Plenty of people out there will tell you how to make money with a blog. Darren Rowse is apparently one of the best. John Chow is another guy making big money off blogging. A quick Google search reveals 47 pages of web pages (20 at a time) that want to tell you how to “make money blogging.” I’m not sure how many people have time to read each and every one of those 928 Google entries to learn how to make money with a blog, but I have a good idea how they read, and I’m sure that many of them will sell you a program to show you how to make money blogging for just $500 $400 $300 $197 $37.
In no particular order, this is your standard list of ways to make money blogging.
Keyword Content
You need to have good content, with your embedded keywords jammed into each post as many times a possible, but without seeming obvious. If you want to help people make money blogging, you should tell people that you can help them make money blogging. It’s like a thesis. You tell them that you have tips to help make money blogging, you tell them the tips to make money blogging, and then you tell the reader that you have given them tips to make money blogging.
The content of your blog should be focused on one particular thing if you want to make money blogging. A site like BLOW IT OUT YOUR PIE HOLE, which is not really pointed at any one thing, except things that piss me off enough to write about it, isn’t really a good site to make money blogging. Each post deals with a different topic, but it’s all put together with a healthy dose of someone else’s opprobrium. If you had a site that dealt with dentists, or barbershop harmony, or DVD players, and that topic exclusively, you would have a niche site. Your niche site should be one that has a high paying adword, so you have content that constantly refers to the topic at hand, creating more ad opportunities for your topic, like how to make money blogging, so you get super relevant ads on your site that shows people how to make money blogging.
Some say that you should post a couple of times a day, others say you should post at least once a day, some say that you should set a pattern and stick with it, and others say a couple of times a week is fine. Any way that you post, if you want to make money blogging, you need to have consistently good quality posts. One thing I really hate is going to a site, and there’s nothing new in the past year. If there’s nothing new this month, it’s understandable to me that people go on vacation, have a 9-5 job that turns into a 7am-10pm job, or they have writer’s block. But if you haven’t written about how to make money blogging in the past year, I doubt that you’re still in the “make money blogging” life style. On the other hand, there are sites that have developed such powerful content that they are getting new visitors to extremely old content.
Traffic
Your site isn’t worth the electrons that power it if you don’t have traffic. If you want to show people how to make money blogging, you need to let them know that you’re out there. First thing is developing your content with your embedded keywords, focusing on your niche. Build that content. Get Google’s Analytics on your site, so Google knows about your site. Add a sitemap to your site and tell Google and Yahoo! about your site map. Tell another search engine that you use. Sure, there are plenty of search engines out there, but seriously, if you were going to look up “make money blogging,” what else would you use besides Google and Yahoo!? Sign up for an Alexa widget. Add your site to Technorati. Get your site’s feed burned. Post a comment on another site in your niche or a site whose niche matches well with yours, making sure to look for those sites which use the “no No Follow” rule. Look for forums where you can actually contribute and put your site in your signature. It’s also a good place to put an affiliate link, like Get a Bottomless ATM!
Income Streams
Once you have your content and your traffic, you need to turn those eyeballs and mouse clicks into cash. You can’t make money blogging if you don’t have any way of converting space into money. One of the easiest ways of making money blogging is with Amazon.com, which I believe either owns Alexa or is part of the same parent company. Amazon.com pioneered the affiliate system, and they have a pretty powerful set of tools. The most obvious is linking to a specific product, and getting a percentage of the price. They also have a Java Script snippet that you can place on your page, and the Amazon robot will look on your page for products and create a content link back to their site. Unless you are actively seeking product for placement, it’s the easiest way to go. By the way, did I tell you that I saw the movie Jumper, a movie based on a book by Steven Gould, last weekend? (See how simple it is?)
Other affiliate links can be found across the site. Sign up for Commission Junction and or Clickbank and you have access to TONS of products that need another place to advertise. Some sites, like Widgetbucks, TTZ, or Chitika You build the traffic, put the affiliate link on your page, and they will track how many clicks you have generated, and how much money you have collected. For me, I find affiliate links to be one of the worst ways to make money blogging. Maybe I try to get too many affiliate links, maybe I don’t have enough. It’s something that I will have to test. I also try to find affiliate links that provide for a “multi-layer” reward system. I get a kick back from my generated sales, and if you sign up as an affiliate from my link, I get a smaller percentage of your generated sales. I am sure that somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone will land on my site, sign up as an affiliate from my link, and will be able to do something that will just make the vendor very happy, and send me a little percentage back as if it were a finder’s fee.
Google’s adsense is another good way to go if you want to make money blogging. You simply stick in your page a little Java Script snippet, and the Google robot knows what words are near the ad, and fills the spot with relevant links to your topic. This is why embedded keywords are important. You don’t want to have a site about how to make money blogging if you keep using keywords like “soda,” “dog,” “Valentine’s,” or “copier” in every one of your posts. Keep the ads relevant to the niche of your blog by keeping the niche of your blog the niche of your blog, not general rantings and ravings. Google has a minimum payout of $100. Since I have been trying to make money blogging, I have earned less than half of the minimum payout. I joined the adsense program in 2003. At the beginning of 2004, Google paid everyone. I think I got a check for $2. In four complete years, I have made less than fifty bucks. This is the year that I’m getting a payout. Seems pretty pathetic when you compare it to people who are earning five figures a month from adsense.
Selling ad space is another option, but it won’t get you anywhere until your traffic is large enough. I have tried Text Link Ads, but we don’t have enough traffic here to even get ‘The Hole’ to register a blip on their interest level. Other sites have begun selling 125×125 ad banner squares, but before you can even think about using this to make money blogging, you need the content and traffic.
This is by far not a complete list of income streams so you can make money blogging, just a little taste of those that I use here, at ‘The Hole.’ As we help you on your journey to make money blogging, I have discovered one secret that I have not seen anywhere, until now. This isn’t a crappy secret like M. Night Shyamalan’s “Secret” where he sets up a dichotomy between the major characters of his screenplays. No, this is the secret to really make money blogging. What I have found is that the best way to make money blogging is to blog about making money blogging. With the exception of people who blog about making money blogging, and a few other folks who turned their blog into a book, or landed a newspaper gig, most people don’t make money blogging.
Unless you write a blog about how to make money blogging.
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This post was tagged with adsense, adwords, affiliate, Alexa, amazon, blog, Chitika, google, M. Night Shyamalan, money, moneymaking, pie hole, yahoo.Related posts
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