Could you make a living out of creating how-to videos? According to New York Times, people are:

Many of the clips have been played hundreds of thousands of times, turning Mr. Kedersha into the top earner on Metacafe, a video-sharing Web site that pays the makers of popular videos. In little more than a year, the site has written him checks totaling $102,000.

It makes sense, in-demand content is the fuel of the web. More and more people are turning to the web for answers. Advertisers want to be where the eyeballs are.

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Some of you may have attended the "Quit Your Day Job and Vlog" session at South by Southwest, a happening event, as they used to say, in Austin, Texas. It was even written up in my Houston Chronicle this morning.

Unfortunately, as most of us know, the title of the panel discussion was a tad misleading since very few of us can afford to quit our day job and Vlog or Blog even. Look at the stats. Those who are making a living only from their own personal blog or vlog is minute.

Success stories
The presentation though offered inspiration with its four success stories, Lindsay Campbell (MobLogic), Zadi Diaz (Epic-Fu), Lisa Donovan (LisaNova), and Bre Pettis (Etsy). Pettis offered the best advice.

He offered 4 concrete suggestions. Two of them we've all heard often: publish frequently and own your own IP. The third is particularly applicable for Vlogging which is what they were talking about anyway. Make friends with musicians. (I have a list of those I'd love to add to my list of friends. However, I'm not holding my breath.)

Takeaway truth
The takeaway truth reminded me of the graduation address falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut: "Don't forget to use sunscreen."

Pettis said: "Take care of your teeth because not having insurance sucks and teeth are expensive."

Now that's profound, realistic, wise, and funny.

All at the same time.

Creating a blog is like breathing for you?
What about the content?

And here comes a client who needs a website/blog.

Almost always somebody who needs a website/blog will have some special know-how in a niche. He/She is a specialist for a content niche (let's say plumbing) but has no web development and (!) no writing skills (but maybe thinks so).

Artem is writing in Have Profession - Will Be Paid for Writing:

If you have skills in pretty much any area, you can easily earn extra $5-20 an hour by freelance writing in a relevant niche blog - the writer's skills are not important.

His perspective is good and a specialist able to write can make some extra freelance money from his know-how. I always experience it the other way round :)

How I make long term money from content development...

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Follow-Up to Interview With Local Niche Blogger Terri Chadick

I am running a local blog myself and I can only say that it is monetizing very well. Loads of people told me that I should cover subjects 'nationwide' but I always reclined. 'All business is local' is still true and Google gives a lot of authority to good content on local blogs. Checking the incoming search engine traffic shows huge amounts of local keywords combined with general search topics.

Let's get more specific about local content and monetization options for a local blog...

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This weekend I interviewed THE ProBlogger, Darren Rowse. We talked about:

• Becoming a 7-figure blogger - by mistake
• Pre-Teen Glamor Photography Vendor
• Starting a million dollar empire on a credit card - The b5media story
• Tips for beginner ProBloggers
• Darren's big news
• And more

Listen to the interview after the jump!

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Go read this now. Then this. That is all.

You might have seen on my blog I give away a free ebook. A few people have asked me lately why I continue to give away free information when I could be selling it.

The fact is without free information nobody would know me to buy paid information.

We have to separate out the ideas of free content versus paid content and instead think of our free content as sampling for the paid stuff. Give people a taste to get them juiced up for the full thing. Also remember that your free blog articles allow you to cast out a wide search engine net to trawl back juicy new visitors.

When you give something of value away you do run the risk of being taken advantage of, of devaluing yourself, etc, but they key thing to know is you are taking the risk out of the exchange in the hope the prospect will be impressed and delighted enough to take the next step.

The secret is to not give everything away, hold something back. Give away the concepts but retain the step by step process. Give the sizzle but keep back the sausage :)

I was chatting with Ryan the other day and he told me he had discovered some new high value niches. This has sparked off new ideas that are going to be enthusiastically pursued. Ryan discovered these niches almost by sheer luck. It got me thinking if it was possible to try out a niche intentionally before plunging into it?

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I was talking to my friend on AIM. We were brainstorming article ideas and I was thinking about doing a series of articles on "How To Build An Authority Blog" - and then it occurred to me (by way of my friend):

The one message that no one wants to hear is this: success takes time.

You can accurately identify who's going to be successful on the net by simply checking to see whether they have a proper grasp on the amount of hard work and long-term commitment it takes to succeed.

The sad thing is that no one wants to hear this message and it gets tuned out. So it's very tempting for those of us with advice blogs to hone our content to appeal to the "get rich quick" crowd.

But most people don't get rich quick, they get rich slowly. So if you want to drastically increase your chance of getting rich on the Internet, take the slow and steady approach. Form a long term, 3-5 year plan, and start taking those steps today that you can acheive today to prepare you for the steps you're going to take tomorrow so that ultimately you will get where you want to be in 3 years.

That's the best advice I can give you. (Well, besides getting to know the right people;-)

Everybody knows that sexy pictures draw huge amounts of traffic.
Is your blog appealing in a sexy way?

Why don't you use sexy content?

Why don't you sprinkle in some sexy pictures from time time?

'page three girl' content

Right now I am planning a magazine style website. Again this will be some kind of newspaper on the net thing. Of course I am planning some sexy 'page three girl' pictures to entertain the readers.

Advantages of including sexy pictures

I am not talking about p*rn*graphy!!!

• There are many great and absolutely clean nudity sites out there. There is a whole niche of nudity picture producers who offer great soft sex pictures and a sexy 50/50 affiliate program.
• Recurring 50/50 subscription shares produce nice checks.
• Even a conversion rate below 0.0001% produces a nice income in the long run!
• Resume: My affiliate experiences with sexy pictures are very good.

I really don't get the problem!
Please tell me why no sexy pictures can be found on your blog?

Chris, along with many other bloggers, are strongly against AdSense. To be fair to Google (and staying away from some silly reasons to hate AdSense), it's not so much AdSense that's a problem rather than the way you need to use it to get maximum revenue from it.

If you, like Chris, do not want to turn your blog into an ad clicking machine, then you've probably explored alternatives to Google AdSense. At this point, 2 things happen to 99% of the people looking for alternatives to AdSense:

One, they find out that the alternatives don't pay as much in their niche.

Two, they realise that the alternatives are not as easy to implement - whether because of more work required on your part (affiliate / own products) or because of ad network requirements (minimum monthly pageviews, etc).

While Google AdSense has been a good friend to me on Soccerlens, In the last few months I've made a move away from it. Here's what I've learned so far:

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Did you prepare your blog for the holiday season?

People want to buy now!

Summer is over and readers are using the Internet like crazy. With the upcoming Christmas season the motivation to look for interesting items, ideas and gadgets is getting stronger every day!

• The strongest buying season of the year is happening the next 30 days. It's Christmas time and jingle bells are all around.
• People are hurrying to get nice Christmas gifts for family, friends and co-workers.

Christmas time is definitely one of the most important repeating events!

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Are you willing to write articles for money?
How much do you expect to get?

Don't give away your work for free

Please read the following. Read twice:

We would like 5 blog postings per week. Each post must be 250+ words. Pay is $55 / month to start.

Source: Software company seeks blogger (November 17, 2007 - 12:21am in Blogger Jobs)

• Reading the whole offer I expected an angry loud and clear stream of comments.
• I expected every freelance writer would stand up and show his/her antipathy (read: spit out).
• I also expected that this offer would be taken offline because of 'business nonsense' and being a bad job offer for the p.com community.
• Instead: "I am interested in this opportunity where can i contact you" and "I'm very interested in this job.".

Hello! What is happening here?

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Why am I so against Adsense? There are a few reasons, I risk getting into a rant if I list them all!

My main reason for disliking Adsense is that it changes people. There are strong publishers who resist the siren call, but in most cases there are two outcomes with Adsense monetization:

1. Defeat - The publisher feels a failure because of the measly Adsense payment, if they even get any at all
2. Submission - The publisher changes their whole approach to serve the needs of the Adsense block rather than their readers

Often in a last ditch attempt the blogger or webmaster will go from (1) to (2).

What do I mean by "submission"? Well have you noticed the hoops you have to jump through to get good Adsense earnings are mostly not reader-friendly?

• Cloaking ads so they look like navigation
• Blending colors and fonts so they don't look like ads
• Tuning content so better, higher earning ads display
• Tweaking presentation to increase click-throughs
• Attracting a higher percentage of first time visitors who are more likely to click
• Using misleading headlines to generate search traffic that leaves via ads
• etc etc

By all means make money with Adsense, just please do not get caught into the trap of subjigating your strategy to it or feeling like you are a failure if your blog does not earn the big bucks.

Personally, I go for loyal audience over adsense clicks any day :)

Many of you probably know about WidgetBucks - the new ad-engine on the scene. I installed WidgetBucks on my blog about 1 month ago and now I am in a position to comment on it. A lot of people have claimed eCPM of $3-$6. Well, that's not true in my case at least, however, having said that, I still very strongly recommend WidgetBucks to anyone who can fit it in their blog. Reasons:

1. My earnings from WB during one month are more than my earnings from AdSense throughout the year (I have a low traffic blog).
2. Minimum I have got from a WidgetBucks clickthrough is $0.28 cents per click, while minimum on AdSense is $0.01.
3. There is a referral program. I am yet to see the results for this, but I do have some referrals, and so I should see some earnings soon. (in case you are interested in signing up, you might consider using the following Url (it gives me referral points): http://www.widgetbucks.com/home.page?referrer=476001
4. I can withdraw my earnings to PayPal, and the minimum I need to reach before I can withdraw is $50 (as compared to $100 for PayPal).
5. There is $25.00 signup Bonus.

All these reasons combine make it a very strong case for trying out WidgetBucks. Once again, I am making more in one month from WidgetBucks than I make in a year with Google AdSense.

If anyone has any questions, comment on this post, or mail me and I will answer them.