You all may have the day off today, but I’ve been busy launching Home Poker Game Guide! The new site features advice and tips for hosting and playing your own home poker games. It will be a great site to compliment the recently re-launched Home Poker System - with the hope being that people can setup their games with Home Poker System and then get some usefully information from Home Poker Game Guide so that their home games will be the best they can be. There’s only a couple posts at the new site so far, but I’ve already got a bunch of topics queued up to work on - so be sure to keep checking back for the latest!

Also, I’ve decided to scrap the site Poker Sensei as it was just one of those ideas that seemed better in my head than it did in reality. I still love the domain so maybe I’ll come up with something better for it in the future, but until then, consider it abandoned.

As promised, I’ve compiled the breakdown of my August earnings. Again, these are just the percentages of earnings I had with each program, not specific numbers and no breakdown of which sites. Overall, earnings were a tad lower than last month, mostly due to me slowing down a bit with new sites and updates to existing sites.

1. Google Adsense - 50% of my August earnings came from Google Adsense clicks. This number is up from 44% in July.
2. Text Link Ads - Text Link Ads accounted for 44% of my earnings which is a bit up from last month.
3. SIAB GEAR - SIAB GEAR was down to 5% in August. Since my sales are so low, one or two sales difference accounts for a fairly big jump in total earnings from the store.
4. Chitika - Chitika moved up from the last spot, earning a full 1% for me.
5. CJ and Amazon - Commission Junction and Amazon combined for less than 1 percent of my earnings in August. Again, these two programs perform fairly badly for me, but it’s also due to me not using them much.

The breakdown looks very similar to last month’s, with each program only changing a few percentage points. Chitika, CJ, and Amazon continue to fight over the scraps of last place as Google Adsense continues to fend off Text-Link-Ads. Once I find some time to start marketing my SIAB GEAR store more, hopefully I can bring those sales up so that the store can compete for first place someday.

Squirrelinabox Poker is no more, for Home Poker System has taken it’s place as the web’s best home poker game manager.

Completely redesigned and rebranded, Home Poker System (HPS) gives poker players full control of their leagues with a powerful scheduling system (complete with invitations and RSVPs), full player stats, and much more. Leagues are easier to setup and run than ever before with a much cleaner layout that’s much more intuitive. Everything is still 100% free too, so there’s no reason to not head on over and check it out!

I have plenty more features planned for the site so stay tuned for those. Also, I plan on launching a related site within the next month or two that will be another valuable resource for home poker enthusiasts.

Ok, so some people have asked me in the past about how I make money with my sites, and more specifically, which programs earn the most. Now, let me first say that I make very little with my online endeavors right now - definitely nowhere near enough to quit my day job. As such, this is really just an inside look at my personal earnings and not what you should expect on your sites.

1. Google Adsense - 44% of my July earnings came from Google Adsense clicks. It surprises me each month that the money I earn from Adsense is generally stable even though the payout could potentially vary wildly due to the seemingly randomness of user clicks and advertiser bids.
2. Text Link Ads - With 42% of my earnings coming straight from Text Links sold by Text Link Ads, Google Adsense may soon be bumped as my #1 earner. I’m a huge fan of Text Link Ads as it seems to be a much more stable revenue option for me.
3. SIAB GEAR - Last month was a fairly big month for SIAB GEAR (my online apparel store). Normally I make about 2-5% of my money from the store, but last month it jumped up to 11%. While I don’t expect it to remain that high, it’s always good motivation for me to get off my but and keep adding more designs.
4. CJ and Amazon - I’ve clumped together both Commission Junction and Amazon as both are CPA affiliate programs and together still only accounted for 2% of my earnings in July. My current sites really don’t lend themselves well to product-based revenue streams, but hopefully I’ll be able to take advantage of such potential with future websites.
5. Chitika - Last, and well… least, Chitika brought in a whopping .5% of my revenue. Granted, I’ve taken off most of my Chitika ads because they have really never performed well for me, so the number is both a combination of the type of ad not working well and me not using them as much as, say, Google Adsense. Again, I think it’s mostly due to my sites not lending themselves well to product-based ads (which is what Chitika ads primarily are).

So there you have it, a breakdown of my earnings for July. No, I’m not going to post any dollar amounts next to the percentages above. And no, I won’t be breaking down my earnings by website. I’d prefer not to give away any possible ideas to competitors - though again, my earnings are so meager I doubt I have anything to worry about.

I’ll probably do a report like this each month because I think it does provide some good insight into what revenue streams I’m using and why. Also, it’s a decent motivator for me to really try and bring up my numbers and try to figure out why certain areas aren’t performing as well as they should.

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted any news here, but that’s mostly because I’ve been steady working on the rewrite of Squirrelinabox Poker. It’s a complete rewrite from the ground up (code, design, everything) - so it’s taking a bit of time. Most of the site will function fairly similarly to the existing, though it’ll be much cleaner (visually and functionally).

As I think I’ve mentioned before, the new version will also come with a brand new name. It will no longer be called Squirrelinabox Poker as that’s a fairly vague name that doesn’t really describe what the site is all about. I’ve also made the decision to not migrate any leagues over to the new system. Too many things have changed in the underlying code for it to be worth my while as there’s really no leagues currently being used.

So when will the site unveiled? Hopefully within a month (let’s just say by September 1st to make it easier). Once launched, I plan on continually updating the site with new features so be sure to send me an email if there’s something in particular you’d like to see.