Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

Although many of us are blogging for the long-term in very specific niches, there exists many more dynamic opportunities to achieve blogging success as well as various styles that can be adopted. Over the years I have learned that there are some of us who have not really mastered the quality of patience and do have difficulty being committed to tasks and goals that require long-suffering dedication that leads to success.

So I have a few ideas through which I can offer some inspiration for the short-term blogger and how you can take advantage of the various changes and seasons of popular events. [Read more]

Why eBay Partner Network Makes 22 Times More Money Than AdSense On My Blog

Updated on March 5, 2009: I noticed a huge discrepancy with my Google Analytics pageviews versus the impressions being reported by eBay Partner Network.

Needless to say that changed my calculations. I reworked the numbers and found that instead of 200% in the original post, eBay makes me 22 times more money than AdSense! Or in percentage terms, 2,100%. Of course, with this new knowledge, I’m very motivated to put eBay links on all my relevant posts, not just my most popular ones

I’ve been pretty excited the last couple days. I finally found an income stream for my gaming blog that actually makes a decent amount of money without hurting the usability of my readers.

At first, I tried AdSense but the ads I got were very irrelevant. My gaming blog is about a collectible card game called Magic The Gathering. As a card game, the word deck is huge keyword. However, that word was a problem since it would show ads about building a physical deck for your house. Also, since the title of the game has the word magic, I would get ads about magic tricks and how to cast actual spells.

I estimate that 70-80% of my ads were irrelevant. As such, I knew my readers were having a poor reading experience on my blog. I even hated looking at my site. The big intrusive irrelevant ads were a turnoff. I tried smaller ads but my income sunk too much. But even with the big ads, my income was not very good. Relevance is huge if you want to make money and very few people were clicking my ads.

My sister has a dating blog that gets less than half the traffic as my blog. But she has earned more with AdSense since her blog shows more relevant ads. After a while, I couldn’t optimize AdSense to make more money. My income was so low that I decided to drop the program and look for other ways to make money.

I tried affiliate programs from online retail stores but I couldn’t find a quality program. Surprisingly there was no info product I was comfortable with endorsing that had an affiliate program. I was close to giving up. I thought I would have to focus solely on creating my own products to make decent money from my blog. I’m working on my own info product but it will take a couple months to complete. I wanted to make some money right away without resorting to AdSense.

To add to my frustration, my blog was reaching new traffic highs every month for the last couple of months. I had recently reached the 1,000 daily visitors milestone.

eBay Partner Network

As a last ditch effort, I turned to eBay’s cost per click (CPC) program called eBay Partner Network (ePN). I knew they could be a great income source, since they have a lot of traffic and there is an active eBay market for the cards I blog about.

I sent my application but immediately regreted it when I read this article about how to get accepted in the network. Yeah, I know. I should’ve read the article first! My excitement and impatience got the best of me when I found out that eBay had a CPC program.

In my application, I wrote a 50 word blurb about my site. I didn’t put any effort in explaining why my site was a good fit for eBay. Needless to say, my site was rejected after a couple of weeks.

I then wrote them a 380 word email message asking them to reconsider my site. I explained my business plan and gave multiple traffic stats. I even included my experience as a search specialist and blogger. I knew my site was a good one for eBay so on the second try, I spent the extra effort to communicate that fact.

I couple days later I was accepted into the program.

I immediately create a couple eBay links and placed them on my most popular pages.

After a couple of days, I looked at the numbers and was very happy to discover that eBay made 22 times more money than my previous AdSense numbers (based on CPM, or cost per thousand page impressions)

Plus, the best performing AdSense ads are the big square ads that take up a lot of space and make your blog look cluttered. On the other hand, eBay has text links that can be placed in the middle of your posts. Therefore, you add value and an income stream without making your blog look cluttered with ads.

My blog doesn’t have any ads right now and it’s a great feeling. I do plan to sell ads on my sidebar in the future but I’m glad I don’t have to put ads in the content section of my blog. That section is the best place to put ads if you want to make money but it’s the worst spot from the user’s perspective.

I’m excited about the future with ePN. I haven’t done any testing on my eBay links so I think there’s room to optimize and earn more money.

If you have a product driven site, I definitely recommend eBay Partner Network.

Performancing offers blog management services.

5 Ways to Turbo Charge Your Blog Monetization

By now you probably know that simply plastering ads all over your pages and prominent donation links don’t really work. There really are no get-rich-quick schemes in blogging; turning your blog into a reliable income generator requires hard work, experimentation, and patience. Those are three aspects common among the five methods I share in this post.

Optimum Ad Placement

Like it or not, your average visitor has learned to ignore parts of your website that seem like ads—even elements that really aren’t ads! The kneejerk reaction to this reality is an in-your-face approach towards ad layout, sacrificing readability for the sake of ensuring your ads are front and center.

If you’re committed to building a long-term quality audience however, you’ll need to find a good balance between content and ad visibility. [Read more]

5 Ways to Optimize Online Videos For Your Blog

Blogs are hardly about text anymore, with online video players embedded within posts commonplace. Here are five ways to use online videos to maximum effect. [Read more]

Making money with Amazon even if you miss the direct sale

Until recently, I’d almost given up on being an Amazon affiliate. It wasn’t necessarily hard to get people to click on links but they rarely seemed to buy what I was offering them.

However, times have changed. I can’t think of any of my family, friends or acquaintances that isn’t aware of the Amazon brand and hasn’t bought at least one item from them.

What I’m discovering more with Amazon is that, while the basic rules of affiliate success remain the same — including traffic, deep-linking, compelling and relevant enticement — Amazon is one of the few big names that rewards you even if your visitors’ first clicks don’t make a sale.

Granted, you only get 24 hours from a visitor landing at Amazon from your site in order to earn commission from items placed in their basket, but there’s also a 90 day window of opportunity if users add something to the basket on day one but don’t purchase it immediately.

I used to think that Amazon had less earning potential than pay-per-click advertising such as AdSense or Chitika, because someone not only has to click but also purchase before you earn any money.

Thing is, I’m finding that if I can get people to visit Amazon, I have a good chance of earning commission on everything they decide to buy, even if it’s not something I initially recommended.

Looking a what people order, a number of items are either the exact product I recommended, or something closely related. The other items are seemingly random.

So, with decent traffic and a positive push towards Amazon from a wide variety of your blog posts, you do have the potential to earn, letting Amazon do its usual great job of drawing people further into its site and towards the “Add to Basket” button.

I know some other affiliate programs also offer this kind of deal. It’s worth looking into. If you’re transparent about your links and recommend stuff that you own, or would buy yourself, then regardless of whether your visitors buy those items when they go to a merchant site, they’ll hopefully remember your site as a useful source for genuine product recommendations.

Income from Amazon is still far more unpredictable than from other forms of advertising I run on my blogs, but I now believe it has much greater earning potential too.

Now to drive the traffic in.

What’s your experience with Amazon or other affiliate programs and indirect conversions like this?

Would You Pay to Read Someone’s Tweets?

Would you pay to read someone’s tweets? For some time now, enterprising individuals have been trying to find the holy grail of Twitter monetization. Some have been blatantly spamming advertisements through @replies. Some have indirectly monetized their Twitter accounts by using it as a viral marketing tool. Still, others have created Twitter clients that are funded by advertisements.

Will you dare to venture into Twitter monetization by limiting your audience to paying subscribers? This is what TwitPub aims to do. It’s supposed to be a

marketplace made for Twitter so users can buy and sell premium tweets.

Is this a viable business model? It could be, if you are in the business of dispensing important, expensive advice.

While TwitPub’s activity may not be all that impressive, their service may have potential within the political and financial realms (as people would pay to access gossip and financial advice, especially in this economy).

I come from a school of thought that says the moment you set a price to your content, you would have already devalued it. For one, you are limiting your audience severely. Secondly, you won’t have as much interactivity and viral marketing potential if your content is closed. Of course, this may not necessarily be true in all cases, but unless you’re really famous and powerful, I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in paying to read your tweets. And if you’re already famous and powerful, you probably don’t need anyone paying a few bucks to read your tweets or to send you direct messages.

Would you pay to read someone’s tweets? And would you pay to get your direct message sent into someone’s inbox?

Passion versus Pay versus Profile: Blogging deal or no deal?

You’ve a finite amount of time to write, you have to pay the bills, but perhaps you don’t love the subject as much as you used to. How do you know when it’s the right time to leave a project?

This post is primarily targeted at bloggers who have one or more regular, paid writing positions with a blog network/company and may be considering their current position.

It might also be useful for those bloggers running their own blogs (over which they have complete editorial and publishing control).

Passion | Pay | Profile

Blogging for a liveable wage isn’t easy — at least if you’re keen to do it ethically and above board.

Getting a paid writing gig with a large company can get you money and exposure much more quickly than you’d likely attain it (if at all) by publishing your own blog.

You’ll likely have access to on-tap resources to help you improve as a writer. At very least, you’ll probably be working for an editor who will critique your work, give you post ideas, and generally encourage you onwards.

Assuming you applied for the position because you had a decent amount of knowledge and passion for the subject, it’s the near perfect experience.

Isn’t it?

The longer you blog for high profile sites, the more you’ll be noticed. The more you’re noticed, the more opportunities present themselves. You also have the potential to earn more, either because your payment per post increases (often with a new position) or your posts become more popular and you get a proportional share of revenue.

The trouble begins when your passion goes, the amount of work you’re required to do is worth more than you’re being paid, or you don’t believe the work improves your own profile – only that of the company you’re working for.

It’s worth reassessing the work you’re doing on a regular basis. Think of it as a self-appraisal — when you work for yourself, no-one else is going to appraise everything you do.

Consider:

Passion

• What are your main passions?
• Do you want to blog about all of your passions?
• Are you blogging about something you have little interest/enthusiasm for?
• Are some passionate blogging subjects worth keeping for yourself rather than giving to someone else? (in other words, should you be running your own blog instead of relinquishing control and writing for a company?)

Pay

• Are you still being paid enough for the work you’re doing?
• Would you be able to make more money working for someone else or for yourself, or changing project priorities to give more room to new money-earners?
• Is the work you’re currently doing taking so much time or energy that you have no resources left to do things your heart tells you to?
• Are you sacrificing long term gain (sidelined projects) for short term gain? (fixed pay working)

Profile

• Is your blogging gig still giving you, as a person / brand, the exposure you desire?
• Do your efforts seem to be rewarding the company’s profile at the expense of yours?
• Would your personal brand be improved by moving on?

Contracts and Bridges

If you have a written contract in place then you need to consider that before taking any action that may breach the terms it lays out.

You may have a notice period which must be worked out before you can leave. If you want to change the level of work you do for someone else, it may have to be negotiated and a new contract drawn up.

If you have a verbal agreement then you may have no legal/contractual obligations, but think very carefully about burning your bridges with any one company. You never know when they may be a useful contact or source of work in the future.

Final thoughts

These are just a few points to think about, whatever situation you’re currently in.

It may be that you don’t think there’s anything wrong, and if you’re enjoying what you’re doing and getting what you want, digging around may not be helpful (if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it).

Then again, if there’s even a niggle that you’re selling yourself short, skimping on projects you really care about because you’re bogged down by a regular contract, or running yourself ragged without the passion to energise you, then it really is time to sit down and consider what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

The three elements — passion, pay, profile — need to be weighed together, and any decisions you make will be based on your current situation and how much of a risk-taker you are.

Doing a regular check-up like this will help to ensure that you’re giving your best and being fairly rewarded, while still enjoying blogging. After all, that’s the main reason you started, right?

Blogging revenue: are you seeing recovery?

Many online publishers have seen a downturn in revenue over the past couple of quarters, with some niches more badly hit than others.

Advertisers are either scarcer, or they’re not paying as much for advertising space.

Yet I’m noticing that some “set and forget” advertising models (such as Google AdSense and Chitika’s Premium ads) are showing some positive growth.

Growth isn’t explosive, but it does appear to be happening. Though the current economic climate is still challenging, the new financial year may well be encouraging advertisers to spend budget and seek sponsorship deals.

Do you generate revenue from your blog, and if so have you noticed any signs of recovery? I’d be interested to hear your experiences.

Need Your Help Monetizing A Site

Performancing.com has been around for at least five years now. In that time span, many bloggers from all walks of life have shared their tips, tricks, and techniques. Based on what I’ve seen while writing for Performancing, many of you are either monetizing websites or are wanting to do so. I find myself in a good position to become one of those who are monetizing websites as I am currently working on my own project. However, I have never monetized a site before let alone dealt with advertisers. So with that in mind, I’ll explain what I plan on doing with my project and then I’d like you to chime in and help me decide how to monetize this site.

About The Project:

The name of my project as well as the domain name is WPTavern also known as WordPress Tavern. The site will focus on all things WordPress as well as related projects under the Automattic umbrella. I’ll also have a forum attached to the site. I have three goals for this project. The first is to foster a community. The second is to turn the site into a success and the third is to turn the site into my full time job which revolves around my passion.

Monetization Strategy:

If there is one thing I have learned by browsing the archives of Performancing, it’s that you should always have multiple revenue streams. With my new project, I’ll have a couple of different avenues for which to pursue advertising.

WPTavern The Site – With regards to advertising on the site, I will have an area on the sidebar for 4-6 125X125 advertising spots. I’m not sure if I will use any Google based advertising because it is annoying and easily blockable by Ad Removal scripts. When I start out, I’m thinking of filling the squares with affiliate links until those spots are sold.

What should I use or do to manage these advertising spots? It’s been suggested to me that I use something OIO Publisher to manage my ads. I can also use PerfAds but I’m just not sure what I should be doing.

Podcast – I already operate a WordPress centric podcast which produces one episode each week. As it stands, the show doesn’t have any advertising attached to it and on average receives 800-1,200 downloads per week. My plan is to increase the amount of episodes I produce in order to increase these numbers and provide better coverage of the software.

The Talkshoe Cash program is gone and they do not provide an in-house means of monetizing show hosts. I’ve been thinking about joining a podcasting network in order to gain advertising. I’ve also been thinking about joining BluBrry. Talkshoe doesn’t really give detailed statistics for the show so I’m not sure how difficult it will be to base advertising rates on those stats. How should I go about selling/managing advertising on the podcast?

Video/Screencasts – Creating text/audio based content is not enough for WPTavern to rise above the noise. I’ll need to produce videos and more specifically, screencasts. I’d love to be able to have those screencasts sponsored either by me mentioning their product in the video or creating an intro or outro featuring their product. I don’t have the software right now but I plan on producing these videos with Camtasia Studio 5.

Any thoughts on this monetization technique would be very helpful.

WPTavern Forum – With the forum, I’m not sure if I will have a 468X60 advertising banner in the header section of the forum or not. I’m also thinking about adding a section above the fold to display 125X125 banner ads. Last but not least, if I am going to use Google Adsense, I’d like to use it on the forum by either having a bot publish a post in every thread which is Google Adsense or some other fashion. I’m also toying around with the idea to have a specialized section of the forum where premium theme or plugin authors can purchase an advertising post in the forum. However, that method of forum monetization I feel would be difficult to police.

If you have any thoughts or ideas on how to monetize a forum, I’m all ears.

Conclusion:

As you can see, I definitely have opportunities for multiple revenue streams with this website. However, my specialty is writing and producing content, not managing the advertising. Should I outsource the advertising or grunt it and do everything on my own? An alternative would be to partner with someone who has experience in advertising management and let them handle it while I foster the community as well as produce the content.

Last but not least, how should I go about the advertising as I’m just starting out with the site? I’ll have a good launch but I’m unclear as to how I should handle advertising from the get go. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

WPTavern is an up and coming project. I’ll be keeping everyone updated on my progress, milestones achieved, and techniques I use which turn out to be successful.

Monetizing Isn’t Getting Any Easier

Darren Rowse of Problogger has published the results of his two month long poll asking his readers how much income they make by blogging. You can view his post to check out the results but here is something that stuck out to me:

So to this point we can say 70% of those who make money from their blogs make less than $500 a month and 30% make $500 or more.

I know Darren has a huge audience of bloggers and most of them are looking to make money online but it seems pretty bad that only 70% of those who voted are making less than $500.00 per month. Just that statistic alone makes me realize why Make Money Online blogs are so popular.

While the results of Darren’s poll are not entirely accurate, it’s interesting to note the discrepancy between the amount of people who made $20,000 or more in the month of October. I’m willing to bet some people voted $20,000 just because it felt good but I’m still curious as to who those elite bloggers are. Darren claims he knows a few people who make that amount, I personally don’t. If you do, tell me in the comments.

Back in May of 2008, James Mowery asked Performancing readers how much money they averaged per month from Blogging? 26% said less than $100 while only 8% said more than $2,500.00. An interesting point in this poll was that 18% of those who voted claimed they would make money eventually.

What I think all of this means is that, it is a real pain to make a decent amount of income by blogging. There seems to be a select few who have been able to turn blogging into a full-time job and have developed a major following by people who are looking to do the same thing. In 2009, I have finally bit the bullet and will be operating my own web property centered around WordPress. I’ll have my chance to try out different revenue generating opportunities and of course, whatever I learn through this process I’ll be sharing the information on Performancing. But again, it has to be said that Darren has turned this blogging stuff into a six-figure salary job and he has documented how he reached that point by means of Problogger and by writing a book. It would seem that even if you are given the ingredients to success, it’s not as simple as just mixing them together. Some of the ingredients to success come from you.

While times are becoming increasingly tough with regards to monetization, my hope is that with the reboot of the Performancing website along with the forum, we can help each other succeed by sharing tips, tricks and techniques. Thats what I’d like to see and with that, I wish everyone a safe and happy New Year!