But they’re not just ‘money’ because they bring in revenue: they are one of the easiest ways to grow your audience without much work. If you learn how to optimize these money pages (its not hard to do), you’ll really improve your website in so many ways. More revenue, more members, more influence and authority. Doesn’t that sound good?

I’ve talked very briefly about money pages in my previous post on analyzing your site visitors and decided to expand a little more on this topic because I think its often overlooked by webmasters. We’re always focused on creating new content and getting new visitors to these new pages that we forget about what’s going on in other parts of our website.

This is tailored towards content publishers and bloggers but the main strategies here apply to other site types as well, you just need to find the right tools to do it. So lets get started.

How to Optimize Your Money Pages

Image Credit: marissa cap

There are many things you can do to money pages, in order to make them better or more profitable. It’s important to decide the extent of your work according to your goals and resources. How much time do you want to spend and what’s most important to you? Do you want a bigger readership? Or are you just concerned with increasing your daily revenue?

Here are a list of things you can do for your money pages:

1. Monetize. The aim here is to get more revenue out of each page. There are various ways to achieve this and they generally involve the placement of ads both around and within content. There is also an indirect future revenue from lead capturing.
2. Capture Leads. The money page is optimized to encourage a visitor to subscribe to your mailing list, site feed or register for your website. The main aim is to find a way to continue to reach your visitors after they leave your money page. This helps to grow your site audience and is also a component of revenue generation.
3. Improve Relevance. This involves revamping the money page in order to provide up-to-date information or better content in order to accommodate visitor needs. This provides  an improved user experience for all and can result a host of benefits like more referral/citation links and greater visitor loyalty/trust. Relevance is also important when your main goal is to capture leads or increase revenue.
4. Make it Rank Better.  Doing on-site and off-site optmization will help specific money pages to rank better on the search engine result pages, hence driving more traffic back to your site. This increases your site reach and revenue at the same time.

Step 1: Find Your Money Pages

Image Credit: TW Collins

Open up the web analytics program you’re using for your website. There should be a section which reveals which pages have the highest unique views per month. Extract the urls for the top 10 pages and put them somewhere for easy access. Or bookmark them on your browser. If you don’t currently use an analytics tool, I recommend setting up Google Analytics.

How many pages you choose to optimize really depends on your website and preference. If you have a lot of webpages that get solid traffic, you can do more. If you don’t have many pages that get web traffic, then you have a lesser amount to work with. I like to focus on the top 10 because if its a manageable amount of work for an acceptable returns on investment.

My personal guideline is to only work on pages with a minimum of 200 unique views everyday. It’s a basic number that’s good for some decent conversions. Adjust this figure to something you can work with, if your website is new or gets less overall traffic.

The point to remember is that not every page is hot. The goal is not to optimize every single web page you have. There has to be a limit. So learn to prioritize and work only on the pages that are currently receiving the most traffic to your website.

Step 2: Improving Content Relevance

Image Credit: jesse.millan

Visitor search queries reveal what people are looking for and what they want to get from your web page. It tells you what information they expect and is a way to understand their desires or needs. Many are ready to pay for a solution or subscribe to get knowledge in their inbox.

Better relevance = better conversions. It’s that simple. By making your website as relevant as possible to search queries, you’re making visitors more likely to stick around, opt-in or buy. Users are going to click away if they find that your web page doesn’t fulfill their info needs. So the first step is closely examine your money pages in relation to search traffic terms.

My goal is to include every search query in my money page. Every question typed into search engines by visitors who access my site must be answered. One very easy and quick way to do this is to add a simple FAQ to the page to address the visitor’s specific needs. Just phrase the same exact search query as a question. Then write an answer which responds to it.

Another method for search query relevance is to create new content and insert it into the money page. It’s important to edit your pages so that it doesn’t display content that is simply outdated or useless. You’re not going to presell anyone with stuff like that. It won’t work.

Either rewrite the entire money page or include update notes specifying new information and linking to other pages on your website with newer content. Whenever new information or changes occur, go back into the money page to make necessary adjustments. This is one reason why I asked you to keep those 10 URLs bookmarked or easily accessible.

Note that by increasing your money page’s relevance and informational value, you are also increasing its linkability: People are more likely to link to it because it is a detailed and useful reference page on the topic. Whenever possible, I try to fashion my money pages on blogs after Wikipedia in terms of comprehensiveness.

Step 3: Monetizing Your Money Page

Image Credit: Gaetan Lee

While you can monetize your money page and capture leads at the same time, I find it better to optimize for one goal instead of trying to achieve both. Because when it comes to monetization, captured leads are usually a good source for long term income anyway.

There are formats for each goal (monetize or lead capture) and you’ll get better results if you either choose to monetize fully or go all out to hook your visitors by making them sign up or subscribe to your website. If you put up too many well blended ads, the visitor can easily click away instead of subscribing to your newsletter, so either pick one goal or balance both.

Let’s talk about monetization first. This is easy if you’re using ad networks like Google Adsense. Go to your money page and insert an additional ad unit, blend it well with your content and make sure that its quite visible while not being too obtrusive.

A well placed Adsense unit can really increase your overall daily income. I’ve seen a jump of more than $20 a day for a site that I own when I took the time to test and optimize a few money pages. While you may have default ads already on every page of your site (sidebars, header etc), these may not be truly optimized for a money page.

Money pages need to be treated differently from the other pages on your website. They’re the ones that bring a lot of visitors (big sample size) so you can really use this opportunity to test the profitability of specific ad schemes. You can even remove the default ads specifically for this page so you have more room to experiment. That’s what I do for some sites.

Other ways to monetize include the use of commission-based affiliate programs which range from digital products to established eCommerce retailers like Amazon.com. Clickbank is a digital product marketplace you can use. Sign up, search through the marketplace for a product, grab your affiliate link, insert it on your money page.

You can also try CPA networks with relevant pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale programs. Commonly used CPA networks are Market Leverage, Max Bounty, NeverBlue, PepperJam, Copeac, Azoogle and Hydra Network, among many others. Affiliate programs can work well but remember to keep them related to your content.

Alternatively, you can promote your own products on your money page by including a short pitch for it and linking to a proper sales page. Or you can try to sell your visitors away from the money page by getting them to first subscribe to an email list. This brings us to the next step.

Step 4: Optimizing to Capture Leads

Image Credit: sindesign

The goal is to capture not just the email of the visitor but his/her permission to allow you to reach them away from your website. For some of you, you want visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed so they’ll continue to read your content or hopefully participate on your site.

Many set up email lists and auto-responders with the aim of eventually monetizing by selling their own products or recommending those of JV partners. Their aim here is to get users to opt-in to receive newsletters or special offers. The same goes for online retail stores.

Good email marketing providers are Aweber and GetResponse, both of which charge a monthly fee that you should be able to earn back easily. There are free alternatives available but you’ll often lose out in terms of features. If this doesn’t bother you, you could try starting with any of the free email software or plugins available.

To optimize a money page to capture leads, you’ll need to do some offer customization. Look at what content/product is on the page and create a specific offer that’s relevant to it. Provide an incentive for someone to sign up: perhaps a free digital product with related or more in-depth information. Or simply the promise of future discounts or special product offers.

To get into the mind of the visitor and understand what entices them, you’ll need to go back to the search queries you’re getting. If someone is interested in ‘what causes wrinkles’, you’ll know they’ll be interested in an ebook on natural anti-aging remedies. Do up a free guide and offer it to them only if they register as a member or sign up to your email list.

How about lead capture for communities and membership sites? Apart from providing incentives you can use teasers. Restrict visitor actions by only allowing them to view a limited amount of content or interact in a limited fashion. This limit will be removed when a user registers with your community. These are methods commonly practiced by paid membership sites, forums and social media sites to entice signups.

Step 5: Sending Internal Traffic to Your Money Pages

Image Credit: leeds at night

Now that you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum conversions, you can also send over visitors from other pages of your site. You’ve already done the work to make the pages incredibly relevant and usable, they shouldn’t just be seen by search engine visitors.

If your money pages are related, by sure to interlink each one so that each visitor is funneled to another optimized page. This not only improves your bounce rate but makes sure that each visitor is given two opportunities to convert if they aren’t persuaded the first time around.

Another method is to use a script to autolink specific anchor keywords or phrases on your entire site to the specific web page. This helps with SEO and is very easy way to get more eyes on your money page. If you’re using Wordpress, try the Internal Link Building plugin or the SEO Smart Links plugin. Both help to auto-link keywords on every page of your blog. There are quite a few similar plugins out there but these two work well for me.

If you’re a blogger producing content daily, endeavor to link to the money pages whenever it’s pertinent to your post because you’re driving traffic to pages that will perform well. Alternate the links to each money page so your audience won’t get sick of seeing them all the time.

There is an alternative way to highlight your money pages: Group the ones about a similar topic together and list them all in a reference page, which will funnel traffic out to different locations. Instead of linking to each individual money page, you can just link or promote the reference page, which will then direct the visitors you get to each money page simultaneously.

A simple example of this is my reference page on social media marketing, which collects both money pages and less visited pages together under a specific theme. There’s also the option of creating special banner ads or images to link to either your money page or the reference page, it doesn’t always have to be promoted in the form of a link within content.

Step 6: Improving Your Search Engine Ranking

This is the final step in the process and should always come after you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum results and set up a method to promote it internally on your site. After you’ve done all that, it’s time to look at boosting a major factor for earning more money: your website’s ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This is an optional step because if you’re getting a lot of visitors, you’re should already be ranking quite well. But if you’re on the second page of Google or not yet in the top 3 queries for a keyword/phrase that is sending you a good amount of traffic, why not bump it up and get even more visitors per day?

You’ve already got your list of top money pages based on search queries. Now you should find what these pages are ranking for, which is something you can easily discover through your stats trackers. If you’re already using it,  Google Webmaster Central is a free tool that shows you the top 20 search queries visitors use to reach your site.

Off-Site Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a pretty big topic: its hard to cover everything that needs to be done so I’m going to simplify it into one fool proof method of improving your search engine rank for Google. This is something that is unanimously agreed upon by everyone.

All you need to do is get links from other sites, especially with the specific anchor text you are trying to rank for. But not just from anywhere. You want links from quality, relevant websites.

Let’s see what Google itself says about ranking:

Sites’ positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

One more. From Google’s warning on link schemes:

Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.

It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.

Links matter a lot because Google’s algorithm is set up to use the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance. High quality links boost the trust, relevance and authority of your web page. This is somewhat the same for search engines like Yahoo or Live.

Ideally, the best type of links you can get are from the websites that are already ranking well for the keyword or phrase you are targeting. But these links might not be easy to acquire, since you’re likely to be viewed as a competitor and a threat.

So, what I personally like to do is to do some research on the people ranking for your keyword/phrase on the first two pages. Dig into their backinks by using something like Yahoo Site Explorer and find out who is linking to them. Try to get those same links if possible and even more quality links that your competitors don’t have.

There are many ways to build links, some are blackhat and others are more compliant with search engine guidelines. As I’ve mentioned in my previous post on long term social media marketing, I favor the strategy of creating valuable services, tools and content in order to attract links from bloggers. It’s stable and works extremely well for every niche out there.

If your money page is optimized for relevance and is high on informational value, it is already a potential link magnet. So here’s something you can do immediately. Send email pitches about your money page to relevant blogs. If you contact 1,000 blogs, you might easily get 50 to 100 extra links (or more), which may be enough for you to outrank other websites. Sometimes all you need to do is to get the word out.

And there are many other ways. Article directories. Blog/web directories. Social bookmarking websites. Social news sites. Social media communities (Flickr, Youtube etc). Contests. Link exchanges. Blog comments and carnivals. Donations/sponsorships. Forums. Press Releases.

On-Site Search Engine Optimization

Image Credit: Mario de Leo

On top on link building, another aspect of ranking better is on-site search optimization, whereby you make your webpage compatible with search engine requirements and the specific search query you’re targeting. Google’s webmaster guidelines, Yahoo’s Webmaster Resources and Live Search’s Webmaster Center has a list of the most basic stuff you should be doing and ways for you to track your site in their search engines.

Basic pointers for on-site optimization involves having a good site architecture, where pages with similar themes are grouped together with a focus on great navigation and usability for visitors. On site-optimization also involves having your targeted keywords in the title tags and an appealing meta-description, which may affect SERP clickthrough rates. For the WP users out there, you might find this excellent guide to Wordpress SEO useful.

Other on-site factors include keyword density, which is the number of times a keyword appears compared to the total number of words in a page. And latent semantic indexing (LSI), which examines a page in relation to groups of associated words/terms used within it.

I wouldn’t worry too much about latent semantic indexing and perhaps even keyword density because a content heavy page is likely to include the associated terms and keywords naturally, because of its depth. The main point to note is to maintain a tight focus on your chosen topic and not divert too much from it in your content.

And then there’s the controversial topic of PageRank Sculpting: using the nofollow tag on internal site links to optimize the strength of specific pages, thereby enabling them to rank better in search engines. Perhaps a useful tactic, although one that isn’t quite necessary. Any possible success here partly depends on how knowledgeable you are with SEO.

On-site optimization isn’t a difficult process, as long as you have a good site architecture set up from the start and follow search-engine guidelines. The hard part is really the task of getting people with relevant/quality websites to link to your money pages.

Time for You to Do Some Work…

These are the fundamental factors involved in optimizing your money pages. After completing the first step of finding your money pages, you don’t need to work on the other steps in a sequence. As I’ve said earlier, it depends on your goals. Personally, I go through all six steps when I’m looking at money pages that receive a substantial amount of daily web traffic.

The good thing about money pages is that once you optimize them, you can just leave them alone for a while. If you’re busy every day, you might want to spend an hour during the weekend on your money pages. Or just assign them to a colleague or a member of your staff. Set aside some time to optimize them and you’ll definitely see the results.

If you found this article useful in any way, please consider linking to it or sharing it with others. I’ll love to hear your comments as well!

Don’t miss any future tips on improving your website, subscribe to dosh dosh today (It’s free!).

6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website

These blogs can and often do make a lot of money. They produce regularly updated webpages which pull in large amounts of search or social media traffic. This converts into advertising revenue.

Flagship blogs also have large and loyal audiences and their attention can be monetized in various ways: creating and selling subscription-based access, info products, affiliate programs or joint ventures with other businesses/bloggers.

Since I love writing and making money online, I thought I could create a schedule of some sort and force myself to build large flagship blogs regularly for profit.

I thought about this idea for a little while and came up a plan.

The Flagship Blog Project: Working in 30 Day Cycles to Build Assets

Image Credit: meeting a pretty cute ugly

Create one flagship blog on the first day of every month and spend all 30 days developing and optimizing it. By the end of the month, the blog should be fully operational and only maintenance is needed: which means that you’ll only need to create content regularly while promoting the site.

When the first day of the next month arrives, repeat the whole process again by building and creating another new blog within the time frame of 30 days.

At the end of a year, you should have 12 flagship blogs and all of them should be fairly established with their core audience and regular readers. Depending on the niche and the blog’s popularity, each will bring in some steady revenue.

Put simply, this project involves the repeated use of 30 day blog production cycles to develop multiple flagship sites. The ultimate goal is to eventually set up a collection of blogs and make them into profitable assets.

Apart from multiple income sources, setting up multiple blogs allows you to experiment with a lot of things, in terms of marketing/promotion or monetization.

Playing around with each flagship blog will also give you experience-based knowledge, the type you cannot easily obtain through observation or a single blog.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can set up your 30 day blog development cycle.

Breaking the Schedule Down: Developing a Weekly Action Plan

Image Credit: yelling treeson

Having an overall idea of what you want to achieve is important because it allows you to set intermediate markers (daily pageviews/No. of subscribers etc.) which track progress towards these goals. Apart from having a list of attainable numbers, it is also important to create a time-based work routine: a weekly action plan.

The goal of an action plan is to divide your limited resource (time) into smaller chunks, thereby allowing you to spend a proportionate amount of attention on the tasks involved in developing a blog. For example, let’s break down the development of a flagship blog into a progressive four-week sequence:


Week 1: Setting up the Blog

• Research your intended niche and check out the competition




• Choose a domain name that is easily brandable.




• Pay for a good web host and set up Wordpress




• Hire a skilled designer or customize a free Wordpress theme




• Install all the necessary Wordpress plugins or addons




• Develop consistent branding (tagline, usernames, logos etc.)




• Optimize the website for visitors and search engines




• Write your first blog post.

Week 2: Developing a Strategy

• Develop a content development strategy.




• Start writing down content ideas and file them for future use.




• Create the necessary pages (Set up a great About page etc.)




• Subscribe to the RSS feed of news sources and notable blogs in your niche.




• Create an email marketing folder with contacts of blogs in your niche




• Create a list of social media channels that are relevant to the blog.




• Put up an ad looking for writers and monitor their applications.




• Write a few more posts for the blog.

Week 3: Marketing the Blog

• Create new + consistent social media/networking profiles (optional)




• Spend a few days creating one spectacular link bait.




• Promote the link bait by emailing popular blogs or use social media.




• Set up an actionable prospect list and start reaching out to other bloggers.




• Spend some time everyday networking with other bloggers




• Learn to use cost-free methods of marketing such as guest blogging.




• Purchase ads on relevant sites promoting your blog.




• Hire a few good writers and tell them your requirements.

Week 4: Maintenance and Transition

• Ensure that hired writers write a few posts. Give feedback.




• Create a regular posting schedule for yourself or your writers.




• Develop a second link bait and release it on social media channels.




• Reduce the amount of time spent on the blog by 50%




• Make preparations to allocate time for the next cycle.

The points mentioned above are not comprehensive and there are a lot more things you can do within each phase. These are just examples of tasks that could be done within the time frame of a single week.

You should set up a schedule that fits your resources, availability and skills. For example, if you have money to spare you could outsource a big portion of the work and focus on networking and strategy development instead.

Monetization Options and Marketing Strategies

Try to cross-market topically related blogs as it will help to increase readership, especially if one blog grows faster than the others.This tactic could be done in the form of contextual interlinking or display ads.

Team marketing is also a viable option to consider. A strong and active network will help a lot in the early stages of your site. Working with others will also motivate you and will give you ideas when you are unsure of how to best market your blog.

If you set up blogs in related niches, you can monetize them by selling ad spots across all of them as a whole. Networked ads will provide additional exposure for advertisers and make it easier for you to price your ads at a higher rate.

Another revenue-generating strategy is to sell the blogs off once they are reasonably developed. In the internet marketing niche, blogs with an audience, some reputation and revenue can get a sale price of over $10K. Even smaller blogs with less than 200 subscribers are sold for thousands of dollars.

Blogs are fast becoming lucrative resale assets, much like cars or houses.

How Can You Find Time to Create and Promote Content for Multiple Blogs?

Image Credit: Live on!

This is probably the number one question on your mind right now. It is also the biggest problem that anyone who owns multiple blogs will face.

It is difficult to create and promote content for many flagship blogs. The easiest way to do so is to get other people to do the work. You can hire ghost writers and staff/guest bloggers and get them to create content on a daily basis.

Alternatively, turn the blog into a team blog, whereby each member will blog on your site in return for exposure or revenue-share. Key point to note: You don’t have to be the blogger in the limelight. You could always play CEO behind a multi-author setup.

Think of blogs as media businesses, and not just platforms for personal expression.

Indeed, outsourcing seems to be the only viable solution because the more blogs you set up, the greater your content deficit. The articles you publish are incredibly important for a new blog because it determines if you’ll attract a core audience that’ll subscribe, read or link to you regularly.

Active promotion of your content is essential. If your websites are profitable, you could hire a marketer to work on a profit sharing basis. This could even be a fellow blogger or friend. You don’t need to hire a professional company. Blogs are really easy to market, once you know what results to expect and what to do.

Social media marketing is an example of a blog-friendly, DIY promotional method that works well and is relatively easy to implement.

Is the 30 Day Blog Development Cycle Really Sustainable?

The costs involved in hiring writers and designers needs to be carefully monitored because you don’t want to overspend. Ideally, you want to break even for each blog within 3 months, which is possible if you are skilled in growing it.

Perhaps this schedule will work best for bloggers or entrepreneurs who already own websites which generate revenue. Take a portion of your existing revenue and use it to fund your new blogs. The startup process will always be a little bumpy but the payoffs will come, especially if your site provides great value and is well marketed.

Development Cycles are Important Because They Drive You to Act

Image Credit: have a nice trip

Procrastination and laziness are obstacles to success. If you have the skills and ambition, all you need to make money is to stop hesitating and start doing it. You can learn all you want, draft up the most detailed plans and network till everyone says they love you but it all doesn’t mean anything, if you don’t take action.

If you love blogging and want to make money from it, go right ahead and set up a blog. Some people will tell you its hard to make money blogging. I say ignore them. It’s possible. It’s not a pipe dream. And you can do it, if you really want to.

Experts are only people like you and me. They talk about what they know or have experienced. For every 100 unsuccessful blogs they see or come across, there a thousand more that are successful. Don’t let statistics determine your future.

It’s really all up to you. All it takes is a serious desire to succeed and a willingness to learn. Keep an open mind and experiment as much as possible. You’ll find out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to blogging and making money.

Anyone up for a Challenge?

Here’s the deal. From the beginning of next month (December), I’ll push myself to create one flagship blog every 30 days. I might not last for an entire year but I’ll go as far as I can. If I didn’t challenge myself, I’ll probably be too lazy to build up these assets.

I like having the pressure of time bearing down on me and I’ll make sure that I work twice as hard to get everything set up and done in 30 days. No excuses.

This article was partly written to motivate myself and partly because I thought some of you out there might want to attempt this 30 day blog development cycle too.

So, any takers?

For more ways to make money blogging, subscribe to Dosh Dosh today.

The Flagship Blog Project: Creating Multiple Blogs for Profit in 30 Day Cycles

While there are many ways you can build up and make a blog profitable, I think some generic steps do apply for all types of blogs, regardless of their niche or focus.

Simply put, these are the things you need to do in order to make money blogging.

Listing them from Step One to the point where the blog starts to bring in a monthly sum of money would be helpful because anyone could use this as a checklist of some sort to make sure that they are following a strategic plan towards success.

Breaking Down the Steps Towards a Money Making Blog

The whole process from ground zero to a substantial and regular income can be broken down into a tremendous amount of points and to-do items. Some of them are chronological and necessarily predate the tasks that come before it.

Other steps can be performed concurrently with others (blog marketing is an example) and do not require you to complete a required task before hand. What I envision is the creation of one definitive list with tasks and goals that you’ll only need to accomplish, in order to make your blog an incredible source of income.

This would be an extensive blueprint you can show to just about anyone who owns a blog and say “There, just follow these steps and you’ll really make money from your blog.” It should be an authoritative document you can use as a reference point, whenever anyone asks you how to make money blogging.

A Community Ebook on Ways to Build a Profitable Blog

I was initially planning on writing this article like any other blog post on Dosh Dosh but I felt that my own experiences on making money with blogs is limited and it would be far better to seek the opinions of others.

The idea of a community or group eBook popped into my head and I thought, why not collect all the best flagship articles and advices from a community of bloggers and republish them into an eBook format? This would make for an incredible reference point for new or experienced bloggers alike.

As I’ve mentioned above, this eBook would be the definitive and ultimate source of information on all things related to generating income through blogs. I haven’t had too much time to mull over all the little details but I do have some general ideas about how this should work:

1. Collect new or existing articles from many bloggers on the various steps leading up to the development, growth and maintenance of a profitable blog.




2. Assemble all these articles and arrange them according to topics and themes. The entire collection of articles will be chronological and will read like a step by step checklist of things to do to make money blogging.




3. Publish in an eBook format and distribute it for free for anyone to download and read. All of the articles within the blog may or may not be re-published elsewhere, depending on the contributor’s individual copyright policy.




4. Promote the eBook and make sure that it is distributed widely. Each contributing blogger getting some exposure for their brand and site. As a result, each contributer may also get some traffic and new readers.

Some Considerations and Guidelines

I really like the idea of pooling all our articles and ideas together so that everyone can learn something new on the topic of blogging for money. I have never promoted a community eBook extensively and I’m very interested to see how it’ll fare.

Of course, the eBook will be completely free and I or anyone else won’t make any money from it directly. All submitted content copyrights will still belong to the authors and you will decide how others can and may use your articles.

I haven’t decided if affiliate links should be used in each published article but I am very much leaning towards allowing it, because its another way for each blogger to get some additional income.

In the scenario of an overwhelming supply, it would be impossible to include every single article because of several concrete reasons. First of all, it would make the eBook far too long and secondly, the eBook content would be repetitive; as the same topics are usually covered by different bloggers.

Some suggestions on the editorial process:

• Bloggers do not have to be in the meta-blogging or make-money-online niche. The relevance of the article is more important. Articles that are already published can be re-used as long as you own complete copyrights for them.




• All articles will be judged and approved according to their quality, relevance and usefulness. No weight will be place on the blogger’s brand or blog size.




• A voluntary editorial team could be established so there’ll be balance when it comes to asessing content quality and approving submissions.

Now for the Most Important Part..

Would any of you be interested in the idea of contributing to a community eBook? I’m plan to open up submissions for all bloggers and not just the popular ones.

This is pretty much something I’m really interested in experimenting with and I’ll be giving the community eBook continuous exposure on Dosh Dosh, so it’ll get distributed and downloaded widely, which benefits everyone.

I shall probably make another post detailing the submission process and all other details that needs to be covered, but I just wanna throw this idea out there and get all your opinions about the whole thing.

What do you think of the idea? How do you think we should go about doing this?

Thanks for sharing and the floor is all yours now. ^_^

Creating a Definitive Blueprint for a Profitable Blog: A Community Ebook Idea

Business Week’s article offers several mini-case studies with income and traffic reports for several websites and I found it a rather interesting read, although I’m already familiar with the blogs profiled.

Some of the blogs included in Business Week’s list include popular blogs like Boing Boing, Shoemoney, Problogger and Perez Hilton.

I thought it’ll be interesting to profile 6 of the 13 blogs mentioned, list their stats and do a quick comparison. I also added in the Alexa Rank, just so you can see it’s inherent flaws when used as a tool to assess an individual web site’s traffic value.

1. I Can Has Cheezburger?

“If you hit a niche and you can build a community, you might not have a $1 million idea, but you might have a $10,000 or a $100,000 idea,” says Nakagawa, who gave up his job as a software developer to play Cheezburger full-time.”

• Launched: January 2007
• Niche: Humor
• Revenue: Estimated $5,600/mth
• Traffic: 15 million pageviews/mth
• Alexa Rank: 4,996

2. Boing Boing

Advertising costs range from $350 to display a small button ad for one week to between $2,000 and $3,000 for the minimum 170,000 impressions on banner ads, all sold exclusively through Federated Media. Frequent posting—the four authors update the site 20 to 40 times each day—drives high traffic to the blog.

• Launched: January, 2000
• Niche: Humor/Cyberculture
• Revenue: Over $1 million a year
• Traffic: 22 million pageviews/mth
• Alexa Rank: 2,180

3. Mashable

Cashmore says it’s the most-trafficked blog on the subject. But he didn’t expect to make a living from it when he began. “The idea that top bloggers would be making large sums was laughable,” Cashmore says. “The folks who held on, however, are doing pretty well these days.”

• Launched: July, 2005
• Niche: Technology/Web 2.0
• Revenue: Estimated $166,000/mth
• Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
• Alexa Rank: 1,493

4. Go Fug Yourself

The mechanics are simple: They take celebrity photos from a wire service, add snarky comments about the getups, and click “publish.” The result? Some 3.5 million unique visitors a month, a book coming out in February, and two full-time jobs.

• Launched: July, 2004
• Niche: Celebrity
• Revenue: Estimated $6,240
• Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
• Alexa Rank: 14,237

5. Perez Hilton

He may also be the hardest-working blogger making fun of show business, with 24 posts on an average day—and as many as 40 on a day with talk of a Britney Spears meltdown. “Advertisers come to me because I get a lot of traffic. I get a lot of traffic because I work hard.”

• Launched: September, 2004
• Niche: Celebrity
• Revenue: Estimated $111,000/mth
• Traffic: 4 million pageviews/mth
• Alexa Rank: 929

6. Overheard in New York

Although Overheard brings in cash, he says, “I’ve always approached it more as a community than a business. I want to make enough so we can invest more to grow. I’m not trying to build a Web 2.0 company that I can sell for millions of dollars.”

• Launched: July, 2003
• Niche: Humor/Urban Culture
• Revenue: Estimated $8,100/mth
• Traffic: 6 million pageviews/mth
• Alexa Rank: 30,122

Lessons to Learn from Profitable Blogs

Having briefly looked at the growth, traffic, niche and revenue for these blogs, one can come to a few general conclusions. While they may be relevant to most bloggers, they might not apply to some outstanding bloggers within any particular niche.

1. Web traffic is a very important factor in monetization and profit. Blogs with little traffic will not make as much money as blogs with a lot of traffic, even if conversion ratios differ.




2. The niche you choose affects how much money you will eventually make. Some niches are almost inherently easier to monetize. (Tech>Humor)




3. Highly unique blogs with interesting topics (Cheezburger) can become profitable and popular very quickly.




4. Comparative analysis will show you that you are under-monetizing or not making full use of your traffic. Despite the niche differences, Cheezburger still earns less than Go Fug Yourself, while having four times more traffic.




5. Lucrative blog niches with a large potential audience are tech, humor and celebrity culture.




6. Metablogging (blogging about blogging) will not make you a lot of money unless you are exceptionally good at it.

For more tips on how to make money blogging, subscribe to Dosh Dosh via RSS or sign up for free email updates.

Profiles of Successful Money Making Blogs

One formidable way of making money from blogs consists of effectively using paid blogging networks.

From an advertiser’s standpoint, blogs are simply publishing platforms which produce content that is viewable by both search engines and potential customers.

Advertisers want more exposure for their businesses and will often purchase sponsored links or written content in a bid to generate public buzz and increase their search engine visibility.

Here is where you come in. As a member of paid blogging websites, you will get paid to blog about the advertiser’s products, website or service. These advertisers will pay the blog networks directly and you’ll receive a stipulated fee when you agree to take on each specific assignment.


How do I Make Money with Sponsored Blogging websites?

The process is actually fairly simple. Start by signing up with these sponsored blogging networks and giving them the web address for your blog. Some of these networks stipulate that your blog must have of a certain age (3 months old etc.) so take note of that before applying.

Take a look at their Terms of Service and wait for your blog to be approved by the administration. This usually takes a few days. After your blog is approved, go through their marketplace (if they have one) or just wait for blogging offers to arrive at your email inbox or site dashboard.

When you decide to take up a specific offer, write a blog post according to the instructions given. Publish the post and inform the blog network of the page URL. This is usually done through a user interface after you’ve logged into the network.

After your post is approved, you’ll receive payment according to the stipulated time frame. You can earn around $5 to $500+ for one single blog post, depending on the popularity, size and niche of your blog.


Dosh Dosh’s List of 17 Sponsored Blogging Networks

Some of these networks should be well known to everyone but I’ll wanted to be as thorough as possible when developing this extensive list of paid blogging websites.

This list will be updated regularly and more paid blogging websites will be added in the future. Hopefully this will help all of you to make more money from your blogs.


1. PayPerPost

The largest sponsored blogging network, Payperpost offers the greatest amount of offers and has a vibrant community of bloggers who support each other through a forum. If you only want to sign up for one paid blogging network, I would highly recommend using PayPerPost above all the others.

The addition of PayperPost Direct and existing affiliate programs will extend your income potential outside of the basic marketplace structure utilized by most other networks.


2. ReviewMe

ReviewMe is basically some sort of a blog marketplace where advertisers can visit to order reviews from blogs. Some of the more ‘high-end’ or popular blogs are registered with ReviewMe and the earnings are substantially higher if your blog is well established and has a large audience. This is measured by your feed subscription base as well as the Technorati and Alexa Rank.

Bigger blogs tend to earn upwards of $100 to 700+ for each single blog post and there are a lot less restrictions and rules than Payperpost. The downside for ReviewMe is that they take a hefty 50% commission for their services, which in my opinion is too large.


3. SponsoredReview

SponsoredReview is a blog network that is somewhat similar to ReviewMe but they offer a little more functionality by allowing you to negotiate fees with the advertiser and bid for an advertiser’s offers.

SponsoredReview takes 35% commission for their services and you’ll earn anything from $10 to 500+ for each review. Their user interface is one of the better ones out there and the only drawback to their service is the lack of advertisers.


4. Blogsvertise

Blogsvertise doesn’t have a marketplace so you can’t browse advertiser offers to select what you would like to write about. The site admins will match advertiser offers to your blog profile and you can choose to accept or reject the offers you see.

Generally, the assignments are sporadic and you’ll receive one or two of them every week if you’re lucky. They do however pay on time so that’s one of the benefits of working with Blogsvertise.


5. Blogitive

Blogitive will pay all bloggers a flat rate of US $5 per advertiser offer, regardless of the size or popularity of the blog. One of the earliest blog networks on the scene, Blogitive seems to be gotten into a slump a few months after their launch.

They’ve recently revamped their user interface and one of the much touted Blogitive advantages is that they pay weekly via Paypal. Blogitive has a very poor collection of advertisers and that’s something that they definitely need to improve.


6. LoudLaunch

LoudLaunch is a medium sized paid blogging network which features a moderate amount of advertiser offers. Your blogs need to be more than 2 months old and payment is only made via Paypal. Like Payperpost, the blogger usually needs to append a disclosure badge, tracker tag or logo or the bottom of posts.

The user interface doesn’t appeal to me and like other networks like Blogsvertise, the range of advertisers seem to be rather limited.


7. BloggerWave

Based on Norway, BloggerWave’s rates for paid posts are generally around $10 for a single post. There doesn’t seem to be many restrictions and you’ll get paid via Paypal. BloggerWave has been late on payment for many bloggers and some bloggers have gone so far to suggest that they are a scam.

Apparently, they seem to have made good on their payments recently and hopefully things should go smoothly from now on for bloggers using BloggerWave.


8. Smorty

Smorty rates for sponsored blog posts is $6 per post although this might increase if you have a high traffic or popular blog. Post approvals are generally made within a week and payment is made on a weekly basis through Paypal. There isn’t a lot of advertisers using Smorty at the moment though that might change in the future.


9. PayU2Blog

PayU2Blog started a few months ago and do seem to be a work in progress. There is no actual marketplace which allows you to browse for advertiser offers and they do seem to function very much like Blogsvertise in that that’ll determine the type of assignments you will receive. Payment is made every two weeks via Paypal.


10. Blogging Ads

Blogging Ads started early and recently relaunched with a new look. It’s nothing too different from Blogitive, however do note that you can only put up 10 posts per month on all your blogs and the rate for each post is usually $5. Payment is made weekly via Paypal. Blogging Ads doesn’t have a lot of advertiser offers as well.


11. Creamaid

CreamAid is a get paid to blog program with a twist. All bloggers of an option of displaying a widget which allows them to earn referral commission whenever another blogger picks up an offer from it.

CreamAid is more fun than the other get paid to blog websites although I think their monetary potential is weakest. Don’t expect to earn more than $5 for most offers you come across.


12. V7N Contextual

V7N Contextual is not technically a get paid to blog network because most of the time you won’t have to write a blog post. All you’ll have to do is to transform any specific keyword (eg. golf clubs) in your blog posts into a link to the advertiser’s website. All bloggers will earn $10 per link, regardless of their blog size and reach.

An important point to note is that you’ll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which means that you can’t disclose that it was a sponsored link. I have blogs in the V7N program and have not received many offers before. Don’t count on getting too many assignments.


13. LinkWorth

LinkWorth is a search engine marketing company that offers a variety of monetization options for bloggers. For instance, bloggers can sell contextual links within posts or write sponsored posts on specific topics.

Other interesting methods include rotating ads, in content ppc advertising as well as packaged link ads. LinkWorth gives up to 70% of the revenue for its ads and payments are made monthly through Paypal, check, direct deposit or Wire.


14. BlogtoProfit

BlogtoProfit allows you to get paid to write blog posts about each sponsor’s products/websites. This company doesn’t have a user interface or dashboard and there is no marketplace which allows you to pick or choose the offers you want. I’ve tried submitting some blogs to them before but have never gotten response from them at all. It is possible that they are not active anymore.


15. LinkyLoveArmy

LinkyLoveArmy appears to be a get paid to blog network but their website doesn’t make what they do very clear. The design is fairly cluttered and there’s no apparent FAQ or guide for bloggers who want to sign up. This appears to be a fairly small DIY setup so I wouldn’t expect too many advertiser offers from the onset.


16. InBlogAds

InBlogAds is a hybrid network that allows you to sell text links as well as blog posts. InBlogAds started quite a while back but seems to have died. I’ve not seen any new offers available and I think they are definitely outclassed by all the other get paid to blog networks.

Although they were one of the first to integrate an advertiser and publisher account within the same dashboard, they’ve definitely fallen behind and dropped out of the race for bloggers and advertisers.

Conclusion

As I’ve mentioned in my article on how to make money blogging, paid posts are a reliable method of earning a considerable amount of money from your blog.

You don’t need a large number of daily visitors at all, although one should always keep in mind that your potential for profit increases as your blog becomes bigger and more well known.

Here’s my advice if you’re really interested in using blogs to make money: Keep a couple of blogs for paid blogging and strive to create a flagship blog that has a large audience and great reputation.

Remember that an established and popular blog usually means more monetization options and far greater money in the long run. For more tips on effective ways to make money blogging, do subscribe to Dosh Dosh’s blog feed.

(This article is 100% original. Please contact me if you see any other copycat articles and I will make sure they are removed from other sites.)

A Definitive List of Paid Blogging Websites

It’s not a difficult process at all and this post will provide 7 distinct methods you can use to generate substantial income from blogging. These seven methods are strategies you can adopt right from the beginning, preferably before you set up your first blog.

You can think of them as guidelines which point out the different options you have, if you’re serious about using blogging as a method of making money online.

1. The “Flagship” or Big Blog Route

This is simultaneously the most profitable and most time-consuming blog venture. The flagship method directs all your focus on a few blogs in order to make them incredibly popular in their niche. Flagship blogs should have a large audience as well as high daily visitor traffic numbers.

These type of big blogs have a wide variety of monetization options with direct advertising sales being a big part of it. Know that not everyone can successfully create a big blog so attempt this route only if you absolutely believe that you have the networking skills, niche knowledge and marketing know-how that’s needed.

• Benefits: Fame as well as more monetization options/potential for your blogs, alongside personal satisfaction. Another advantage is that big blogs usually market or promote themselves automatically once a certain level of fame has been achieved.




• Disadvantages: Very time-consuming especially if you are not outsourcing the content creation or marketing duties. Expect a lot of work and experiment with creative promotional ideas if you decide to go this route.

2. The “Pay per Post” or Get Paid to Blog Route

This is rather simple. Set up multiple niche blogs on either your own domains or free blog hosts like Blogger. Maintain them over a period of time and focus on writing content and building up their Google PageRank, link profile and Alexa Rank.

Submit all of your blogs to multiple get paid to blog websites like Blogitive, Blogsvertise, Review Me, Sponsored Reviews, PayperPost, LoudLaunch and then start writing sponsored posts. I highly recommending using PayperPost as they simply have the largest amount of paid offers available.

• Benefits: The greatest strength of this method is that you don’t even need a large audience to make money. 20 people could be visiting and reading your blogs everyday and you’ll still be able to make at least $15 a day from each blog. If skillfully done over multiple blogs, this method can allow you to easily make over $1.5 K a month.




• Disadvantages: No passive income. You’ll need to spend time writing multiple sponsored blog posts, which can be boring and time consuming. Work will also be needed to maintain your multiple blogs, although that will be minimal after they have been optimized and running for some time.

3. The Automated Blogging or Splog Route

Automated blogging involves the setting up of blogs which automatically pull content from RSS feeds, search engines and news sources to serve as content on your website.

Some bloggers set this to pull partial excerpts of RSS feeds, which does go against some copyrights and one can choose to only include excerpts with a link back to the site in question. Monetization for automated sites is usually done through contextual ads like Google Adsense or affiliate programs.

• Benefits: Very little work needed to maintain these blogs as they do not need you to actively generate or write content. You might need to do a little SEO and regular maintenance now and then. Try if you are adventurous.




• Disadvantage: A weak potential for profit unless you understand the entire process perfectly and if you have quite a large number of blogs.I estimate that a fully automated blog will make you around $5 a month although the actual value depends on the niche and your skills. Assuming that this is so, you’ll need 1,000 blogs to make around $5000 a month. Splogs dwell in ethically gray areas as well.

4. The Text Link Selling Blog Route

The main bulk of your income through this method comes from selling text links to various webmasters and businesses who want to improve their site ranking in Google. While text link selling works for the flagship or other blog models as well, sites can be primarily built for text link sales as well.

The overwhelming emphasis here is on Google PageRank and niche relevancy so you’ll need to focus on these two factors. You can either convert a domain into a text link and sponsored post selling blog or you can purchase a domain with existing PageRank to sell text links for a quick buck. I suggest looking for link buyers directly through webmaster forums.

• Benefits: Selling text links or contextual text links is rather easy and doesn’t involve much work. Potential for profit will correspond to your Google Page Rank and niche. A site with a high PageRank and a profitable niche (mortgages, credit cards) will be very attractive to link buyers. Like paid review blogs, traffic is not a factor in these blogs as well.




• Disadvantages: Over Reliance on the Google PageRank algorithm means that your income may rise or fall depending on your actual Page Rank. There may also be a limit to the number of links you can sell which leads to an income ceiling.

5. The Made-for-Adsense or Made-for-Affiliate-Program Route

This involves setting up a blog around a specific topic with moderately high priced keywords (e.g. teeth whitening, car loans). You’ll only need to create around 25 keyword rich articles on the topic, optimize it for search, set up Adsense or affiliate programs and then leave them alone.

The main emphasis is on building links to the specific webpages, according to the long tail keywords you want to target. Search engine visitors will then find your blog and either click on the ads or convert on a product.

• Benefits: Not a lot of time involved as you can usually contract an experienced writer to develop the keyword rich articles. Not much time is needed to update the blogs as well and new material can be added on a bi-weekly or even monthly basis.




• Disadvantages: There might be a lot of competition in a profitable niche and search traffic might not lead to sufficient income, unless you go for volume and set up dozens of similar websites in other niches as well.

6. The Blog Network or Contract Blogging Route

This involves joining a blog network and getting paid to maintain and create content for blogs. You’ll get paid according to the amount of pageviews, possibly receive a token base fee in the hundreds or a share of the blog’s ad revenue.

• Benefits. Relatively stable monthly income because of the base fee. Contract work usually leads to more freelance blogging or writing assignments because of your proven ability or association with a specific organization.




• Disadvantages: Why bother? If you’re that good at creating and promoting a blog, set up your own website and keep all the profits. However, it is useful to note that a lot depends on the type of network or contract agreement you receive.

7. The Blog-as-Marketing or Branding Route

This method will only apply if you own an online business or provide a freelance service like web design, copy writing or marketing consultation. A blog can be used to help promote your personal or business brand and attract more customers.

This is an indirect method of making money. Ideally, this sort of a blog shouldn’t be plastered with ads or paid reviews because it can tarnish the image of the brand.

• Benefits. A blog can help your brand or business to develop much more search visibility because it allows you to easily create more fresh content that caters to specific demographics as well.




• Disadvantages. Your blog will only be as useful as the quality of the service or product you are pushing. The amount of money you earn doesn’t entirely depend on the quality of the blog but the value of your service/product as well. Income is therefore indirect and can be inconsistent.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are several strategies you can choose if you’re interesting in making money from blogs. You can experiment with several of these methods in order to develop a better grasp of how blogs work or you can zero in on a strategy that appeals to you the most. Whatever path you choose, it is important to know that success will usually come when one is willing to invest time and effort in not only working as blogger but constantly learning how to better monetize or grow your blog.

Improving your skill-set and knowledge levels is especially essential if you’re planning to own blogs that make a steady income every month, and not just write for other blogs or use them as addons for your core business. As always, be sure to pick one that suits your personal schedule and interests. Good luck!

For more tips on how to make money blogging, please subscribe to Dosh Dosh today (It’s free!)

How to Make Money Blogging: 7 Strategies to Help you Get Started Immediately

This is distinct from vlogs, which are blog posts done in the form of videos by creative bloggers. While I think interesting and creative personal vlogs have huge monetization potential, they are obviously not for everyone.

On the contrary, a simple blog that regurgitates online videos from other websites can still make you a tidy sum of money through contextual-based advertising like Google Adsense.

Here’s why I like video blogs:

• Easy to create and maintain. Nothing can be easier than plugging in some embedded code from a video website like YouTube. Updating the blog will take probably take less than an hour a day.




• Videos are social media friendly. Videos can go viral very easily and are extremely easy to promote through social websites.




• Video blogs are fun!. Let’s not forget the possible fun factor behind this money-making exercise. Videos are very light on the mind and generally stress-free. You don’t have to write a good article, check your copy and constantly think of blog post ideas.

Making Money with Video Blogs – The Method

Instead of writing a lengthy article on the topic, I’ll just point you to a Digital Point forum thread that offers a guide to setting up a video blog. The thread was started by thetafferboy83 aka Mark Cook who posted the same article on his blog.

Mark has offered this information freely to both Digital Point and Site Point forum members (great way to build a reputation btw) so I think its only polite to link through and give him some credit here.

I suggest starting at the Digital Point thread because there’s several pages of discussions where Mark answers questions from fellow forum members about the whole process of setting up and monetizing a video blog.

Here is a summary of the steps in his article:

1. Sign up for Google Adsense. This is the first step to take if you’re not already an Adsense publisher.




2. Pick a domain name. This should be short and memorable.




3. Set up Wordpress on the domain.




4. Install various video plugins for Wordpress. These help to speed up the process of uploading videos on your blog.




5. Burn your feed with FeedBurner. This is the first step towards building up defensive traffic through a feed subscriber base.




6. Pick a WP theme and brand it with your logo.




7. Search optimize your theme. Several manual methods were listed in the section but I would suggest using SEO plugins, one of which is the very essential SEO Title Tag plugin.




8. Set up your Adsense units for maximal click through benefits. The easiest way to do this is to use Adsense Ready Themes with already optimized ad placement. A little tweaking will be needed but it saves you a lot of time.




9. Source for video content. You can either repost videos or download videos and rebrand them with your site logo and URL.




10. Promote your blog with StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is really useful in driving traffic to any site and I suggest reading my comprehensive guide to StumbleUpon if you are interested in fully utilizing its potential.




11. Build Links to your blog. Mark only suggests RSS or blog directories and I would suggest linking to the blog from a variety of other places as well: Other sites you own, forum signatures, social bookmarking sites etc.

The basic strategy is to drive traffic from social websites like StumbleUpon, YouTube and Reddit to the blog, whereby you’ll monetize the visitors through effective Adsense placement. Organic search traffic is not a primary emphasis here.

Mark suggests that this method will allow you to make around US $1000 a month, without much trouble. His website also currently sees an impressive 25% click-through rate.

Some Thoughts about Making Money with a Video Blog

I’ve never owned a dedicated video blog before so I can’t personally confirm that his earnings are actually achievable.

I have no doubt about how easy it is to get large amounts of referral traffic to the blog itself. The only question is the actual CTR and according to some comments, video blog owners have difficult hitting that 25% range.

I’ve owned several picture-gallery style blogs and the CTR has always been consistently around 10%. There is however, a possibility of achieving a higher CTR gradually over time as ad tweaking and placement skills come together with stronger traffic.

Mark’s video blog marketing tips were primarily focused on social websites and referral traffic, which inevitably will involve some consistent marketing and promo work everyday before you build up a strong enough feed subscriber base that will naturally pitch or link to your posts.

In terms of search traffic, a video blog might be an interesting way for anyone who is truly interested in exploring the potential of longtail keywords, simply because it would be far too difficult to rank for competitive terms.

I’ve always been wondering if the lack of on-site textual content might affect keyword ranks and a video blog will probably be a good way for me to find out.

Are Video Blogs Profitable? A Possible Case Study Scenario

I do own several domains at the moment and I’m thinking of setting up a video blog on one of them just to test the profit potential of video blogs and find out if it is actually a worthwhile money-making venture.

Should I do so, I will of course put up detailed traffic stats and TOS-friendly earning screenshots so everything is open and accessible by everyone. I’m not too worried about making the domain public as well.

What do y’all think.. would you be interested in reading some a case study about video blog monetization?

How to Make Money with a Video Blog: An Introduction and Guide

His suggestions differ from elaborate SEO campaigns and only involves three easy DIY steps.

1. Set up a simple blog on a free or paid blog host. Write some posts about your business service and include your contact details.




2. Build a Squidoo lens with details about the nature of your business. Include RSS feeds and set up a guestbook to include testimonials. Take some pictures which include the company logo. Upload them to Flickr.




3. Connect with your customers and ask them to set up Squidoo lenses or blog about your business.

What happens after you’ve done all three steps? Seth suggests an outcome:

A month later, if someone types, migraine acupuncture des moines, into Google, they ought to find you. Or pet store 10706. The beauty of your situation is this: if only 5 or 10 new people a week find you via this ring of links and google searches, you’re going to have a shot at doubling your customer base within a year. For $60.

Squidoo lenses do generally rank well on search engines for uncompetitive keywords and the same could be said for any other Wordpress.com or Blogger blog.

The main problem I see in this strategy is the difficulty in getting one’s customers to actually build lenses or write blog posts which target your product or service. Not very likely, in my opinion. It would be much easier to hire someone to put up hundreds of Squidoo lens, which brings me to another point..

Squidoo lenses can be a tad spammy. Some of the ones I’ve seen have content that are rehashed, rewritten and are generally uninteresting. I’m also not a fan of it’s homogeneous lens designs, which detracts from actual branding.

As such, I can only see Squidoo being used as a means to do two things: 1) Drive traffic to your website (if your lens ranks well) and 2) Provide links to your website to help it rank (Many lenses are needed).

A full post on using Squidoo for your blog and website is in order and I will explore these strategies in greater detail. Seth’s article does however bring out an important principle that I want to highlight.

Monetization for the Small Blog: Choose the Right Money Maker

Seth’s article was on small businesses developing an online presence to gain new customers and I think the general principle behind it applies to small blogs or new blogs with little daily/monthly traffic as well.

The main point is this: Even if very little people (5 or 10 new people a week) visit your website and come to know about it, your reader base will still gradually increase over the long term

To put it in terms of website monetization, making money from your blog doesn’t just depend on heavy traffic flow but also the quality of traffic and your ability to retain them as an audience or convert them as customers.

This means that a new blog shouldn’t entirely focus on contextual ads which are very largely dependent on the amount of pageviews or visitors you have.

An example: You might even get 500 visitors a day to your blog and earn $5 a day. Or you can have only 30 and earn $70 from commissions by promoting affiliate programs that perfectly fit their needs.

A lack of traffic doesn’t mean an inherent inability to make money, though there is some evidence of a correlation. Even if your blog has a tiny audience, these visitors can translate to long-term profitability if you know how to promote affiliate programs which offer recurring income.

Monetization for Very Small Blogs : Picking the Right Money Making Strategy