Like Most Make Money Bloggers...

I guess I am like most make money bloggers... when the bucks don't roll in, you quit after a couple of months. It really is silly to think that there are actually people out there that make money writing crappy blog posts. Well, I have been pulling in about $2 or $3 dollars a month, even with this crappy blog, a website, and a few other blogs that I have paid absolutely zero attention to. The website has been totally on the back burner, but it still gets 30 or forty hits a day. The other blogs do as well.

So, I guess with a little bit of attention, you can pull in a few more bucks.

Cash report for February and up through Mid-March

Adsense cash flow was pretty steady for the month of February, with income at around $3.85. Not too bad, considering there has been zero marketing done with any of my blog sites, other than an occasional Entrecard plug. It is certainly not great either. For these sites, I have been relying solely on search engine hits. So far for the month of March, I am on track to make about the same amount as February's result.

Last month, I did devote considerable more time to writing for Associated Content. I made about $70 of of 20 or so articles. The cash return for Associated Content is not bad considering you do not have to spend any time at all marketing your site. The visitor's just come and you get paid.

Making Money Process is Slow

I have put off make money blogging this month and cut down the number of posts I have made this month to all of my make money blogging sites. It is not that I have given up. It just because I started looking at other ways to make a few bucks online. Most "make money bloggers" last about 2 months and then close up shop after they fail to pull in the big bucks.

I am not really looking to make big bucks, but have a much more realistic approach, looking to make some pennies. So far my income for February on my "penny-blogs" is about on the same track as it was back in January, despite cutting the number of posts drastically.

So what distracted me? Well, I started writing a few more articles for Associated Content, and have looked to them as a revenue source. AC is a content driven site that pays its users to post articles, videos, audio, and pictures. AC then takes your content and places their own advertising and pays you a part of their revenue stream.

For pre-paid articles, you can be paid up to $1 to $8 bucks, based on their keyword content and then get a continuing performance pay of $1.50 per 1000 page views. The key to success is to write content that is optimized for search engines, and will get high advertising income. So far I have made about $100 bucks by posting various articles.

AC is a quicker way to make money then penny blogging, and I will keep at it and keep you posted.

January Numbers

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.

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!

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.

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.