Ask The Blogger

Blogging Tips & Strategies

Ask the Blogger

5 Ways To Make Money Blogging in 2011

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It’s every blogger’s dream – to make a living blogging.  But the odds are against the part-time blogger making even the smallest payout from Google adsense their first year (if ever.)  So how do you beat the odds?  These tips should help

Find Your Own Advertisers

Putting up an advertising space saying “advertise here” is not going to get you anywhere. You may think advertisers should be trampling each other for that above-the-fold 125×125 ad on your homepage, but chances are it will never come. So go to them.  If you don’t have a rate card for your the spots you are selling then you better make one fast.  An ad for $30/mo. is still $30 more a month you didn’t have.

Find a local angle to the niche your blog is about.  If you are writing about “silver lab puppies” seek out a local breeder specializing in that type of dog.  Likewise, if you have a more general blog such as “sailboarding” you may not have a sailboarding shop near you, but chances are you might have a local sports or outdoor supply store that sells life jackets.

Just because you have a “national” focus does not mean you can only have national advertisers. I hope you are active in your local blogging and twitter community and follow (and are followed by) other people in your area.  They are probably reading your blog regardless of content. There is always a local advertiser you can hit up for some exposure.  It’s great if they have a shopping cart and ship nationally or internationally, but even if they don’t – they may be interested in advertising.

Bottom line: don’t wait for advertisers to find you, go out and find some.

Post A Product Review

There must be  a product or two on Amazon.com you can promote with an affiliate link.  I’m not talking some random product but a product you actually use and would not hesitate to recommend.  Look it up on Amazon and lin kto it with your affiliate ID.  If you don’t have an amazon affiliate account – get one. Now.  Seriously.

Some people do review sites for the sole purpose of making money through affiliate programs.  Some are successful, most are not. So if you really love a product, review it.  If you tried multiple products that are related, compare and contrast them.  Some of the best performing blog posts are comparisons of similar products.  An example might be The Flip video camera vs the Kodak Zi8.  You aren’t just copying the description from amazon, you are doing an honest-to-goodness comparison you yourself have tried.

THAT is authenticity.

Review Your Adsense Stats

I admit it, I don’t spend nearly enough time figuring out google adsense placements and performance.  I log into adsense, check my balance and then look at it again in a few hours.  Repeat throughout the day.

But there is a lot of information waiting to be mined. Like everything it takes time and effort.  Look at your pages and figure out the best placements for your ads.  Maybe all of your ads are in the same place on every page – maybe not.  Try testing different placments and sizes.  It will take a while to get the relevant stats, but once you hit upon the formula for your site, it can mean the difference of tens or hundreds of dollars a day.

Review A Site or Product for $5

This one is a bit controversial so stay with me. There is a great web site called fiverr.com. On it you can buy (or sell) practically anything for $5.  Everything from a phone call impersonating Kermit the Frog, to a picture of your dog posted in the middle of Tokyo’s biggest street.

One of the ways people used to make money on their blogs was through a site called ReviewMe.  It’s still around, but you had to be selected by an advertiser based on your traffic, and personally I made about $20 in 2006, then nothing.

But on fiverr, not only can you sell a “review” but you can also just sell a link if you want.  Now, if you want to remain reputable you would include the proper attribution such as “Sponsored Post” before your blog post, or s a similar disclaimer letting people know you are getting something in return for reviewing or linking to the site.  Go ahead and search fiverr for some other ideas.

The Donation Button

We’ve all seen them, and most of us hate them, but in this day and age, who cares.  The old “tip jar” is a viable way for your readers to make a donation to your site.  Even Adam Curry supports his podcasts The Daily Source Code and No Agenda through listener donations.  Yo may never see the $1,000 donations Adam sometimes sees for his show, but you might make a few dollars a month.  PayPal makes an easy Donation button that gives you an embed code you can just copy and then paste into your blog.

Of course the biggest way to make money blogging in 2011…

Keep writing great content. Write regularly, write well, write write write.  There is no shortcut for great content. Great rewards come with great work.  If you only give a few minutes or hours for blogging a day, then that is what you are going to get out of it.  A great blog requires a lot of work. Making a good income with your blog likewise requires a lot of work – but it is possible.

Here’s to a profitable 2011!

 

What Is A Niche Blog?

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Question: I’ve been hearing the term “niche blog” a lot lately, sometimes good and sometimes bad.  What is a niche blog?

Great question!

If you are new to blogging, you may hear about “finding your niche.”  In fact, most blog mentors advise people to start with a niche they enjoy, and grow their blog from there.  Sounds great, doesn’t it!  It is… but that isn’t the kind of niche blog being talked about these days.

Today, the term “niche blog” is used a lot of times to refer to what used to be called “MFA” or “Made For Adsense Blogs.”  These are blogs on a super niche topic used only to put up SEO content to rank high for keywords, so they can earn adsense revenue from people coming to the site.

By having no real content, when a visitor arrives at the site, they will more than likely want to leave right away.  The best way to do that is through the google ads presented on the page.  In this way, MFA or niche blogs are very popular with the types of bloggers who want to “get rich quick.”

There are many themes catering to this niche blogs easily and quickly.  By purchasing a developer license from the theme’s creator, the niche blog author can use the same theme over and over again on hundreds or thousands of different niche blogs.

Some people claim niche blogs have a short shelf-life, making money quickly at first and then falling off.  Others say they their niche sites earn as much today as they did 6 months or a year ago.  One thing is for certain though, you have to produce a lot of niche sites just to be sure your income stream is not depleted should one or two stop earning revenue.

If you are running a true “niche blog” then really it is just a blog.  Mentioning you run a niche blog may get some strange reactions from others in forums, especially if there are those who think niche blogs are spamming the Internet.

Why Are Adwords For My Blog Always Disapproved?

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Question: I am using blogger.com for my blog. And I’ve been reading a lot of blogs with so much affiliates. Now I joined affiliates and place banners and text link ads in my blog. But when I activated my google adwords to advertise my site, my ads was alwasy disapprove due to violation in landing page or advertising policies. How can I resolve that? I reviewed my site and removed all the ads but still it was disapproved. Can you help. Thanks

That is a pretty big question, and without knowing the specifics, it is hard to give a good answer, but I think I might have some insight you can use.

First, adwords are disapproved for many different reasons.  The email you receive from google regarding your ads is often not very helpful, but it should provide at least a clue.

The most common reason ads are disapproved, based on what you have told us, is your pages quality score. There are a lot of ebooks floating around that talk about “adsense arbitrage.”  That is, you spend money on adwords to get visitors to a page that you then have adsense (or other affiliate programs) on.  While this might have worked 5-10 years ago, the rules have certainly changed, making it harder to get adwords ads approved.

When you create an adwords ad, the system now looks at the total page (and perhaps the entire site) and determines a quality score.  If the quality score is too low, your ad may be disapproved, or it might cost a higher price to display the same adwords ad.

For instance, say you have setup up a blog about vacation deals.  On it you have a page for “vacations in Dubai” where you list some very basic information like “Vacations in Dubai are nice.  Wouldn’t you like to vacation in Dubai?  Vacations in Dubai will form memories that last a lifetime.”  You include a few photos of Dubai, and then surround the content with ads, affiliate programs, pay per click offers, and more.

That is going to be a very low quality score.

If you want to make real money with affiliate programs, you have to provide real content.  If your blog is just a few sentences on each page, surrounded by affiliate programs, not only will you not make money, but as you have said – adwords to your site will continue to be disapproved. A blog with no substance with only affiliate programs is only one step above a Made for Adsense (MFA) site.

Follow the adwords rules and have good content on the page(s) you are doing adwords for.

Can I Use Flickr Images On My Blog?

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Many bloggers obtain pictures for their blog in wrong ways. They look at Google Images or search Flickr for a relevant image, then simply include the photo in a blog post they are writing. While this is easy, it is by no means legal, and the consequences may haunt you for years to come. Imagine waking up one morning and finding your hosting provider shut your blog down for copyright infringement – not a good way to start the day.

Flickr has a category of images that are available for public use. In fact, they have several different licensing options for their. It is important to remember – just because an image is on Flickr, does not mean you can use it freely.

The most common form of license for blog posts on Flickr is the Creative Commons Attribution license. This allows you to use an image on your blog as long as you give credit (and a link to the Flickr album) of the photograph’s creator. There are over 24 Million photographs of this type currently on the system.

If you find a photo, and it says copyrighted or does not have a Creative Common license noted on it, don’t risk using it. Find another image with a suitable license, or take one yourself. Other licenses exist as well, with a full list available on the Flickr website.

Remember, just because you find an image being shared and displayed on the Internet, does not mean it is available for “fair use” or use at all.