like research to find the right sites to buy, getting involved in subscriptions and repeat billings for things.

[eddiebooth]

I moved away from selling generic products to selling only the top brand names in their own sectors - the brands strongly discourage discounting which suits me as I get to maximise my profit margin, and the general public looking for these specific products seem to shy away from sites offering discounts off as, I guess, they realise they are probably only getting a clone, not the real deal. I tested this myself by building 4 sites all selling the same products. To start with I heavily discounted 1 site (against the manufacturers wishes). After 3 months this site had ZERO orders, so I tweaked it to only give c5% discount and now it is the best selling of the 4 sites.
Joe Public isnt stupid, they generally know that online you usually get what you pay for, and if somethings cheap it must be for a reason.

[83lewishere]

I moved away from selling generic products to selling only the top brand names in their own sectors - the brands strongly discourage discounting which suits me as I get to maximise my profit margin, and the general public looking for these specific products seem to shy away from sites offering discounts off as, I guess, they realise they are probably only getting a clone, not the real deal. I tested this myself by building 4 sites all selling the same products. To start with I heavily discounted 1 site (against the manufacturers wishes). After 3 months this site had ZERO orders, so I tweaked it to only give c5% discount and now it is the best selling of the 4 sites.
Joe Public isnt stupid, they generally know that online you usually get what you pay for, and if somethings cheap it must be for a reason.

+1

This is very important There is always someone who will work for 99p profit, when you go for £1. Then someone will go 98p. AVOID THIS CYCLE