monetizing your blog? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Melissa said:

Thank you so much for your answers!  I really appreciate the depth of your answers. 

Now, of course, I have some follow up questions.  Both Crystal and MoneySmarts mentioned writing other places. I enjoy writing, and my husband keeps suggesting writing at other places besides my blog.  How do I go about doing that?  (I am referring to writing besides guest posts, although I have guest posted for a number of other bloggers and enjoyed it.)  How do I find sponsored post writing assignments?

Also, both of you mentioned selling private ads and that the Yakezie forums could help with this.  I am still fairly new here; could you explain how that works?

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Take a look at ProBlogger. They have a ton of blogging jobs on the Job board. I was able to get 10 staff writing jobs off of that site.

Mr Money's response is going to be helpful to all of you.  Please read his response very carefully.  Please don't expect to be making hundred of dollars each month your first few months into blogging.  It takes time to build a consistent audience.  Even with Google, the quality of the ads from their network that they choose to show on YOUR site improves as your traffic improves.  It's taken 2 years of blogging for me to hit the $100 mark per month with my blog. 

 

Mr. Money's advice will fast track you on the way to make money.  good luck.

Post edited 1:07 pm – December 6, 2010 by moneysmarts

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sandy@yesiamcheap said:

Mr Money's response is going to be helpful to all of you.  Please read his response very carefully.  Please don't expect to be making hundred of dollars each month your first few months into blogging.  It takes time to build a consistent audience.  Even with Google, the quality of the ads from their network that they choose to show on YOUR site improves as your traffic improves.  It's taken 2 years of blogging for me to hit the $100 mark per month with my blog. 

 

Mr. Money's advice will fast track you on the way to make money.  good luck.

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Yup, as mentioned it takes time to hit that mythical $100 adsense payout.  If you get help from others, however, and write about good paying topics more often, it can happen a lot quicker. How do you know what topics pay better?  Check out what kind of topics successful sites are write about, use the adwords keyword tool, look at your own analytics to see which articles pay the best, look at what's in the news, etc. 

Also, when thinking about your topics, think about what kind of things you search for when you go to google.  For me, I would normally search to get help on things I don't understand.  Tax issues, economic news, how to type articles, etc.  So in other words, write your articles to help other people. Articles and sites that focus inward and do a lot of navel gazing (for example;  "things i spent money on this month", or "10 reasons why i like my cat") tend not to do as well.  Help others, and you'll do better.

Smart On Money is my second blog, and this time around I knew a bit better what I was doing when it comes to monetization.    Instead of having to wait months and months to get my first payout, I had it within 2 months this time.  The site is only 5 months old now, and the site is now breaking $100 in adsense every month – over $200 last month – so it can be done. 

My suggestion?  Write a lot, and get as much content as you can indexed by google, cause that's where most of your good paying traffic is going to come from.

Forest Parks said:

The best way to increase adsense earnings is to pretend it isn't there. Write good coherant posts for readers and on popular topics. Even though commeters and readers are no good for adsense as such they are good at helping you climb the ranks will ultimately will increase adsense earnings. So never write for adsense as such!

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It is so nice to hear this from a seasoned blogger.  I just cannot bring myself to write with Adsense in mind, but I thought I was being naive.  I figured I rather be naive than turn blogging into yet another job with somebody else's rules.

Forest Parks said:

The best way to increase adsense earnings is to pretend it isn't there. Write good coherant posts for readers and on popular topics. Even though commeters and readers are no good for adsense as such they are good at helping you climb the ranks will ultimately will increase adsense earnings. So never write for adsense as such!

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I don't know if I would pretend it's not there, to a degree writing your posts with adsense in mind can lead to better performing posts and higher adsense revenue for your site.  On the other hand, I agree with your point that you don't want to be writing posts that you don't enjoy, and aren't passionate about – and you don't want your posts coming out sounding like you're just aiming to rank high for a good paying keyword.  You need the posts to be useful, and ones that actually help people.  So in that sense if you want to do well with adsense you can ignore it to a degree as long as you're writing posts that are helpful, and are topics that others are searching for information on. 

 

But long term, I think it's important to pay attention to adsense and analytics trends, and look at where your site excels, what posts pay best and optimize your writing to help increase your income – if you're worried about that (like I am)  ;)

Hey Forest,

 

Now that I have it up, I think am going to focus on writing.  However, moneysmarts does have a good point about targeting your topics.  Perhaps the sweet spot is writing about things you are passionate about that is also popular with a lot of people as well.  What a journey…

 

Buck

 

Forest Parks said:

The best way to increase adsense earnings is to pretend it isn't there. Write good coherant posts for readers and on popular topics. Even though commeters and readers are no good for adsense as such they are good at helping you climb the ranks will ultimately will increase adsense earnings. So never write for adsense as such!

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Out of curiosity, is the AdSense monetization tied to the search engine hit your site gets as opposed to the visitors? Has anyone looked into that?

I am just curious at Kevin's comment above when he mentioned his friend earns more from AdSense. The regular readers may not click on adsense compared to the surfers who stumble on your site in search of something.

moneysmarts said:

In general the ones the posts that do well with adsense monetization are the ones that do well in the search engines.  Regular readers don't usually click on ads, so it can be a good idea to try and monetize in other ways for your regular readers – like your own products, affiliates, etc.

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The most clicks that I get are from articles with very focused topics that pull search engine traffic.  Chances are that the ads that are displayed will closely be associated with what they were searching for (especially with Google's search tracking cookies) which might insight people to click on those ads.  There is both a good and bad here.  The good is that you will generate income, but the bad is that you will be losing a reader off to another site.  I write content sometimes for my most popular search terms and they generate the most revenue.  I've said if before and will say again, everyone should install Adsense Optimizer plugin.  It is light years ahead of others and increased my revenue from under $0.50 to $30 in the first month alone.

sandy@yesiamcheap said:

moneysmarts said:

In general the ones the posts that do well with adsense monetization are the ones that do well in the search engines.  Regular readers don't usually click on ads, so it can be a good idea to try and monetize in other ways for your regular readers – like your own products, affiliates, etc.

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The most clicks that I get are from articles with very focused topics that pull search engine traffic.  Chances are that the ads that are displayed will closely be associated with what they were searching for (especially with Google's search tracking cookies) which might insight people to click on those ads.  There is both a good and bad here.  The good is that you will generate income, but the bad is that you will be losing a reader off to another site.  I write content sometimes for my most popular search terms and they generate the most revenue.  I've said if before and will say again, everyone should install Adsense Optimizer plugin.  It is light years ahead of others and increased my revenue from under $0.50 to $30 in the first month alone.

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Hey Sandy! Is the Adsense Optimizer Plugin a Wordpress platform-specific feature? Or can that be used with other platforms as well?