I took a short break from blogging. To be honest, I have not stopped searching for ways to make money blogging, just trying a few different things. One was through trying Associated Content. This sort of a pay for blogging site that concentrates a little more on the news side of things. I'll have more on that in a later post.
I have been a little discouraged by the numbers (aka Money!) coming in via Adsense. I know it has only been a few months, and I always talk about persevering and setting goals, but it has been tough to keep motivated.
I guess I am at the point where all make money bloggers reach, and quit! However, I do not plan on quitting just yet. I made numerous posts through the first half of January to my various blog sites. However, my numbers consider to decline in terms of money with Google Adsense.
My hits have also declined a bit as well. Not sure why this may be happening, but I will get back in track and keep at it.
By the way, here is the money I made for January: $3.62
Down a bit from the $4.00 I made in December. I made tons more money on Associated Content. More on that later.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
A Project Wonderful Experiment
The other day I decided to take a little plunge and advertise one of my blogs on the highest rated traffic site on Project Wonderful. This is Friendster Layouts, and they sport well over 1 million unique hits per day. I was able to advertise for just a dollar! Imagine, advertising to 1 million viewers over a day for just one dollar.
Sure it is untargeted marking, like putting a billboard out on the information superhighway. But a million views is a million views. Actually, after my total one dollar expenditure I ended up with about 1.3 million surfers seeing the ad. Project Wonderful takes care of those statistics for you.
A total of about 130 unique people clicked through my add visited my blog. That came out to about half a penny a click through. Not too shabby at all. I seemed to have picked a a few new readers that have subscribed to my feed as well. I guess it was worth the dollar.
Maybe I will try this with one of my other blogs sometime down the road. It may be a little while since I am rather cheap when it comes to advertising!
Sure it is untargeted marking, like putting a billboard out on the information superhighway. But a million views is a million views. Actually, after my total one dollar expenditure I ended up with about 1.3 million surfers seeing the ad. Project Wonderful takes care of those statistics for you.
A total of about 130 unique people clicked through my add visited my blog. That came out to about half a penny a click through. Not too shabby at all. I seemed to have picked a a few new readers that have subscribed to my feed as well. I guess it was worth the dollar.
Maybe I will try this with one of my other blogs sometime down the road. It may be a little while since I am rather cheap when it comes to advertising!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Return Traffic
Traffic is the most important aspect for any blog that you wish to monetize. A blog is basically a searchable database that is indexed by Google or Yahoo, and your goal is to populate that database with as much juicy information as you possible can. You want your content to rank higher than others so it is important to center your "data" around a few popular terms that will get noticed. There are certain techniques that you can use to get your rankings higher, that may be covered in a later post.
There is another aspect to getting traffic that cannot be ignored. That is the idea of return traffic. To get return traffic, then your "data" must be presented in a coherent form that the reader will understand. If you sprinkle in the right kind of humor into your post, then they just may bookmark your site, subscribe to your feed, or subscribe to an email from your site. This is probably the toughest part for theblog publisher. The writing part takes a lot of practice.
Also, do not be bashful about asking people to subscribe to your feed, or email updates! So here goes, if you like what you read here, go ahead and sign up for my feed here, or subscribe for automatic email updates! Thanks.
There is another aspect to getting traffic that cannot be ignored. That is the idea of return traffic. To get return traffic, then your "data" must be presented in a coherent form that the reader will understand. If you sprinkle in the right kind of humor into your post, then they just may bookmark your site, subscribe to your feed, or subscribe to an email from your site. This is probably the toughest part for theblog publisher. The writing part takes a lot of practice.
Also, do not be bashful about asking people to subscribe to your feed, or email updates! So here goes, if you like what you read here, go ahead and sign up for my feed here, or subscribe for automatic email updates! Thanks.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Overcome Writers Block - Use Google News
Basically, all bloggers are freelance writers. If you want to make money blogging, then you must be ready to put a lot the things down on paper, and do so in an understandable manner. There are some make money bloggers out there there are actually pretty good writers and they have put together some pretty informative blogs. Do I consider myself a good writer? Who knows! Maybe, but then again maybe not. You can be the judge of that. One thing is for sure, I am going to keep trying, and posting about the different subject areas that I have selected to base my blogs around.
Sometimes I get it right, and write the perfect post with the right keywords that has hundreds of hits per month. But most of the time, I just post what's on my mind, and do not get the best hits. The key is to at least remember to sprinkle a keyword or two into the post to keep your SEO up.
So, what do I do when I can not think of anything to write? The first place I visit is Google News. Google News is a service that is slightly different than the standard Google search. Google News monitors over 4500 news outlets for the most current material and breaking news. I visit this sight and look for breaking news by searching with one of the keywords that I have a blog set up for.
For example, If I have a blog about Ford Mustangs, but can not thing I anything to write about, I try this search. The results returned will provide that latest and greatest out there on the web. I look for twists in the news, perhaps offering my perspective on certain new items and weave a blog post out of it. You can search just about anything on Google News and at least find something to write about.
Sometimes I get it right, and write the perfect post with the right keywords that has hundreds of hits per month. But most of the time, I just post what's on my mind, and do not get the best hits. The key is to at least remember to sprinkle a keyword or two into the post to keep your SEO up.
So, what do I do when I can not think of anything to write? The first place I visit is Google News. Google News is a service that is slightly different than the standard Google search. Google News monitors over 4500 news outlets for the most current material and breaking news. I visit this sight and look for breaking news by searching with one of the keywords that I have a blog set up for.
For example, If I have a blog about Ford Mustangs, but can not thing I anything to write about, I try this search. The results returned will provide that latest and greatest out there on the web. I look for twists in the news, perhaps offering my perspective on certain new items and weave a blog post out of it. You can search just about anything on Google News and at least find something to write about.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Penny Blogging and Google Page Rank
The BlogSphere has been abuzz about the recent Google Page Rank update. The Google Page Rank occurs several times a year, usually about every quarter. Your Google Page Ranks affects how your blog pages appear in search result and generally runs on a scale from 1 to 10. There are several websites where you can go and check your results.
After the recent update I went out and check several of my blogs. Most are too young to even appear in the results. They came up as N/A, including this penny-blogging site. I do have a couple of blogs that are a little older, and did not notice any change in their numeric value.
One of my more established blogs (well not really established) has a rank of 1 and its value remained unchanged. However, even though the value has not changed, I have noticed that the number of searches that I get from Google on this site has dropped precipitously. This is not a good omen. I still am getting pretty good traffic on this site due to RSS feed readership.
Not sure if blogs in general have just got an overall downgrade in rank from Google perspective, and I would be interested in any comments. Therefore, there is a little poll for you on the sidebar.
After the recent update I went out and check several of my blogs. Most are too young to even appear in the results. They came up as N/A, including this penny-blogging site. I do have a couple of blogs that are a little older, and did not notice any change in their numeric value.
One of my more established blogs (well not really established) has a rank of 1 and its value remained unchanged. However, even though the value has not changed, I have noticed that the number of searches that I get from Google on this site has dropped precipitously. This is not a good omen. I still am getting pretty good traffic on this site due to RSS feed readership.
Not sure if blogs in general have just got an overall downgrade in rank from Google perspective, and I would be interested in any comments. Therefore, there is a little poll for you on the sidebar.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Waiting for Blogs to "Mature"
For new blogs, you are going to see a limited income. In other words, you are probably not going to make squat the first couple of months. You need to build links, posts, and traffic .
Most affiliate services will turn your blog applications down since you lack Google page rank, and have a limited presence on the web. I have set up a bunch of different blogs that are focusing on certain keywords, and I am going to try to make a little money. So far, I have one pretty well established blog, and the others are slowly coming along. Some have made more progress than others. Since they focus on a variety of different topics, I have only found certain time that I have been interested in posting to them.
Waiting for sites to mature can be a long agonizing process, because you are not seeing any fruits of your labor. This is why it is important to stay focused and remain positive. Another key is to remember your goal, and keep posting.
In addition, the time will come to start to market your site. So far, I have done very little, other than adding the sites to Entrcard.
Most affiliate services will turn your blog applications down since you lack Google page rank, and have a limited presence on the web. I have set up a bunch of different blogs that are focusing on certain keywords, and I am going to try to make a little money. So far, I have one pretty well established blog, and the others are slowly coming along. Some have made more progress than others. Since they focus on a variety of different topics, I have only found certain time that I have been interested in posting to them.
Waiting for sites to mature can be a long agonizing process, because you are not seeing any fruits of your labor. This is why it is important to stay focused and remain positive. Another key is to remember your goal, and keep posting.
In addition, the time will come to start to market your site. So far, I have done very little, other than adding the sites to Entrcard.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Income Reports for November and December
I have set up about 7 blogger type blogs, and also have my own hosted website that I have placed Adsense and Project Wonderful advertising on. I also have a couple of more blogs set up that are getting ready to be monetized once I have a few more posts, and they have aged a bit.
At the start of the month, I was on fire, posting nearly every day on the blogs, but have tailed off a little towards the end of the month. Holidays. They mess everything up. But supposedly the News Years Resolution is supposed to correct all of that. Right.
I think that the holidays may also have lead to less net surfing, as everyone was out buying their last minute gifts. I have noticed that Internet traffic to my sites are on the decline, despite my efforts to add more content. Revenue is down, and the earnings per visit are also down.
Another possibility could be that this is a sure sign that the economy is taking a downturn. Less money is being spent on advertising. It it tough to gauge whether my measly income that I earn from these blogs would be a good indicator of advertising dollars spent, but I take it as sort of a bad sign.
I made $5.84 in November on Adsense, and in December this value dropped down to $4.60. On ProjectWonderful I got about the same numbers. I earned about $0.10 in November, but this value has dropped down to around $0.05 per day. It seems that there is something going on, and I will keep an eye on this trend.
I am hoping that it is just a holiday blip and things will move upwards from here as I continue to add content and think of more ways to generate income.
Still have not decided if I will try PayPerPost or Smorty yet. I may go for it on a couple of sites once they have reached maturity. They generally need 20 posts and need to be greater than 90 days old, and I have not reached that criteria yet on any of my blogs except for one, and I would like to keep that one PPP free, as it gets good search results.
At the start of the month, I was on fire, posting nearly every day on the blogs, but have tailed off a little towards the end of the month. Holidays. They mess everything up. But supposedly the News Years Resolution is supposed to correct all of that. Right.
I think that the holidays may also have lead to less net surfing, as everyone was out buying their last minute gifts. I have noticed that Internet traffic to my sites are on the decline, despite my efforts to add more content. Revenue is down, and the earnings per visit are also down.
Another possibility could be that this is a sure sign that the economy is taking a downturn. Less money is being spent on advertising. It it tough to gauge whether my measly income that I earn from these blogs would be a good indicator of advertising dollars spent, but I take it as sort of a bad sign.
I made $5.84 in November on Adsense, and in December this value dropped down to $4.60. On ProjectWonderful I got about the same numbers. I earned about $0.10 in November, but this value has dropped down to around $0.05 per day. It seems that there is something going on, and I will keep an eye on this trend.
I am hoping that it is just a holiday blip and things will move upwards from here as I continue to add content and think of more ways to generate income.
Still have not decided if I will try PayPerPost or Smorty yet. I may go for it on a couple of sites once they have reached maturity. They generally need 20 posts and need to be greater than 90 days old, and I have not reached that criteria yet on any of my blogs except for one, and I would like to keep that one PPP free, as it gets good search results.
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