Blogging Pays U?

I haven't posted in a while mainly because I am a bit disillusioned right now trying to make money blogging. I had a good little revenue stream going with paid posts and that dried up it seems recently. No one but no one signs up for any affiliate programs I recommend and about the only thing that is doing well right now are google ads.

I'm open to your suggestions but I just can't seem to drive enough traffic to the blogs to make it worth my while....

Social Spark is the latest offering from IZEA and I detest it. Here is why. First, the website has issues. You do a search for 'open' and 'qualified' opportunities, select one and then go back and guess what? Yep, it lost your criteria and you have to start again - and thats just one annoying issue with that site.

Next, you don't get paid until you have earned $20. So you make 4-5 posts waiting 30-days after each posting before you can get a nickel out of them. That's just not fair.

Third, often they want you to add a disclosure banner but for certain sites that disclosure banner doesn't work and as a result, their automated check rejects your post. They claim to be working on the problem but I have three posts stuck in that hell that have been up over a month and no sign of payment.

Even worse, you can't use any other advertising in those posts so if you have google ads auto inserted into posts - forget it.

Frankly, SocialSpark sucks and is a big disappointment.

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I just signed up with OfferForge. Basically, they are looking for bloggers to sign up for their service whereby they have a variety of affiliate schemes to offer. I'm still trying them out but you can visit them yourself at Join OfferForge and start earning today!

In the past, Google ads haven't done that much for me. Just a few cents per day. But the last two months something strange has happened. Overall, traffic hasn't grown that much but Google ad clicks have soared. I have not a clue why.

The clicks are mainly on my main blog over at Rant Here. The blog traffic has declined in the last two weeks - probably because I have been too busy and sick to do much blogging but click throughs are up. I didn't change anything or do anything differently either...

But there is one BIG difference. A lot more traffic is arriving via the Google search engine as opposed to social networking sites or other sources. Could it be that visitors via a search engine are just more likely to click on those ads?

I have to say that making money reading emails is one of the most stupid ways to make money I have ever seen and yet folks do it. The idea is that you sit and watch an on line commercial for 1 minute and earn $0.02! Folks that is $1.20/hour and way below minimum wage! These people ought to be sued.

Yep - you are right - I tried it. Just to see how it worked. They gave me a $10 signing up bonus and will pay out at $25. I'd have to work pretty damned hard for the money and it is isn't for me...

I can see how this might help folks sat at home with nothing much else to do make some beer money but that is about that...

Meanwhile, if this sort of nonsense interests you - try this one out....

Good luck!

Of all the services I have signed up for the one that is seriously the best is Matched. I strongly recommend this service to you all. Why? because it is easy, regular cash.

Yes - I have posted about it before but I don't see that many of you have followed the link and checked it out....

What does this service do?

You register all of your blogs and then they find advertisers for you. They notify you when a suitable advertiser has been found and you go back to the website and cut and paste the code, drop it into your website and THAT is IT!

Then you sit back and wait for your monthly paypal account debit. And... they pay in British POUNDS! Yes, it can be a hassle setting up your paypal account to accept a foreign currency but once done, it is done....

And, as the US Dollar falls and falls, guess what? Your revenue from this service goes up and up in US Dollars due to the exchange rate.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

For the last five months I have been running 5 blogs and trying to make some money from them. One area that constantly frustrates me is advertising. Here is what I have already tried;

Google Ads
Got to be careful discussing Google ads since they take a dim view of the practice. Google ads are certainly easy to set up on a web site. I guess it is this ease of use that makes them so popular? Reading around the internet it is apparent that many people make good revenue from Google ads on their blogs and websites but I don't. Granted, revenues are building slowly but I have yet to get my first check from Google. I think the trick is to have a niche site that Google can place ads on that match the content of the site - my more niche blogs definitely perform much better than my broader humor type blog even though it gets much more traffic.

For me, Google ads have lost their luster. You have to wait to generate $100 before being paid and then can only get paid in a limited number of ways not including Paypal which would be far more convenient. There is all that Google red tape too to deal with.

I'm sticking with the Google program for now because of its near universality and ease of use but if I have one more problem with Google (see earlier posts), they are gone for good.

Bidvertiser

Time for a quick update on my progress to date in making cash from blogging. Just recall that I have four blogs and that these numbers represent cash made from all four posting paid articles on them. Also note that the best ranked blog has a PR of zero (thanks payperpost!), an Alexa of 990,000 and a Technorati rank of 220,000. My other blogs have page ranks of 2 or 3 but Alexa and Technorati rankings well below my main blog. Remember - traffic = money and therefore rankings = money too....

So let's look at each money making (article posting service) scheme in turn and look at earnings to date....

Sponsored Reviews
Sponsored Reviews has been my best performer. The service appears to be unique in that you bid on advertisers opportunities and I really do like this feature since I detest getting a bunch of opportunities simply handed to me for things like face lifts, belly tucks and penis enlargement when it has NOTHING to do with the content of my site.

However, opportunities seem to dry up from time-to-time and so it is sporadic and unplannable at best. Recently, I have also earned some payments for signing up an advertiser at the site too...

Until a few weeks ago, I never bothered with cloaking affiliate links. I mean why would I? Anyone signing up for a program and carrying my links (ie giving me some type of refferal fee or earnings) isn't penalized for it. They don't lose anything be being my affiliate.

Now, its easy to cheat someone of their affiliate earnings. When you hit an embedded url you just delete the last bit that contains the affiliate id and so doing, you stop them getting a referral fee or whatever. Again, why would anyone do that? Except through sheer bloody mindedness right?

Well, a few weeks ago, I embedded some of my affiliate links using a cloaking program available of the internet for free. It just mkeans that when someone clicks on the affiliate program link, they don't see the affiliate code there and so there is nothing to delete to stop me getting my fee or reward for referring you. I didn't code all the links on the site like that - just a few...just to see how YOU behave.

While we bloggers look for ways to make money from our blogging passion it's a good idea not to lose sight of the fact that life is for living. Having lived in the US for a fair time, it always amused me somewhat that Americans had the income to vacation but didn't while Brits did but didn't really have the income to do it!

Readers Digest, yes - that trusty little magazine full of jokes, cartoons, human interest stories, tips and tricks, has a website that we all should visit. There you can learn that vacation and family time are as, if not more, important than blogging and making money. I particularly like the RD.com - Family Life section with its parenting pointers, vacation tips and those amazing Readers Digest family stories.

But, if you have a family, you should also check RD.com - Parenting for some other ideas. Surely, at the end of the day, it is all about the family? It's why we try to make money right? Here, you'll find those Readers Digest jokes - yes, they are clean and sharable with the kids, but you'll also find a whole bunch of great articles, self-help tips and stories.

And here is another great blog focused on making and saving money. What I like about this one is that it talks about saving money as well as making money and it covers pretty much every topic you could imagine or want to know about. For example, he talks about gas prices in California but with an emphasis on how to spen less money on gasoline.

The site is full of good articles but it is a little heavy on the ads. Nontheless, I like looking at sites like this for ideas and also to see what money making schemes are being utilized. He plainly uses google and adbrite but also a number of affiliate programs to based on the advertising on the site. Go check it out....

If you enjoy sport - American sports - then I discovered a blog and website that might be for you. It's called Brutus Report. It's actually packed with features like whiteboards, discussion forums, a blog, news feeds and much much more. In fact, it even has a photo gallery and an online store featuring collectibles!

The main focus of the site is Ohio State Football and Buckeye Sports from the coaches, recruits, and players but it does feature a lot more than that... check it out.

Periodically I search the Internet for traffic building ideas and find the same old arguments and ideas trotted out over and over again. And they don't work. Here are some of the things I have tried for traffic and how they have performed;

Submitting to Digg, Stumbleupon and others
I submit articles regularly to these types of sites. I don't apparently have a big enough network on Digg to ever get published but I do get a few hits this way. Nothing much but a few. Posting comments on other folks published articles can get many more hits but at the risk of being labeled a spammer and having your account frozen. Stumbleupon has been useless - no hits at all except in a few cases where some popular Stumbleupon user has submitted one of my articles and then I have had thousands of hits.

Moral of the story - you need to invest time and energy into building a network on these sites to get any real traffic.

Article submissions
Submitting articles to various sites including using Blog Carnivals is also hard work and time consuming. Again, t brings a few visitors but the biggest benefit is climbing up the Technorati rankings.

Traffic Generators

I recently posted about Adult friendfinder and its affiliate program. It's no really appropriate for any of my blogs for obvious reasons but, the same company has a whole host of different businesses that are not all sexually oriented. By signing up as an affiliate, you can chose from this list of sites to promote as an affiliate from the friend finder site to others like an online card sending site and an email service. I signed up and will promote a few of the non sexually oriented websites on my other sites to see how it goes...

Meanwhile - do take a look via the link below....

People blog about all sorts of things and all sorts of topics but this blog was a new one for me and very creative. A third-year student is blogging about his aim at escaping debt! Of course, he is also using the blog to make a few dollars and why not? Looking at his P and L he needs those few extra dollars. Besides, I wish my student son would follow suit.

Go on over and check out the blog Invesing My Way to Financial Freedom and follow his trials and tribulations as he attempts to get summer jobs and make ends meet....

Got an adult oriented blog and want to make some money? Why not sign up as an adult Friendfinder affiliate? You've likely seen their ads so now you can run them too and make some cash as you go...

Since my days of running my own PR and Marketing Consultancy, VasMark Group, Inc., I have valued market surveys as a marketing tactic. Market surveys, if properly set up, can provide a wealth of information for your firm. A survey can actually generate sales leads, improve our brand awareness, help you gain knowledge about the competition, the market and buying criteria. They are an underused tactic in marketing from my perspective.

How To Set Up A Market Survey
A market survey has to be thoroughly thought through to be effective. It can't be too long and yet it needs to ask the right questions. Often, those dong a market survey miss the chance to truly add value by not asking the right questions or framing the questions wrongly i.e. they are open to interpretation on the part of the respondent.

The first question to ask is what information do you really require from the survey? You then have to construct a profile of the respondents you are looking to survey and frame the questions in a way that is not open to interpretation and yet provide the data that you are looking for.

Gaining Additional Information

Well, here is another blog with some good content particularly if you use the Blogger platform since it has a lot of posts regarding using that platform more effectively. Though why it is called Third World Chaos is beyond me...sounds good though!

Its a well laid out blog with some excellent posts including this one about a service called Blogatiser. This is one I will be reviewing to see how it works and if it might work for my blogs too.

The site is multi lingual too which is a nice touch - check it out...

I stumbled on a website that has some great money making ideas recently with a strange sort of blog title - Self Help & Personal Development w/2k Daily Visitors. I'll admit I visited the blog initially because it had a post about mine but I came away with a vast haul of new money making schemes and ideas to put to the test.

He claims his easiest source of income is Paid to Click programs. The mind boggles - paid to click ads? But apparently so and quite profitable too apparently. What I did like about the sit particularly is how it is a resource for bloggers who want to make some cash. It's easy to navigate and get around and the stuff you really want to know is at your finger tips.

Check it out.