Yakezie.com - Topic: Monetizing: Baby Steps

moneysmarts on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Sat, 21 May 2011 08:21:45 +0000

I'll slightly disagree with some on the whole adding adsense right away bit. If you're writing about the right kind of topics, you can actually do pretty decent with adsense. The key is – you have to be writing about topics that bring in good high dollar clicks – and not ones that have 2 cent clicks all day.. My advice is to add adsense right away, as long as you're writing about topics that are similar to some of the bigger blogs in your niche – sites that are probably doing keyword research and figuring out what kind of topics to write about that earn..

When i first started my sites i added adsense right away, and had my first payout within 3-4 months, and payout every month since.

Here are a couple of posts I wrote about income sources i have for my blogs -hope it's helpful:

http://www.moneywithablog.com/.....e-sources/

http://www.moneywithablog.com/.....-bloggers/

Hunter @financiallyc on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Mon, 16 May 2011 17:05:03 +0000

That's a quick payback for an investment. Definitely food for thought. Thank you.

TightFistedMiser on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Sun, 15 May 2011 15:26:25 +0000

Hunter - Buying a website definitely worked out for me. I made my money back in about a year and a half. There are not many investments with that kind of return.

martin on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Sat, 14 May 2011 11:27:56 +0000

I just wanted to jump in with a quick thought on adsense: I find that it's useless unless you write about popular topics and receiving the traffic. Without those two ingredients I find that it won't do you much good.

The Financial Blogger on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Sat, 14 May 2011 10:22:06 +0000

Hunter Montgomery said:

Thanks Mark, Yeah, it's early days for me. No offense taken; I appreciate direct feedback

WRT private links on the homepage: Do you mean the huge blogroll?

Thanks TFM, Interesting, I was reading about buying blogs the other day. On balance, has it been a good investment for you?

Hunter

Buying blogs is an amazing business ;-) I have grown my online business with several blog acquisition. The truth is that it's way more easier to work with an existing blog with solid archive than starting a new one ;-)

Hunter @financiallyc on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Thu, 12 May 2011 14:35:13 +0000

Thanks Mark, Yeah, it's early days for me. No offense taken; I appreciate direct feedback

WRT private links on the homepage: Do you mean the huge blogroll?

Thanks TFM, Interesting, I was reading about buying blogs the other day. On balance, has it been a good investment for you?

Hunter

TightFistedMiser on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Thu, 12 May 2011 14:20:34 +0000

The numbers I provided were affected by some things other than the advertising economy. When my Adsense first went over $1000 that was the result of finally figuring out the best way to place Adsense on my sites. The big jump last year was because I bought a new website that accounted for pretty much all the increase in Adsense income.

The Financial Blogger on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Thu, 12 May 2011 13:28:01 +0000

Don't bother with advertising since your blog is pretty new. here's the cold hard truth that I have learned when I started:

Adsense: you don't get enough traffic to earn decent money and looking at adsense stats will keep you away from your main goal: writing a good blog.

Private links & banners: you can get some but they won't pay much because you A) don't have much content and B) probably low or no PR. On top of that, having private links on your homepage at the beginning will make it even harder to get a high PR.

Affiliate programs (Amazon, Flex Offers, Commission Junction, etc): besides making your site looking more spammy, they won't do any good. Then again, affiliate sales come with A) traffic and B) credibility. As a new site, you don't have much in both categories.

By the way, I don't mean to be rude or abrasive; I went through the same path as you did and at first, I made a lot of mistakes. This is how I would talk to myself if I could go back in time 5 years from now ;-)

Focusing on good content and traffic will bring you money like magic later on. Keep it up!

I hope it helps!

Mike

Hunter @financiallyc on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Thu, 12 May 2011 06:35:59 +0000

Thanks JT, I appreciate your transparency. I enjoy analyzing the numbers too, that's what I did for years at Ford Credit. From what you are saying, the economy is improving.

Thanks Amanda, I appreciate the offer. I think I'll just wait for the time being. It is very tempting to start throwing ads all over my site, but I'm just going to do it incrementally, as my traffic organically expands. Not sure what my PR or MOZ ranking is. I'm going to get a baseline for all that in a few months.

Frugal Confessions on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Thu, 12 May 2011 06:26:56 +0000

You might also want to add a category in your righthand sidebar that says "Sponsors" or something of the like (though I guess if you do not have any then it will not look good to have it sit empty). What is your PR or MOZ ranking? If you want to email me with your rankings I can try and put you in touch with a few payday loan-type contacts (if you are open to these--they can be your main source of pay in the beginning) and you could essentially cold call them and see if they are interested.

JT_McGee on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Wed, 11 May 2011 14:40:04 +0000

Dang, TFM, talk about transparency. :P

There is something really interesting in your numbers, too. I'm making an assumption here, but assuming that you didn't change all that much in your strategy, writing, ad placement, or the number of ads, you can see also in those numbers how the general advertising economy affects earnings.

The poor economy in 2009 definitely didn't help earnings, but the rebound in adspend since then has been pretty robust.

2005 $1.85
2006 $484.54
2007 $227.10
2008 $1665.041
2009 $1918.13
2010 $4058.46

I'm seeing an increase of over 40% in adsense per-click values since 2010. I'd venture to guess that most Yakeziers are seeing similar.

Hunter @financiallyc on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Wed, 11 May 2011 14:07:57 +0000

Thanks TFM, I appreciate the insight into your adsense earnings. I like the trend!

TightFistedMiser on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Wed, 11 May 2011 13:41:27 +0000

It can take a long time to make much money with your website. My yearly Adsense earning illustrate that. I do make money from sources other than Adsense but it has only been the last 3 years that I've been making much money at all.

2005 $1.85
2006 $484.54
2007 $227.10
2008 $1665.041
2009 $1918.13
2010 $4058.46

Hunter @financiallyc on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Tue, 10 May 2011 21:30:02 +0000

Thanks Eric, Latisha, & Max.Money. I appreciate your feedback on this topic.

MaximizingMoney on Monetizing: Baby Steps

Tue, 10 May 2011 20:47:34 +0000

I'd say place some adsense ads on your main post pages to start and just leave them be.

Adsense is probably the easiest to use and you can just place the ads and forget about them.

If you post them on your post URLs only, they'll be exposed to readers who are digging into your site and viewing specific pages (where adsense ads are often very effective), but they won't necessarily be the first thing people see on your home page, if that's a concern for you.

Then I'd just let them be for 6 months to a year, and see if you're building any revenue and if it's increasing over time. Once you start making some regular revenue on adsense, then you could expand to affiliate ads and other ad placements.

I'd be a little leery of placing too many independent ad links on your site if you're a newer blog and trying to build some SEO juice, just because you don't want to dilute your home page links too much.