Blogging Money Making Reality Check
Blogging Money Making Reality Check
I think it is time to do another reality check about making money with blogging as there is so much garbage being written about the subject.
Firstly, as a general rule - yes, there are always a few exceptions - blogging is not an overnight business. You can’t simply set up a blog, write a few posts, slap on a few affiliate banners and expect to make money. It doesn’t work like that.
Unfortunately, in most cases, you also need that special ingredient - time.
It takes time to build readership, subscribers and to make money.
I’m always reading about how someone or other made $xxxx amount of money in a few days but, quite frankly, I don’t believe them. Most are actually trying to sell the reader something, so a few exaggerations are the order of the day.
The fact is that there is a lot of money to be made telling others how to do something or other - even if you can’t actually do it yourself! Some of the offers on ClickBank show this to be true.
The problem is that some bloggers sign up to the likes of ClickBank and then write nonsense posts about how such and such plan will make heaps of money - even though they haven’t made a cent or penny doing this themselves. But this is the reality of the ‘how to make easy money’ world.
I’ve been in the business opportunity market for years. I published magazines on the subject for over ten years. I’ve seen the scams and as a general rule: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The last thing I want to do is put people off trying to make money with blogging. I have proven to my own satisfaction, that this can be done and with free blogs and no capital outlay.
The truth is though that to make money with blogs you need traffic and good traffic at that, lots of it. The more the better.
You will find that with some affiliate money making programs you will often need thousands of clicks to get just one order.
An example of this. On my celebrity blogs I promote IcePoster which, as the name suggests, has celebrity posters. You would therefore think that this is the right product for celebrity blogs.
My stats show, however, that I only get an order for every 2275 clicks to their site.
Okay that’s maybe an extreme example but it’s often the case with such programs. By trial and elimination I’ve found a few money making programs that do work well for me (AdSense, FriendFinderGroup for example) but I had to wade through a lot of chaff to discover this.
When bloggers talk about their earnings the money often comes from writing reviews and sponsored posts as opposed to ads, banners and clicks. This side of the business can be profitable but, of course, takes a bit more effort and time.
And some affiliate programs offer free websites. Great! But you still need traffic, and lots of it to generate sales. And this is what everything boils down to … traffic, hits or whatever you want to call them.
Traffic is really the only secret to making money with blogging.
Good luck,
Mike.
Ad: Looking for adult friends? Find someone now on the largest worldwide personals network. FREE signup! Post a FREE ad with 5 photos, flirt in chatrooms, view live Webcams, meet for REAL! 30,000 new photos every day! Find adult friends now! Over 18’s only.
The Missing Link Will Get Search Engine Referrals
There are several websites that will submit your blog to lots of search engines for free.
I remember using these services when I started blogging but really they are a waste of effort as the search engines will find your site anyway - if you have inward bound links that is.
More importantly though we have to accept that three search engines dominate the market: Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. comScore data for example shows that these three account for over 90% of searches. The August figures showed:
Yahoo! 19.6%
Microsoft 8.3%
Ask 4.8%
AOL 4.3%
I know from my own stats that most of my search engine referrals arrive from Google. I just looked at a couple of my celeb blogs and 77% of the search engine referrals were from Google.
It therefore makes sense to try and comply with what Google recommends. Read such things as their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Central Blog for advice.
I received details of what Google’s Maile Ohye has said about links and PageRank.
He said, “As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service.” My underlining.
It’s not necessarily the number of links that matter but their quality. Their algorithm ignores spammy links or those from a spammy site.
It does seem that Google almost want links to happen naturally, no buying etc. So how do you do this? The following are suggestions from Maile Ohye to webmasters in general.
“Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.
Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.
Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they’re more likely to link to you.”
The advice is probably similar to what we have heard before.
I personally dislike being told what to do or how to do something by some big organisation or government but the reality is that, at the present time, Google is all powerful. Without their referrals several of my blogs wouldn’t have worthwhile money making traffic.
As traffic to me is everything, in making money with blogs, I’ll have to take heed of what they say and expect. At the moment that is …
Good luck,
Mike.
Ad: Make Money With Your Articles. Get paid for the articles you write.
Sign Up With WidgetBucks And Get $25
As regular readers may know I haven’t really been one of WidgetBucks biggest fans but if this program does interest you now is the time to join.
Why?
Because it’s their first birthday and, if you sign up, you’ll get $25 - and free money is always nice!
Of course there are conditions. I’ll let them explain, this is what they say:
“To celebrate our first anniversary, we’re reinstating our sign-up bonus that we offered during the first three months for all new publishers: $25 bonus when your account reaches $50.”
But be quick as the bonus is only applicable, as I understand it, to new affiliates for the month of October.
Okay, let me give my honest opinion about Widget Bucks.
On the plus side I have received $172.21 from them and this was all paid on schedule, no problems in this direction. I’ve also got another $32.54 in the kitty - payments are made by PayPal once $50 is achieved.
So that’s okay.
What I did previously find though was that:
(1) Some of the widgets slowed down the loading of my blogs.
(2) The return on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for international impressions i.e. non USA is very low. However, in saying this, some widgets are based on a pay per click basis and this, depending on the products, is much better.
You can see what I last wrote about WidgetBucks on my post Money Making Spring Clean. Also note the comment on this from Dean Jutilla of WidgetBucks.
I actually took all of the widgets off my blogs a while back but I’m trying them out again now. I have found that the ones I am using at the moment (see header ad on Celebrity Insider) are loading much quicker now.
There is also a bigger choice of widgets. As well as Shopping ones there are also now ‘Local’ and ‘Travel’ widgets. These come in a variety of sizes.
I’m actually trying out the Local version which, to quote them, gives, ‘relevant, real-time local content, such as weather, gas prices, top local businesses and restaurants.’
I’ll leave it at that but, if you are thinking about joining WidgetBucks, it’s probably a good time to join to get the $25.
Also, as I’m being honest, there is a referral program for introducing new members. It’s not over generous but these are the terms:
“… you will receive a 5 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people you refer. You’ll receive this 5 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins.”
In other words if you joined and earned $100 I as the referrer would get $5.
And that’s WidgetBucks!
Good luck,
Mike.
