Money Making The Grown Up Adult Way
As I’ve said previously I like to experiment with blogs to see what works, and what doesn’t, as regards making money.

I’ve been dabbling in the fringes of the adult market recently and, as I guess most of us would expect, it is a very profitable niche.

First a warning: Please do not got to any of the links on this post if they are likely to offend - that’s the last thing I want to do - plus everyone must be over 18.

I started an adult version of a celebrity blog about four to five months ago, with a partner, and it has proved very profitable. I actually spent some money, which is against my normal mission rules, and bought a decent name for a change: CelebTease.com. It only cost $10 for the first year and at the moment it is still hosted on Blogger.

It hasn’t reached the heights of my top celeb blog traffic wise, as yet, but the number of page views is quite good - see below for the last week.

As you can see it gets nearly 2,500 page views a day so readers are staying longer on the site. This means there is more opportunity to sell and, as I’ve now proved, certain things are easy to promote.

As we know the Internet is flooded with adult sites and one of the reasons is because people are making lots of money out of this business. It appears to be a fact that those interested in such things are willing to click on ads, join stuff and also spend money.

If others are interested in testing this market here’s a few affiliate programs that have paid out worthwhile amounts and have been easy(ish) to promote.

WegCash. This has been the biggest earner. One of the reasons is that it’s possible for people to join some of their adult websites for free. For everyone who does you receive $1.15. This may not sound a lot but it soon ads up because it’s easy pickings.

They also have paid sites for which much larger sums can be made. I’m not sure how many sites they have in all for affiliates, it’s quite a few dozen, and cover all ‘variations.’

Met Art. Not so explicit and has won awards for it’s photography - it’s still naked girls though. Pays out on time and, along with the other progams, there is money to be made by introducing others into the business.

AdultFriendFinder. The biggest online contacts site. It’s massive and has about 30 different sites to promote. It’s now owned by Penthouse and it’s possible to promote their site as well - though I haven’t done very well with this - lots of clicks but few sales.

The group has good promotional material of every shape, size and format.

Sexy Ads. Similar to AFF and have various contact sites to promote. Some of the sites I’m able to promote on my normal celebrity blogs (this also applies to AFF where they have sites for sectors such as Christians, Jews and various individual countries). They offer very good back up and I get a check from them every month.

Convergence Inc. They offer a free website of sex toys and similar items with high commission rates. Based in USA but pay out regularly on all orders, even small amounts. They have the sort of products that are right for the Internet and the privacy that this offers.

One more, nearly forgot:

DIY Dating. They are in the UK but operate worldwide, millions of members. They also offer a free website, using their database, on whatever sector of contacts that you prefer.

Now all of this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It depends what you are willing to promote to make money. Lots of people have various beliefs, standards, principles and so on.

It’s not really my personal ‘thing’ but I’m interested in seeing what makes a good profit. If nothing else we may be able to sell CelebTease.com in the future. Now selling blogs … that’s a whole new ball game which does interest me.

Good luck,
Mike.

Blog To Earn - Proven Earners: John’s latest money making carnival.

Free List Building
The money is in the list is something we hear a lot of time, but the problem for many people is that they have no list. They struggle to get people to sign up for their list, even though they think they are giving them something of real value, but they have no idea about how to be list building.

Money Making: Quite Easily Done
I was asked if I would do anything different if I was just about to start my very first money making blog.

I think the main two things I would have done, the very first day, are:

(1) I would have got myself a .com URL instead of sticking with the .blogspot address.

One of the reasons I didn’t do this, at the time, was because I wanted to see if I could make money from blogging without spending any myself. In other words I wanted to make money from nothing. It was a self imposed challenge.

Now that I have proved to my own satisfaction that this can be done I wish I had spent about $10 and got myself a .com. It definitely sounds and looks more professional.

Personally I’m quite happy with my blogs being hosted on Blogger and, as you may well know, there are options to purchase a .com and still host the blog on Blogger.

(2) The second thing I would have done straight away is to get myself another template and not stick to Blogger’s standard layouts.

There are lots of places where you can get alternative templates for free, such as at FinalSense for example.

This won’t give you an ‘exclusive’ template but they have lots to choose from. Make sure, if it is for Blogger, that it is an XML design so that it is compatible with the up to date version of Blogger.

Switching to a new template is very easy to do, though you will most likely have to update the side columns all over again.

Also it’s useful learning a bit of basic HTML so that you can tweak your template if necessary.

Following these two things it’s back to that old chestnut of publishing good content - that people want to read. Yes, I know I keep saying this but you can have the flashiest template, an interesting .com address but without quality content the blog won’t make money. It’s substance that matters.

I can illustrate this by saying that my biggest earning blog still uses a .blogspot URL. Though it’s content that is important (1) and (2) above might just have given me an extra edge that would have made the blog more acceptable to mainstream websites.

I guess to sum up: make the blog look as good as you can, have a suitable .com and publish content of value.

Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum - or some say Quite Easily Done).

Good luck,
Mike

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Do You Do It Every Day?
It’s back to basics today and a trip into the past.

I was asked how I managed to get traffic when I first started blogging - starting from nothing and without any blogging contacts.

Funnily enough I couldn’t quite remember, other than I had the principle that every day I would do something different to try and get visitors. It was really my constant try, try and try philosphy that eventually got things moving.

I left this blog’s URL/address wherever I could.

Often, it has to be said, this wasn’t always productive but like water drip, dripping away it does have an overall effect. Plus, by searching for ways to get traffic, you come across all sorts of ideas - again some that work and some that don’t. The point is: seek and you will find - that almost sounds religious!

So every day I plugged away doing something.

I hit the blog directories. There is a list of directories, together with their PageRank, on my February post A List Of 40 Free Blog Directories.

Looking back through old records the following two directories sent me the most referrals, though don’t expect a deluge!
Blog Show Off
Blog Hub

I also got a good response from Klik Us - mainly because I got onto the front page. When I checked just now I’m still there and I haven’t been on the site for ages.

I also joined various forums. These can bring traffic if used properly. One tip is to always comment on your own threads after anyone else makes a comment - this usually will bounce you up to the top of the list threads again.

Then there are things such as MyBlogLog - see widget in right hand column and myLot. Again, when I was starting out they brought me referrals plus with myLot I also earned about $40.

Like a lot of new bloggers I also dabbled with the Traffic Exchange programs. Now these definitely do work if you have the time. I’m not convinced, however, as to the value of the referrals but they can make your stats look good! Three I joined were:
Blog Explosion
Blog Soldiers
Blog Mad

One warning about Traffic Exchanges: Google AdSense do not like them so don’t run AdSense ads while using any form of traffic exchange.

I won’t go through everything that I tried when I started blogging - I see I haven’t mentioned the likes of exchanging links, commenting on other blogs, social networking for example - but the message is:

Do something new every day to try and generate traffic. Readers won’t otherwise magically appear - remember there are 50 million other blogs out there!

Good luck,
Mike.

YouGov: Complete surveys and polls for payment - genuine company.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Make Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.