Make Money Online

Ever think of adding your own directory to your website?  Structured properly, a niche industry directory is a great way to add keyword-rich content to your website to increase the amount of content on your website, thereby also increasing visibility with Google and other Search Engines.  Now you can build your own directory with PHP My Directory, a packaged solution you can use to launch your own full-featured business directory, link directory or classifieds website.

You can set your directory up with multiple levels of listings based on location and/or specialty, and it comes with automated billing to make it easy to collect listing fees if you don’t want to only offer free listings.   Listings can include an image gallery, products gallery, review & ratings, maps, pdf export and links to external websites.

With Google’s revised stance earlier this year on adjusting or eliminating page rankings for sites accepting payment for links, it’s up to you whether you want to collect fees for your listings.  I for one, will be implementing this on a number of my sites, and will be accepting payments on my higher-traffic commercial sites, but keeping listings free for my free resource sites.  In any event, I’ll keep you all updated on how phpMyDirectory.com performs across my network.

After a year’s absence from this blog attending to other sites and business, I’ve come back to Lugnut22 to chronicle my online marketing & blogging efforts.  As part of this, I have removed all of my paid and sponsored posts from this blog.  Like many other bloggers, my site was hit last year by Google’s crackdown on sponsored-listings promoted by such companies as Pay Per Post, Sponsored Reviews, etc. and my Page Rank was removed and has stayed at 0 for the last 12 months.  My hope in removing these posts is that my page ranking will return and my site’s content will once again become available to people interested in starting their adventure in making money online.  I continue to think that sponsored posts remain a viable money-making opportunity for bloggers, I will just not be taking part in any organized effort as I had in the past. 

In any event, this blog will continue to focus on the many opportunities available make money online, either through affiliate programs, Google and Yahoo ad placements, advertising networks, directories or classifieds, or even selling products in conjunction with a wholesale drop-shipper.  I hope you’ll stay tuned.

So I just found out that PayPal has two levels of Accounts, and in order for your account to receive payments from PayPal Website Payments or Instant Purchase for Auctions, you must go through the process of verifying your account.

This process essentially means that you need to enter routing and bank account information for one of your bank accounts.  PayPal will then make two small deposits in your account, which you must verify by confirming the amounts of these two deposits (this can take up to three days to show up in your online account).

I just listed Online Video Sharing into the Sponsored Reviews system.  Unlike ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews.com only charges a 35% administrative fee.  They also require a 3 to 1 ratio of original (i.e. unpaid) posts to paid posts, which lends itself better to blogs that are primarily targeted toward adsense or affiliates for revenue generation.

If you need a review for a video or photo-related website, check out my profile on SponsoredReviews.  Online Video Sharing is a blog focusing on reviews and updates from Web 2.0 video sharing and photo-sharing start-ups, user-generated content, video-oriented social networking, and the technology that holds it all together.

When I started blogging (only one month ago now?), I really had no idea what people earn who are blogging for money. It is still a bit fuzzy, and many numbers are being thrown about. To top it all off, many people think that just by blogging about about how to blog for money, they will punch their ticket to online fame and fortune.

Truth be told, there are only a few bloggers who will own that space, and if you had not started your blog about blogging in 2005, chances are you’ve already missed the boat. Darren over at ProBlogger and others have already nailed that market with informative and authoritative content about Professional Blogging. Ironically enough, these professionals also do not seem to make the bulk of their income from these blogs, instead earning their income from content/product sites that are much more targeted.

But back to the question at hand - How much money can you make online with blogging? By most reports, most bloggers earn less than $100/month. But don’t get discouraged! Your efforts are not a sprint, and you won’t start making money right off the bat. New services like PayPerPost and Blogsvertise have certainly helped new bloggers make money at their start, but you really need a 4 to 6 month period of blogging consistently (including content creation and networking) before starting to see results through increased Search Engine Traffic and organic travel overall.

And finally, someone has started to develop a list (lists are great!) of blogger earnings that consists of bloggers who disclose their income online. Paula’s list of blogger salaries runs the gamut of blogger earnings, from a low of $480/year to a high of $3.6 million/year. Don’t be discouraged by the low number of high “salaries” on the list - many bloggers do not disclose their earnings - but use it as a measuring stick to learn about other bloggers and what they are doing to make money online.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Chitika eMiniMalls, and had mentioned that they were probably best suited for blogs or websites heavily focused on product reviews.  Well, apparently they think the same, as this website was not accepted into their network.  Another site in our network - DVGadgets is launching later this month, so we will be submitting them to the Chitika network to see whether we can’t get started.  From what I’ve heard from others, Chitika advertising can be a very lucrative PPC program if used correctly.  I’ll continue to update as we find out more.

Depending on the online business that you start to make money online, you may at one point need to be able to process credit cards. But as a new online business you may have a hard time finding a company to process your transactions for a reasonable fee, especially if you are selling actual products online.

If you are looking for merchant solutions for your online business, you want to check out AdvantageProcessors.Com, a company that can handle your online credit card processing whether you are an established business (low-risk) or are a new online business and need high-risk credit card processing services.  Their team of sales agents will work with you to understand your business and find you the best processing rates for your business.

Here’s another entry into the Sponsored Blogging universe - Blogsvertise. Similar to Pay Per Post, Blogsvertise typically pays in the $5 to $15 range per sponsored post that you include in your blog. Unlike many other services, however, you do not get to choose from a qeue of opportunities — instead, the “blogsvertise administrator” will assign you writing tasks. You don’t have to necessarily endorse the product or service, just mention it in your blog and link to the sponsor three times in your post.

If you have just setup your blog within the last 30 days, or have sparse content, you are unlikely to be approved for a standard account. However, Blogsvertise will accept you on a “probation” status that allows you to accept and complete writing tasks for the service. While these tasks only pay $2 per completed task, this will provide you with some level of income (and start filling out content on your blog!) during a time when most other services will not accept you.

I’ve just signed up for the service, so do not have any specific experiences to pass on about the service yet. If any readers have used the service, please pass on your experiences with Blogsvertise.

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’ve been debating how much work I should be doing prior to my April 1 launch (Only 1 month away now… Yikes!). The reality, however, is that I need to hit the ground running, so I’ll be including this month’s activities in a "Pre-launch" section.

So what am I doing this week? Call it laying the groundwork for the basics of building an online blogging business. In otherwords, I spent the day creating accounts with the companies that I will use in this venture, including:

1. PayPal
   I’ve never had a PayPal account before today. I have never bought or sold anything on eBay, and have always counted on credit cards to take care of me everywhere else. I have found today, though, that most online services will take credit cards for payments, but online make payments via PayPal without charging an egregious processing charge.
2. Amazon Associates Program
   I plan on doing a lot of reading over the upcoming months to learn everything I can about social networks, blogging, motivation, sales and a multitude of other products. But the key reason here is to be able to promote specific products through my other network blogs. It should prove interesting to see what my readers purchase through Amazon…
3. Google AdSense
   Seems like AdSense needs to be the first stop for anyone wanting to make money online. Contextual advertising is their forte, but their recently added video advertising may prove to be an engaging medium for the readers.
4. Google Analytics
   Still need to set this up in my blogging platform, but having good Analytics is a must for knowing where your readers are coming from, and what they are reading. This will help you prioritize new content as you move forward.
5. PayPerPost.com
   This new company has received a lot of flak in the online community (read TechCrunch coverage), but I believe it pays a critical link in hooking up advertisers with promoters, provided that appropriate disclosure is provided in all paid posts. We’ll see how it works from an income-generating standpoint.