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Friday, February 17, 2012
Blogs Make Money?
Do you agree with me that blogs don't make money? Some of you would say yes. Millions of you would say no (otherwise, why do I see so many advertisements on every other blog?).
Myth about making money
The truth is blogs can make money. But, there is no easy way out. Don't get trapped by the word "make money by blogging". Its not as simple as that. When I started off, I wrote a few posts and inserted Google AdSense ads at all possible locations and waited for people to click. It didn't happen.
On the right path
It took me nearly a year to realize that it is not easy to make money by blogging. For a while, I started to purely concentrate on my blogging and forget about making money with blogs. This is the period I started to get many backlinks and started to build up my reader base. I got good ranks on Google, Technorati and Alexa. My blog was as high as PR4 at one stage.
Never write sponsored reviews, unless you are John Chow
This is when I was swayed by sponsored reviews. I started to make some good money by writing sponsored reviews. There were lot of offers as my blog had a good ranking. Then, Google slapped the penalty for writing sponsored content. So, this blog went down to PR0. The sponsored content companies immediately stopped offering any good review opportunities to me. I realized that Google Page Rank is the king here. Even though everyone tries to play down Google's ranking system, they certainly have the say in your blog's success. I learnt a lesson the hard way.
How to make money?
So, here's my advice to newcomers (who has an intention to make money by blogging):
I have touched on few controversial issues above and certainly there will be views that are for and against them. Feel free to share your views. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Myth about making money
The truth is blogs can make money. But, there is no easy way out. Don't get trapped by the word "make money by blogging". Its not as simple as that. When I started off, I wrote a few posts and inserted Google AdSense ads at all possible locations and waited for people to click. It didn't happen.
On the right path
It took me nearly a year to realize that it is not easy to make money by blogging. For a while, I started to purely concentrate on my blogging and forget about making money with blogs. This is the period I started to get many backlinks and started to build up my reader base. I got good ranks on Google, Technorati and Alexa. My blog was as high as PR4 at one stage.
Never write sponsored reviews, unless you are John Chow
This is when I was swayed by sponsored reviews. I started to make some good money by writing sponsored reviews. There were lot of offers as my blog had a good ranking. Then, Google slapped the penalty for writing sponsored content. So, this blog went down to PR0. The sponsored content companies immediately stopped offering any good review opportunities to me. I realized that Google Page Rank is the king here. Even though everyone tries to play down Google's ranking system, they certainly have the say in your blog's success. I learnt a lesson the hard way.
How to make money?
So, here's my advice to newcomers (who has an intention to make money by blogging):
- Start off with a good and interesting topic to write about. It can be on car buying, advice on bikes, gardening, diabetes care or even on a celebrity. But, ensure that you write about the topic consistently. No point in writing about everything under the world.
- Get your blog indexed by Google. Please click here to find out how you can get indexed and rank #1 in Google
- Get backlinks from blogs with similar content/ from your own niche. Please click here to read why links are important.
- Once you have few posts, include Google AdSense advertisements. If you are going to use AdSense, do not join in any traffic building networks. It doesn't help. These networks will increase your traffic, but will reduce your Click Through Rate (CTR) and eventually your earnings per click.
- Concentrate on specific keywords and improve on your Search Engine Page Ranking. Please click here to read how to write your content for search engines.
- If you are making money already, then it's fine. If not, try to change the location of your ads or change the colour of your links. Experiment and see whether you have any improvement in the clicks
- If you still don't get clicks and your CTR lies below 2% mark, it's time to consider other modes of advertising. I suggest Project Wonderful at this point of time. Project Wonderful is based on "cost per day" advertisements compared to "cost per click" approach by Adsense. I have started using this recently and looks good so far. If you start using Project Wonderful, then probably you can look at improving your traffic through networks like Entrecard.
- Sponsored Reviews are good for short term benefits. Do not use them if you have an intention to stay in the blogging world for a longer period
I have touched on few controversial issues above and certainly there will be views that are for and against them. Feel free to share your views. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Friday, February 17, 2012 1
Commenting with URL in Blogger
I still notice many Blogger/ Blogspot bloggers are using their Blogger profile to leave their comments. With the recent (quite sometime already) changes to the Blogger commenting system, you can use Name/ URL format. I advise my readers to follow this system while leaving comments.Advantages of leaving URL
(1) If you are using Blogger profile, then it becomes difficult to find your blog (I am assuming you have more than one blog in Blogger). When I visit a Blogger's profile, there are so many blogs listed. I had this difficulty many times when bloggers leave comment about problems with my widgets. I tried to help them by visiting their blogs, but I have to sift through a complete list of blogs. If you use Name/URL feature, it is easy to locate your blog.
(2) It also helps to bring in more visitors. Visitors prefer to visit your blog rather than visiting your blog profile.
(3) If a blog uses “Do follow” in their comments, then you will get a link back to your blog.
So, from now on, remember to use the Name/ URL to leave comments on other blogs. Use your Blogger profile only to reply to comments on your own blog. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Google Adsense & Other Advertisements
Google Adsense is undeniably one of the highly used monetization methods for blogs. But, day in and day out, you could see articles supporting Google Adsense and articles that stand firmly against Google Adsense. What is your take?As a beginner, most of us know only about Adsense. To be honest, Adsense is the driving force behind me and many other bloggers when they started off. It is true that we have so many choices now. Just to quote a few: Adbrite, Bidvertiser, Clickbooth, Project Wonderful and so on. The advertisements from Adbrite and Bidvertiser looks almost similar to Adsense. But, how about their performance? Do you get better returns from them?
Do you use Google Adsense?
With these questions in mind, I ran a poll on this blog titled "Do you use Google Adsense?". The following graph displays the results of the poll:
Neither the poll has any scientific background to support the pattern nor the people participated in the poll are representative. But, the pattern of advertising is in similar lines to what I expected. One quarter of the bloggers are clearly supporting Google Adsense while another quarter have completely dumped Adsense out of their blogs. But, one-third of the bloggers are running both Adsense and other advertisements on their blogs. I am not going to discuss anything about 20% of the bloggers who have no advertisements on their blogs.
Further Discussion on Google Adsense
I will stop there now. But, I will come back with my views in my next post. In the meanwhile, here are some questions for your thought:
- Why do you think Google Adsense is the best? Or why do you think it is not?
- If you have stopped using Google Adsense, why?
- What other modes of advertisements are you using? Why did you choose them? How do you find them?
How to succeed with Adsense?
How can I succeed with Google Adsense? Many of us have this question. I had been using Adsense for more than three years. During this period, I have learnt many do's and dont's of Adsense. Let me share my experience with you.
Adsense Setup and Implementation
Adsense is one of the easiest to implement. Google does not have a very strict policy on approving blogs for Adsense. So, the first step is clear. We do not need any articles on the blog. We do not need to show substantial traffic to start using Adsense. So, the setup is simple. But, how much can you make with Adsense? Is it easy to make money with Adsense? No, it is going to be a very difficult task. If you are using Adsense and expecting results immediately, you may be disappointed. So, what is the trick or secret behind blogs with successful Adsense returns?
Secret of success with Adsense
The secret is simple. "UNDERSTAND how Google Adsense works". Yes, as simple as that. If you don't understand the way Adsense works, you might not be making substantial money with Adsense.
Let me put it in a simple way. Have you played chess? Let me say, you don't know anything about the game of chess. Let me give you a chess board and the necessary coins FREE. Can you win a game straightaway? No. You need to know the rules of the game first. Secondly, you should learn the tricks to make an impact on the game. If you are playing Viswanathan Anand, Garry Kasparov or Vladimir Kramnik with no knowledge of the game, you are going to fail. The success with Adsense is similar. Google provides you a free blogging platform and an easy-to-setup advertising network. But, to succeed, you need to understand the rules and learn the tricks.
Targeted Content Means Targeted Advertisements
Enough on the importance of understanding Google Adsense. My first suggestion is to plan the content of your blog. Google automatically displays advertisements based on what you write. So, the advertisements are going to be related to what you write. The algorithm keeps fine-tuning the advertisements as your blog grows bigger and bigger. If you write about cars, then keep writing about similar content. You can target reviews of cars, news about new cars in the market, compare different brands of cars, write about Toyota, Honda or Mazda. So, Adsense will start to display ads related to cars on your blog.
This is called "Targeted ads". While you establish yourself on the topic you have chosen, you are also moving up the search engine results page and more traffic starts to flow in. These are genuine people who searches for information and comes to your page. If they find the information they want, they just move on. Or, they may click on any related ads. Let me say, I came to your page looking for a review on Honda Civic. If I see an advertisement saying "Good offer for Honda Civic", I might most likely click on this ad. The blogger will be paid a good rate for targeted audience. So, Google will be happy as you are sending a reader who is really interested in the ad.
Conclusion
So, to conclude, choose a niche and write content within that niche. Never work on topics from all around the world in one blog. If you are going to do that, then do not use Adsense. Adsense is for targeted content. Understand this and you have crossed the first obstacle.
Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Adsense Setup and Implementation
Adsense is one of the easiest to implement. Google does not have a very strict policy on approving blogs for Adsense. So, the first step is clear. We do not need any articles on the blog. We do not need to show substantial traffic to start using Adsense. So, the setup is simple. But, how much can you make with Adsense? Is it easy to make money with Adsense? No, it is going to be a very difficult task. If you are using Adsense and expecting results immediately, you may be disappointed. So, what is the trick or secret behind blogs with successful Adsense returns?
Secret of success with Adsense
The secret is simple. "UNDERSTAND how Google Adsense works". Yes, as simple as that. If you don't understand the way Adsense works, you might not be making substantial money with Adsense.
Let me put it in a simple way. Have you played chess? Let me say, you don't know anything about the game of chess. Let me give you a chess board and the necessary coins FREE. Can you win a game straightaway? No. You need to know the rules of the game first. Secondly, you should learn the tricks to make an impact on the game. If you are playing Viswanathan Anand, Garry Kasparov or Vladimir Kramnik with no knowledge of the game, you are going to fail. The success with Adsense is similar. Google provides you a free blogging platform and an easy-to-setup advertising network. But, to succeed, you need to understand the rules and learn the tricks.
Targeted Content Means Targeted Advertisements
Enough on the importance of understanding Google Adsense. My first suggestion is to plan the content of your blog. Google automatically displays advertisements based on what you write. So, the advertisements are going to be related to what you write. The algorithm keeps fine-tuning the advertisements as your blog grows bigger and bigger. If you write about cars, then keep writing about similar content. You can target reviews of cars, news about new cars in the market, compare different brands of cars, write about Toyota, Honda or Mazda. So, Adsense will start to display ads related to cars on your blog.
This is called "Targeted ads". While you establish yourself on the topic you have chosen, you are also moving up the search engine results page and more traffic starts to flow in. These are genuine people who searches for information and comes to your page. If they find the information they want, they just move on. Or, they may click on any related ads. Let me say, I came to your page looking for a review on Honda Civic. If I see an advertisement saying "Good offer for Honda Civic", I might most likely click on this ad. The blogger will be paid a good rate for targeted audience. So, Google will be happy as you are sending a reader who is really interested in the ad.
Conclusion
So, to conclude, choose a niche and write content within that niche. Never work on topics from all around the world in one blog. If you are going to do that, then do not use Adsense. Adsense is for targeted content. Understand this and you have crossed the first obstacle.
Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Make Money with Today.com
Today.com is a blogging platform that makes writing and maintaining a blog easy. It pays you for blogging, without restricting you. When you sign up, you are given a VIP Blogger status that allows you to earn money based on the page impressions your blog generates. Here is my trial blog on Today.com, Cricket and India; take a look if you are interested.
Who should write for Today.com?
Today.com is suitable for bloggers who are unable to make significant money with their normal blog, be it on Blogger, Wordpress or self-hosted. Today.com pays you $2.00 per one thousand page impressions. Compare this with your Adsense earnings. If you struggle to reach $2.00 eCPM, then Today.com is worth a try. All you have to do is concentrate on your blogging and promotion of your blog. The advertisement part is taken care of by Today.com.
How to generate traffic to your blog?
I personally prefer search engine traffic. I find that Today.com blogs are generally doing well on search engines, similar to Blogger blogs. So, you have to get enough backlinks for your primary keyword and while blogging target your primary keyword and secondary keywords. Look at the picture below. This is a screenshot from my trial blog.
As you can see, I am not trying any blog promotion other than getting traffic from search engines like, Google and Yahoo. All I did is to create a blog, get some keyword-anchored backlinks and wrote content targeting my keywords. I am not getting tons of traffic, but I am having enough to keep the blog going. If you take a close look, I did get some traffic from Entrecard and Stumbleupon. But, I have removed Entrecard widget since, as I do not have enough time to drop cards. What I want is traffic without any effort, or simply to put, I want Search Engine Traffic.
Can I use Entrecard?
Of course, you can use it. But, ensure that you disable paid advertisements in your advert settings of Entrecard. So, if you are a dropaholic with 300 drops a day, then probably you could easily get thousand of unique visits to your blog. Today.com has no restriction, so far, on where the traffic comes from. You can get traffic from Entrecard, Digg, Stumbleupon or any social networks. It does not matter.
Important Points
How to sign up?
You can sign up by clicking here. This is an affiliate link and I thank you for signing up through me. Today.com pays $5.00 for every successful referral, if the referral goes on to post at least 30 individual posts on 30 individual days.
Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Who should write for Today.com?
Today.com is suitable for bloggers who are unable to make significant money with their normal blog, be it on Blogger, Wordpress or self-hosted. Today.com pays you $2.00 per one thousand page impressions. Compare this with your Adsense earnings. If you struggle to reach $2.00 eCPM, then Today.com is worth a try. All you have to do is concentrate on your blogging and promotion of your blog. The advertisement part is taken care of by Today.com.
How to generate traffic to your blog?
I personally prefer search engine traffic. I find that Today.com blogs are generally doing well on search engines, similar to Blogger blogs. So, you have to get enough backlinks for your primary keyword and while blogging target your primary keyword and secondary keywords. Look at the picture below. This is a screenshot from my trial blog.
As you can see, I am not trying any blog promotion other than getting traffic from search engines like, Google and Yahoo. All I did is to create a blog, get some keyword-anchored backlinks and wrote content targeting my keywords. I am not getting tons of traffic, but I am having enough to keep the blog going. If you take a close look, I did get some traffic from Entrecard and Stumbleupon. But, I have removed Entrecard widget since, as I do not have enough time to drop cards. What I want is traffic without any effort, or simply to put, I want Search Engine Traffic.
Can I use Entrecard?
Of course, you can use it. But, ensure that you disable paid advertisements in your advert settings of Entrecard. So, if you are a dropaholic with 300 drops a day, then probably you could easily get thousand of unique visits to your blog. Today.com has no restriction, so far, on where the traffic comes from. You can get traffic from Entrecard, Digg, Stumbleupon or any social networks. It does not matter.
Important Points
- Spend time before deciding on your topic. It is better to have a topic that is less competitive, but have significant amount of search traffic.
- Once you decided your topic, choose your URL. Ensure that your primary keyword is included in the URL. This is very important as you cannot change your URL once you have committed.
- Post few articles and start looking for backlinks. Backlinks helps to quickly get indexed by Google.
- Keep posting regularly with your primary/ secondary keywords until search engine traffic starts to flow in.
- Now, you can slow down your posting frequency and post only when you are free. Search engines will take care of sending regular traffic to you.
How to sign up?
You can sign up by clicking here. This is an affiliate link and I thank you for signing up through me. Today.com pays $5.00 for every successful referral, if the referral goes on to post at least 30 individual posts on 30 individual days.
Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Type of Traffic Determines Adsense Success
In my earlier post, while replying to Sandy’s comments, I told you that I don’t use Adsense in this blog. In spite of me supporting Google’s Adsense regularly in my posts, why I don’t use it here? I thought I should explain to clarify the doubts that might have cropped up in you.
I have three main reasons for not using Adsense on this blog:
(1) I primarily get traffic from social networking sites
(2) This blog deals with topics with other bloggers as the target audience. The topics generally revolve around blogging tips and make money online.
(3) The poor performing Adsense ads on this blog affected the performance of Adsense ads on my other blogs
How does type of traffic affect Adsense income?
The traffic to any blog generally falls under two major categories, traffic from social networks and traffic from search engines. Likewise, blogs can also be classified into blogs with primarily social traffic and blogs with primarily search engine traffic.
Please take note that Google Adsense does not perform well on blogs with traffic primarily from social networks. This might be one major reason why bloggers like John Chow, Darren Rowse and the likes have not been using Adsense on their blogs. Even though you get huge traffic through social networks, it is not going to convert into clicks. Even if it does, it is not going to produce good returns for you.
Blogging Niche
If you see advertisements related to blogging from Google on your Adsense block, it means you are not doing well as far as Google is concerned. So, the scenario gets worse if your blog itself is on blogging niche. It might look like you are getting targeted ads. Of course, I am blogging about blogs and I should expect ads related to blogging, right? But, Google will still pay you very minimal rates per click. So, it is a proven fact that blogging niche does not perform well with Google Adsense.
One poor performing blog affects the entire network
If you have many blogs under your Adsense account, then you need to watch the performance of each of your blogs closely. Google has a peculiar way of degrading blogs, called “Smart Pricing”. If one of your blog performs badly, then all your blogs will be slapped a kind of penalty and the returns from well performing blogs will start to dwindle. So, if you notice a blog with poor performance, immediately remove the Adsense ads from that blog. This will help in getting good returns from your other blogs. It is a good idea to regularly test all your Adsense blogs for smart pricing.
Conclusion
So, the above reasons summarize my decision not to use Adsense on this particular blog. But, I have other blogs where I still use Adsense and they perform particularly well. Hope that clarifies my support for Google Adsense and still not using it here in this blog. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
I have three main reasons for not using Adsense on this blog:
(1) I primarily get traffic from social networking sites
(2) This blog deals with topics with other bloggers as the target audience. The topics generally revolve around blogging tips and make money online.
(3) The poor performing Adsense ads on this blog affected the performance of Adsense ads on my other blogs
How does type of traffic affect Adsense income?
The traffic to any blog generally falls under two major categories, traffic from social networks and traffic from search engines. Likewise, blogs can also be classified into blogs with primarily social traffic and blogs with primarily search engine traffic.
Please take note that Google Adsense does not perform well on blogs with traffic primarily from social networks. This might be one major reason why bloggers like John Chow, Darren Rowse and the likes have not been using Adsense on their blogs. Even though you get huge traffic through social networks, it is not going to convert into clicks. Even if it does, it is not going to produce good returns for you.
Blogging Niche
If you see advertisements related to blogging from Google on your Adsense block, it means you are not doing well as far as Google is concerned. So, the scenario gets worse if your blog itself is on blogging niche. It might look like you are getting targeted ads. Of course, I am blogging about blogs and I should expect ads related to blogging, right? But, Google will still pay you very minimal rates per click. So, it is a proven fact that blogging niche does not perform well with Google Adsense.
One poor performing blog affects the entire network
If you have many blogs under your Adsense account, then you need to watch the performance of each of your blogs closely. Google has a peculiar way of degrading blogs, called “Smart Pricing”. If one of your blog performs badly, then all your blogs will be slapped a kind of penalty and the returns from well performing blogs will start to dwindle. So, if you notice a blog with poor performance, immediately remove the Adsense ads from that blog. This will help in getting good returns from your other blogs. It is a good idea to regularly test all your Adsense blogs for smart pricing.
Conclusion
So, the above reasons summarize my decision not to use Adsense on this particular blog. But, I have other blogs where I still use Adsense and they perform particularly well. Hope that clarifies my support for Google Adsense and still not using it here in this blog. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Blogging: Interview with Deepak,
Just thought of sharing this video with you. Unfortunately, the video is in TAMIL language. So, please view the video if you know Tamil. This is an interview by Deepak that was telecast on Dec 24, 2009 in TV (Polimer Channel, Salem, Tamil Nadu, India). What is his interview all about? ...
Deepak is an young entrepreneur, who is in his early 20s. He rejected a well-paying full-time job to venture into internet marketing and blogging. Interestingly, he started on his own immediately after leaving the University. He shares his blogging experience in this first episode of the interview. I could not embed the youtube video; it seems it was disabled. So, I had given the link to the Youtube video.
You can view the video here: Interview with Deepak, Part 1: Introduction & Blogging
Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
Deepak is an young entrepreneur, who is in his early 20s. He rejected a well-paying full-time job to venture into internet marketing and blogging. Interestingly, he started on his own immediately after leaving the University. He shares his blogging experience in this first episode of the interview. I could not embed the youtube video; it seems it was disabled. So, I had given the link to the Youtube video.
You can view the video here: Interview with Deepak, Part 1: Introduction & Blogging
Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post
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