Make Money Online

Here’s a quick rundown from my first month Blogging for Money.  I don’t know if this is a lot or a little for the first month, but hopefully will prove to be the baseline in moving forward.  Please let me know how it has compared to your first month as well.

$20.32 - Google AdSense
$80.00 - Affiliate Revenue
$53.01 - Pay Per Post

$153.33 - Total April Revenue

Now, of course there are some costs associated with all the activites as well:

$99.00 - Blue Host Hosting Package (Yearly)
$14.95 - TypePad Premium Blog Account (Monthly)
$50.00 - Design Fees (One-time)
$90.00 - Domain Registration Fees (Yearly)

$253.95 - Total April Costs

So, of course for the month I’m in the hole, but only about $100.  How does the old saying go, "You have to spend money to make money?"  We should definitely see a turn-around in May.

There are a number of online resources that will give you ideas and approaches about how you can increase your blog’s exposure and visibility.  But before you start pro-actively attracting readers, make sure that your blog has a properly-laid foundation so that your readers don’t visit once, never to be heard or seen again.

I consider these six approaches vital to my future blog(s) success:

1. Post frequently with original content about topics related to your blog’s focus.
   This one seems like a no-brainer, but it can be very difficult to actually do.  I’m not saying that you need to make daily posts, but try to publish at least 3 to 4 posts each week as you are starting out.  This will help make your blogging efforts a habit, will improve your writing, and will increase the total amount of related content on your blog.  Frequency of site updates and the total amount of related content are two key measures to Search Engine Visibility and Page Rank.
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2. Keep each of your posts focused on one major topic.
   Don’t go off on a tangent on your individual posts unless it is truly warranted.  Your readers will appreciate you staying on-topic to your post’s headline, and the Search Engines will be better able to categorize and rank your entry.
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3. Find other related blogs and start interacting with their creators.
   Spend some time on Technorati searching about your blog’s content.  Chances are you’ll find a number of blogs that already exist in your niche.  Don’t worry though!  Each blog is the expression of it’s author, and there is always room for new, good resources.  Take the time to read other blogs to get ideas, see how other author’s interact with their readers, and what types of stories generate the most interaction (comments) with their audience. 

   When you find a post on a topic that interests you or is related to your blog, take the time to post a comment.  You may also take it a step further, and write a post on your blog about the same subject, but with your own unique take.  Be sure to give original blog some link love by including a direct link to their post in yours, and also be sure to post a trackback to their original post. 
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4. Get the word out about your blog among your friends & family.
   Send an email out to your entire group of friends and family with the link to your blog, and be sure to include a description of what your blog is about.  Ask them to check it out from time to time, to give you constructive feedback and to forward it to any of their friends who they think might be interested.  Depending on the web-savvy of your family, it also wouldn’t hurt to request a reciprocal link in the blogroll for any family members who might have their own blog.
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5. Include your blog address in the signature of your personal email.
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6. Submit your site to Yahoo, Google and dmoz.org to get the Search Engine love going.
   There are also a large number of Internet Directories you can submit to for free. Yahoo and DMoz.org are notoriously slow about posting sites to their directory, so by the time your site is accepted, your foundation should be ready for the visitors.

There are certainly many more activities that you can (and should!) undertake for your blog(s), but by taking care of these six core activities, you’ll lay a solid foundation for the future of your blog.

Inspired by a recent microsite I uncovered this morning,  I just went and registered http://www.waterheaterinformation.com/ based on the inspiration from this site, and will be setting the site up over the next week or two.  The PPC profile on Google and Yahoo is similar, with a rate of approximately $1.50 to $2.25, and a similar number of estimated clicks/day - in the low to mid hundreds.  I will report back and let you know how building this site has gone, both in terms of costs/time/effort and revenue results.

I came across a website this morning through PayPerPost - Humidifier Information.  It is a great example of how to use a microsite to create a targeted niche content site that will successfully attract readers and provide extremely targeted contextual ads.

The site already ranks well in the naturalized search engine results (#1 under "humidifier information", and #11 under "humidifier"), and has some good general content about the benefits of humidifiers, different types of humidifiers, and the various different manufacturers.  In addition, it’s well written, has a well-presented template, and presents the contextual ads very cleanly.  Check it out, and consider creating a microsite in this mold.

(Please note that this is not a sponsored post, as this blog did not qualify for the opportunity)

I’ll be in Fort Wayne Indiana next week for the first annual KillerApp Expo, sponsored by Broadband Properties Magazine. The KillerApp Conference and Expo is the first and only venue to explore the high-bandwidth applications that are driving broadband use and adoption worldwide, and changing the way we work, live and communicate.

As the founder of a web-based personal video editing and sharing company, I was invited to speak on two panels: "Your Media Your Way" and "The Opportunities Internet Applications Offer Broadband Providers."

The first panel, Your Media Your Way, will show how application developers are expanding consumers’ choices and their control over the content they create and purchase. I will be joined on the panel by Chris Brogan, Community Director of Network2.tv, with Masha Zager, Editor of KillerApp.com moderating.

The second panel, "The Opportunities Internet Applications Offer Broadband Providers," will profile AT&T’s approach and strategy of partnering with applications developers, as well as how and why applications providers want to establish business relationships with network providers.  I will be joined on this panel with Ken Tysell, Executive Director, Three Screen Services for AT&T, and Scott Lomond, President and COO of SightSpeed, with Geoff Daily, Assistant Editor of KillerApp.com moderating.

So if you happen to be out in Fort Wayne next week for the conference, please stop by and say hi, I’d love to touch base with you all.

I was notified this morning that this blog was accepted into
the Pay Per Post network. I was greeted
with a quick dose of reality that will be true for all bloggers starting
out. Blogs without a Google Page Rank
have extremely few “qualified opportunities”. Out of the total number of opportunities available in the Pay Per Post network, less than 10% were
available to those of us who do not have a Page Rank as of the time of Google’s
last ranking, and half of these opportunities (at the time of this post) related to student loans.

Since there is a limited pool of qualified opportunities for new bloggers,
this presents a bit of a quandary. Do you post
about companies/products that do not relate to the content of this blog until you achieve a higher ranking? Or do you
focus on continuing to create quality content in which your readers will be
interested?

There’s another consideration here for you as well. If you are creating segmented blogs (i.e.
having different blogs for different general topics such as travel, technology,
sports, etc.), you also need to get past an initial 10 sponsored postings for your
initial approved blog in order to get your other sites into the network.

After considering the options, I think I will be taking what
I hope is an acceptable middle road. Here’s my plan:

1. I will take on 10 initial opportunities until I am eligible to have my other site(s) accepted into the PPP network.
2. After the initial 10 opportunities (or until I have another blog accepted into PPP), I will then review only those opportunities that truly interest me, and/or are relevant to the content of this blog, and/or are related to the content of another blog in my network that has not yet been accepted into PPP.
3. I will also post reviews for opportunities that I am not yet eligible for, but have an interest in. After all, the PPP network can also serve as a generator of ideas for good content.

Your friends and family can certainly be part of your traffic-building strategy for your blogs, especially in your early days.  StumbleUpon, BlueDot, MySpace, etc. are all great ways for you to be able to connect your online friends with your new blogs (don’t have accounts & networks with these services yet?  Spend some time and do it now!).

But what about your family?  Chances are you only know the email addresses for your immediate family, or don’t even know how large your extended family is.

That’s where a new company that launched in January of this year comes in.  Geni is an easy-to-use online tool to map your family tree, and is extremely viral.  Within one week, my tree (initially populated with my immediate family), has grown to 203 people - 39 blood relatives and 163 in-laws.  My wife is now also able to track her mother’s side of the family back to 1510!

In addition to being able to finally understand the complicated relationships in my wife’s family, I also hope that this will serve to to open up the lines of online communication with my extended family once again and get some of them interested in maintaining online sites.  Trading links with existing personal blogs among your family is also a great way to increase your SEO and Technorati rank.

You can find out about new updates about the  product on the Geni blog, or be able to ask questions and interact with other Geni users on the Geni Forums.

StumbleUpon just released new functionality called StumbleThru that is very exciting for blogs looking to increase their pageviews per user.  StumbleThru is a random content discovery feature for a few selected sites currently (including WikiPedia and , and accounts for your user’s content preferences based on sites that they have previously stumbled.  If they are not current stumblers, they will be returned a random page from your site and notified that they can receive customized results by being a registered stumbler.

Kudos to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch for prompting WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg to create a random page plugin for WordPress that does the same thing on the same day that StumbleThru was announced.

Now hopefully StumbleUpon will be able to make their technology available as a widget, and throw in some additional functionality as well.  I would love to see you be able to specify websites within your network to be Stumbled through.  It would be a great way to get readers of one of your blogs to get exposed to other blogs that you maintain, or selected other sites within your blogroll.

Chitika eMiniMalls "bring product promotion to life on the web.  Provide your users with relevant content and comparative shopping information without ever leaving your site".

The Chitika eMiniMall is a contextual advertisement that brings in product reviews, pictures and pricing through a web-widget that is best described as a combination of Amazon’s Affiliate Program (product pictures, pricing and reviews) and Google AdSense (PPC, contextual advertising).

The company works through a network of 12,000+ online publishers (mostly blogs, I would imagine).  You are able to sign up for an account through the website, although it appears that the company is dissuading new bloggers from signing up until you reach a threshold of 10,000 visitors/month.

The ads themselves are contextually-generated.  This means that the ads will appear and show products that are the same (or similar) to the product being reviewed or the topic of your blog post.

I think that this advertising model will work best on a blog that leans heavily toward product reviews, and as such will be focusing implementation on my DV Gadgets and Online Video Sharing blogs.  I’ll keep you regularly updated on progress and performance of Chitika.  That is, of course, if my account is approved over the next two to three days.

Text Link Ads has a great program for bloggers. Through their system, they sell static html links on your site, which aid advertisers in improving traffic and Search Engine rankings. You can sign up to be both an advertiser or a publisher, and benefit from Text Link Ads managing all the billing and reporting.

As a publisher, you relinquish 50% of the advertising fee to Text Link Ads, but it is a great way to get your money making off the ground by submitting your site to an existing marketplace that draws advertisers.  It’s another benefit of my research switch to WordPress as well - TypePad is not currently supported as a blogging platform.  As far as I can tell, only WordPress and Blogger.com (new version) are supported.

Text Link Ads also has a product called "Feedvertising", where they will insert the text link ads into your feed as another enticement to monetize your blog.  This feature currently only works on WordPress.