Monetizing 105 - Pocket Change or Big Money?

What I'm about to tell you just goes to prove what they say: you can't believe everything you see on the internet.  I will present to you here the two main streams of thought you will find out there on the web about making money blogging in as warm, and as heartless a fashion as I can muster.

The Optimists Say:

Making money online with your blog is super easy!  Just look at all the millionaires who went from nothing to something in just a few months time!  Trust me and buy my e-book and you'll be quitting your day job in three months time!

The Pessimists Say:


This is hard work, make no mistake about it.  You will be putting in long, hard hours, possibly up to 60 hours a week writing for your blog, networking, making connections in the community, doing research, and neglecting your family and friends while you do it all.  In the end you may make no money at all, end up disillusioned, frustrated, angry, and give up in the end after all that work.

The Optimistic Pessimists Say:

It's hard work, but it's worth a try.  You might make millions, or you might make pocket change, but don't give up when it doesn't work out in the first few months, or even the first year.  It's a learning process all the way through, and even after years of blogging, you'll still be learning how to do it right, and how to be the best.  If you enjoy doing it and make some pocket change along the way, then it wasn't all for naught, and if you become a millionaire, then you can add yours to the list of the few success stories out there.  Don't give up!

I personally tend to be in line with the optimistic pessimists.  I know what it is like to give it my all, even to the detriment of what little free time I have after working two jobs and trying to take care of my family, but I also have hope that someday I can be the best of the best, and make something of myself, and my blog.

I'm telling you this now, because I want you to be informed.  I don't want you to believe the naive optimistic hype online only to become frustrated and irritated when it's not as easy as they make it look.  I also don't want you to fall into the pessimistic category and never even try at all.  When it comes to the world of making money blogging, it's best to approach things with a critical, yet hopeful eye, and an attitude of what you put in, is what you'll get out.  Hopefully you'll give it your all, as I try to do each and every day, and you'll reap the rewards of your hard work and labor.

I will be here with you every step of the way as I continue to learn and share with you what my experiences have been.

Lend us a comment below about what your experiences (good, bad, or in between) have been with blogging in general, or blogging for profit.  We'd love to hear from you, and give you a chance to share your story, and what key things you've learned along the way.

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Monetizing 104 - Paid Text Link Ads aka The Big Flop

You may have heard of sites like TLA (http://www.text-link-ads.com/) that pay you for link ads within your text or other places on your website.  They claim (or at least TLA does) that buying these links for a flat rate will push your site higher on the search engine page rankings.  Sounds like a great deal for you... buying your way to the top.  But in all reality it's a bad deal for the buyer, and for anyone who puts these types of ads on their website.

Pinoymoneytalk.com has done their research and has examples of how Google has fought these text link ads tooth and nail, and has in some cases actually penalized sites for buying these ads, or selling them on their site.  Check out their article HERE for more information.

The bottom line about text link ads of any sort: Avoid them at all costs.  Yes, they can make you money, but at what cost?  Your page ranking could drop, and that equals less traffic for you, and less clicks on any of the ads on your site.

If you have already been penalized for having these ads on your site, and have since removed them, supposedly you can contact Google and get some of your page ranking back.

Want more great info on building or monetizing your blog?  Check out our other great articles!

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Getting Traffic 104 - Stumble Upon

Like using the Ping-O-Matic, adding your site to Stumble Upon is one of the easiest ways to start getting traffic, and should be one of the first things you do after setting up your blog.

What is Stumble Upon?  It's a website that allows users to install a toolbar into their browser with a 'Stumble' button.  Users make an account with Stumble Upon and then choose their interests.  After that, whenever they click the 'Stumble' button, their web browser jumps to a new page matching one of their interests!  It's a fun thing to do when you have some time to kill, and it has helped thousands of people discover new favorite sites.

How does this help you?  Simple:

1) Go to Stumble Upon and sign up for an account (free).

2) Install the Stumble button into your web browser (you can uninstall it easily as soon as you're done with this tutorial).

3) Go to your website.  Once you're at the homepage of your blog or website, use the stumble tool bar to add your site to the stumble search engine.  Be sure to set it to the appropriate category, and put an interesting and accurate description into the description box.  Add it to the Stumble site, and you're done!

4) At this point you can uninstall the stumble toolbar from your web browser if you want to.

Congratulations, now people from all over the world will be 'stumbling' onto your website.  The whole process takes just a few minutes.

Keep in mind that some of these 'stumblers' you get may not stick around on your site, and may keep on stumbling along, which is really useless traffic to you as guestblogging.com points out.  I still maintain however that some of my favorite sites have been found by using stumble, and there is the possibility that you may get some loyal traffic from it, but perhaps not as much as you would hope for.  It is worth a try anyway.

To discover more great tutorials and articles about building or monetizing your blog, click on the category tabs at the top of the page!

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Getting Traffic 105 - Forums And Backlinks

As you've seen, you can get traffic to your blog in a number of different ways: Search engines like Google, ping-o-matic, stumble upon, social networks, word of mouth in the form of other sites sending traffic your way via backlinks...  Today we're going to talk about you doing some footwork (or typing work as the case may be) by using forums to send traffic to your site.

We know that the more backlinks you have out there to your site, the higher up your site goes in the search engine rankings.  Forums can help you push your site up in the rankings as well as send you some direct traffic, and here's how:

1) Find a forum that matches whatever topic you blog about.  For example, let's say you blog about cats.  Go out into the internet world and find a lively forum about cats.

2) Sign up on the forum, and customize your profile.  Many forums allow you to have a link and maybe even a banner or a few words in your forum 'signature'.  The signature shows up below every single post or reply you make in a forum.  Let's imagine the potential of this here for just a moment:

You sign up on the cat forum, and in your signature put:  
Visit my cat health site at www.cathealth.blogger.com.  (Yes, you want it in bold, and in a different color than black if you can.  Sometimes you can even make the signature a larger size).

Now you go onto that cat forum once a day and make one valuable, insightful post or reply to someone else's forum post, every day for a year.  (Don't reply with, 'wow that's cool...' or something else meaningless.  Try to be an active part of their forum community).

After a year you have made 365 posts on this cat forum, and below each post is the link to your site.  Odds are you're going to get at least a little direct traffic from people clicking on your link in your signature.  But even better than that is that the Google bots are out there crawling the web, and finding all of those backlinks you've made in your forum signature.  You slowly climb the search engine page ranks.

Let's imagine now that you've actually signed up to two different cat forums, and you make one post in each, every day for a year.  That's 730 of your links out there on the web
after only a year.

This is the first way you should use forums to get traffic to your site.

The second way you have to be careful with, as you don't want to be considered a 'spammer'.

1) Sign up for a few forums in your niche (topic), again we'll say they're cat forums because you're writing the best cat blog around.

2) Post insightful, meaningful content on the forums in posts and replies to other people's posts.

3) Every once in a while you'll get the opportunity to post a link to one of your posts in a reply.  Let's say you've written a post about what to do when your cat is sick, and you've just come across a person on the forum asking about what to do when your cat gets sick.  Simple, you give a little information and then give a link to your post and say, "I've already written a great post about this on my blog if you want to check it out!"  And there you have it, yet another link to your site on the web, and more chances for people to click on the link and give you some traffic from the forums.

I say to be careful because if you do this too often, they will call you a spammer and you might get removed from the forums.  But if you're giving them a link with valid information to a specific problem every once in a while, odds are they'll appreciate the help.

If you're using the forums in this way, then you should really be signed up to three or more forums in your niche area so that you get more chances to do this.  You can also do this with Yahoo Answers, where they love for you to give links to valuable information that relates to the question.

Check out our other great tutorials and articles by clicking on the category tabs at the top of the page!

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Monetizing 102 - Zazzle

In Monetizing 101 we learned about Adsense.  Lets learn about a second way to earn money with your blog.

Perhaps you've heard about making money via promoting products for sale online.  Well, here's some good news: Zazzle's affiliate program makes it easier than ever, and lets you promote whatever product you want!

What is Zazzle?  Zazzle lets people upload their artwork to shirts, hats, bags, skateboards, iPad cases, dog clothes, posters, post cards, shoes, and much more... too much to list in fact.  The product doesn't get made until a customer orders it.  Zazzle handles all the finances, shipping, returns, and payment to the artist.  It's a great company, and I've made some good money uploading my artwork there.  Check out my store to see what I'm talking about.  Best of all, it's free!  No cost to post products or set up a store.

So how does this lead to you making money with your blog?

1) Sign up for an account with zazzle.com

2) Go to their Affiliate Page (linked above) or their 'Associate Center' in your account area.

3) Open up a new tab and search for a store or product you like on zazzle... perhaps one that relates to your website.  Let's say you have a dog website again, and so you'd look for a witty dog T-shirt. (They even give you banners for some items, and the banner already comes set up with your affiliate link and html... see below).


4) Follow the directions on the affiliate page to get a widget or a link to that product or store and put the widget and link on your blog in the sidebar, or even in a specific post.  HERE is the link to some of Zazzle's free promotional tools and guides (I believe you have to already be signed in to view it).  Also HERE is how I link to most of the products I promote, or you can check out the video below to see how it's done:


5) Viola.  Whenever somebody clicks on your link or widget, and then buys ANYTHING on Zazzle.com within 45 days of clicking on your widget or link, you get paid a percentage of the sale!  Percentages start at 15% and go up to 30%.  Not bad money for just putting some links or widgets on your site every once in a while that already relate to your content and niche!

Want to see an example of this?  I promoted my own store in that link that said 'check out my store'.  If you clicked on it and went to Zazzle, and you buy anything from my store or anybody else's store in the next 45 days, then I get a percentage of it.  Easy as pie!

Check out this video about zazzle on CNN  for more info about Zazzle.

Also check out the video about zazzle below!



Check out our other great tutorials to learn more about making money with your blog!

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Monetizing 101 - Adsense

So, your blog is set up, you have some great content, the tags are set on your posts, and now you want to start making some money?  What an excellent idea!

There are many ways to make money from your blog, and we will cover several of them in other posts, but for now we'll start with Google Adsense, the most basic and easy way to start making money from your blog.

Why is adsense the best and easiest when using blogger?  Well, for starters Google and Blogger are basically the same company now, so Google adsense is already integrated into blogger and ready to use.  All you have to do is make an adsense account, and enable it on your blog.

Check out this quick video to get a brief overview of what Adsense is and how it works:


1) Log into your blogger dashboard.  Go to the link or tab labeled "Monetize."  You will see a button that says, 'Sign up for Adsense'.  Click it and follow the instructions to sign up for Google Adsense.

Google Adsense may seem complicated at first, but Adsense has a lot of great tutorials and information for you to read through that would be pointless for me to reproduce here.  I will tell you some things that might be harder to find however.

2) After you make about $10 you'll need to verify your phone number.  There's a place on the google adsense site where you can click and google will call you and an automated voice will give you a number to punch in.  If you don't do this all of your ads will mysteriously disappear from your blog.  This is one of those things I had to figure out the hard way.

3) Google adsense will not pay you until your balance reaches $100 or more.  That may seem like a lot, especially if you're only making a few dollars a month (if that, which is normal for the first few months you put adsense on your blog).  But once you get decent traffic and have 100 or more articles, you'll be making some decent money.  Some bloggers make enough to quit their jobs, but keep in mind they devote their work day to their blog instead of going to a day job, so they put a lot of work into their blogs.

4) In order to get paid by Adsense you have to give them your tax information, select a payment method (check or direct deposit into a verified bank account), and input a pin # they will send you in the mail (which verifies that you live at the address you gave them).  No worries though, Google is a trustworthy site and will not use or sell your information to anyone.

5) Something very important you must do on every single blog you intend to use adsense on is put up a privacy policy.  I usually do this in a post and then link to the post in a widget (see the Build Your Blog page).  Widgets appear on every single page, therefor the privacy policy link will appear on every single page.  Ads will only display on pages you have a link to your privacy policy on.

Click HERE to view the generic adsense friendly privacy policy used on this site.  Feel free to copy and paste the policy for your site from THIS PAGE HERE.  Be sure to change all the url's to your own site's url.

6) Google Adsense has a pretty extensive list of rules for what types of sites they will allow their ads to appear on, as well as how you're allowed to use the ads on your site.  It would be wise to take a look at those rules on the Google Adsense page, or you could find yourself with money in your account that they take away because you violated their terms of service.  It's very important to know the rules and follow them.

For instance, you cannot click on your own ads, and you cannot solicit clicks.  This means you can't ask people to click, and you can't ask people to 'visit the sponsors' on your site, because these would be clicks that are worth nothing to the people who purchased the ads in the first place.  Google wants to direct people who are genuinely interested in the products to the correct ads so that the ad purchasers get the most for their money.  Asking people to click ads so you can get money would be wrong because it would mean the ad purchaser will have wasted money because they paid for clicks that didn't result in purchases etc.

7) You can only place three adsense units on your blog.  Generally a good placement is one in the sidebar, one in between posts, and one somewhere else like up by the blog title.  Some people put all three units in the sidebar or between posts.  A good thing to remember is that you don't want to overwhelm your visitors with ads or they probably won't come back.  Your visitors aren't coming to your site looking for ads, they're coming looking for real content that you're providing them, so don't overwhelm them with ads.

8) You may want to try placing ads in certain positions for a few months, and then moving the ads to new positions for a few months to see which positions generate more revenue for you.  It's a test and retest process that will take some time to get just right.  It's good to take a critical look at your site or have a friend do it and see where the eyes go to first.  If the eyes are immediately drawn to the left, then you may not want to put ads on the right, at least not at the top of the page.  There are numerous websites out there explaining good ad placement technique, and I won't go into it here more than I already have.

9) You can keep track of your earnings by day, week, month, or all time by going back to your 'Monetize' page on your blog.  It's always nice to log in and see you've made a few cents, or a few dollars.  Money is money, and it will build up until you have enough to cash out.

Be sure to check out our Build Your Blog and Get Traffic sections to learn more about getting traffic to your site so that you can get eyes viewing those ads on your site and get some revenue!

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