No, but later yes.

A few of my friends have recently asked about making money online and whether it is worth trying. These are some observations from my experience in the past 2 years.

My first site, I tried to use for commercial purpose was quite hard work to make money from. I invested a lot of time in writing biographies of people. The return was relatively low. The ads had a low click through rate and relatively low earnings. However, it does get a reasonable amount of traffic and know earns about $100 a month. The thing is that because, it gives a low return, I have stopped adding content. Even though I spend no time on the site, it still earns a reasonable amount each month. This is the power of making money online. You work really hard in the beginning, but, then you can earn without doing anything. For the first year, the hourly rate was probably less than $0.01 per hour. With this kind of return, most people give up because why work for $0.01 an hour when you can earn $8 an hour working at McDonalds.

But, after the initial effort of the the first 18 months (and it was a lot of many hours) you can generate a steady stream of income, with minimal effort and hopefully this will be an income source for life. (The first thing I did after starting blogging for money, was to stop my private pension) I hope a blog will be my pension.

Other blogs I started, have a better ability to monetise because they are about finance or cycling products. These niches lend themselves to monetisation quite well because advertisers are willing to pay higher amounts.

Netwriting a blog on writing and blogging is relatively poor at earning money. However, I don’t mind, because I just enjoy adding content anyway. If you want to make money online, I would suggest a different niche to making money online and a blog about blogging (maybe due to the huge amount of competition)

The best bet to make money online is to find a niche, which you enjoy writing about. In this way you can combine a hobby with earning; this is the best motivator to keep going when you don’t make much money.

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I went through a period of low posting frequency on Net Writing. Ironically, at this time, I was being much more prolific with commenting on other blogs. I guess leaving a comment is less intimidating because it can be much shorter than a blog post; a blog post involves a bigger psychological effort. However, these are the reasons why I have largely stopped commenting on other blogs.

• If I have something interesting to say, I will post it on my own blog, rather than leave a comment on someone else’s blog. Leaving a comment on other blog, gives much less benefit than creating a post on your own blog.
• People give more importance to a blog post than a comment. On some blogs, the standard of comments is pretty high, like Copyblogger. However, people instinctively give a higher authority to a blog post than a comment. I usually read blog posts, but, don’t get round to reading the comments.
• I don’t read that many blogs anymore. I used to read many blogs to get ideas for posts, but, I find that reading many feeds, doesn’t actually give you that many new perspectives. Generally, I prefer to just use my own ideas.
• Opportunity Cost of Time. Leaving comments is time consuming. You have to find blog posts, think of something to say and then fill on all the captcha’s e.t.c. (BTW: Blogger blogs are the worst) If you spend an hour leaving comments, that is an hour you can’t be spending on your own blog or getting away from the computer. I’m not saying commenting is a complete waste of time; it just ranks fairly low compared to other things you could be doing.

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Why I Don’t Use Twitter

I noticed recently one of my blogs getting a good amount of referrals from Twitter. I started to feel slightly guilty for not jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and making the most of this potential traffic source. Problogger has been talking a lot about Twitter recently, so it must be giving some people benefits. However, I don’t use Twitter because:

• I doubt I would have much to say apart from: “please come and visit my blogs”
• I don’t particularly want to invest the time in growing a network of followers. (Interestingly I gained 6 followers, despite not adding any thing since I set up the account 4 months ago)
• My principle is that it is always better to spend time creating blog posts on your own blog, rather than working on third party products. This is a similar reason as to why I reduced the amount of comments I leave on other blogs.
• Many people say Twitter can become a bit of a time waster and you get distracted from doing other things.
• Note:
• Just because Twitter doesn’t work for me, doesn’t mean it can’t work for you. I have several blogs, so there are always blog posts to do. If you only had one flagship blog, it would make more sense to work on promoting the blog through things like Twitter.

Why I Don’t Use Twitter Very Much

Well I couldn’t resist testing what I was criticising, this is my first ‘twit’ in the past 6 months. Tejvan Twitter Profile

Q. What is the plural for people who use Twitter? A bunch of twits? (sorry, poor joke alert)

One of the more difficult aspects of blogging is the ability to keep a regular posting schedule. If you are able to keep a regular posting schedule, it will help attract regular readers. It is also a good way to build up the number of archives and pages.

Don’t Always Aim for Perfection.

Not every post has to be a 1,000 word epic. Sometimes short posts are just as good. I went through a stage of thinking I should always write with Digg in mind. Therefore, articles could take over an hour to write; this was a great disincentive to post - sometimes I went a week without posting.

Try a Few Shorter Posts

Similar to the point above, try posting a few quick posts. See: Advantages of short posts

Write on What You Know

Sometimes we set ourselves difficult challenges by trying to write on obscure topics or topics that need research. When posting think of what you already know about. Maybe you have been having a conversation with someone about an aspect of your blog. If you can talk about it, there is no reason why you cannot write about it.

Write En Masse.

Often I will sit down and write 6-7 posts for Netwriting in one day. On another day, I might write 5-6 posts for my cycling blog. By doing this, you can get into a groove for writing about the topic. Then you can use wordpress time delay publication. This is a very useful feature of Netwriting. You can have new content published throughout the week, but, only need to work on the blog for one day.

See also:

• How To Be A Prolific Blogger
  
• 10 tips for Inspiration to Write

Getting Your Website / Blog

1. Choose Your Niche. Choosing a good niche is essential to a successful blog. It must be good for you and a profitable in terms of advertising.

2. Interest in Blog. You must have an interest / knowledge in the topic. Don’t blog on something you don’t know about

3. Some Niches are much more profitable. It is worth bearing in mind that if you are getting a very high return on ad clicks, it is remarkable how quickly you can develop an interest in your profitable niche.- I never knew Mortgages could be so interesting.

4. Finance The niche should ideally be related to a product which has a financial value. If you blog about funny videos don’t expect a high click value rate. If you can get traffic for a blog about finance, insurance, mortgages, you can expect a higher return.

5. Motivation and Interest can Make any niche profitable. Any niche can make money so long as you can drive enough traffic. So if you have a real knowledge, interest in one subject that could be the one that is the most successful for you.

6. Blog on Products Blogging about Products is another way to make High revenue. If you blog about philosophy, general life, advertisers have no products to advertise. if you blog about different goods like computers, cameras there is a wide range of advertising programmes you can use like Amazon, bidvertiser e.t.c

7. Get your own domain. Don’t use a free domain like .blogspot and .wordpress. It looks bad, people / advertisers will take you less seriously. It will be harder to get links. You will regret it at some point, maybe not today, but you will regret it.

8. Make Bold Decisions. If you currently have a .blogspot address. - Change it now.

9. Choose a catchy domain, if possible with keywords. The ideal domain should be 2-3 syllables, which are memorable and remain in people’s mind. If you can get related keywords it will help. However, it is not essential as some people claim. Choose carefully, there comes a point when changing your domain is painful work. Memorable blog titles “Problogger” “Pick The Brain” “Copyblogger” “Lifehack.org” “Net Writing… :)”

Choosing Your Blogging Platform

10. Choose Wordpress. It’s that simple.

11. Plugins for any Need. Wordpress offers great flexibility, a variety of plugins, and choice of themes. It is being continuously developed and improved. It is also stable. You can customise it as much or as little as you want. Many have made the transition from blogger to wordpress.

12. My Experience. I switched several blogs from blogger to wordpress. I’m sure other blog software have their merits, but, having tried a few different ones I recommend wordpress as the most effective and easy to use.

Getting Started

13. A good, solid design is a must. True, you want to avoid spending too much time on frills and cosmetics. But, it has to look professional.

14. Avoid Looking Ordinary. Do not just use a standard blog theme. At least create a unique header.

15. Content is King. Sorry a bit of cliche but, work on creating content Writing High quality, interesting articles.

16. Be Patient. Don’t be despondent if traffic is slow in the beginning. Don’t worry about your earnings, or lack of them for the first 6 months. It takes time to get traffic.

17. Spread the Word. Let people know you have a new blog. This can be done through targeted emails plus commenting on other blogs.

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Recently, I have had a few problems with my blogs / websites being down and inaccessible. Now that the sites generate a decent sized income, I can’t afford to have this kind of unreliability and am moving towards getting a VPS, virtual private server (A virtual private sever guarantees a certain amount of disc usage e.t.c and means you are not completely at the mercy of your shared server)

The one thing I noticed about the recent downtime, is that it relied on me, manually seeing that the site is down and inaccessible. It made me wonder how many times my sites were down, but I was not aware of it.

Checking When Your Site is Working

I am going to check out this service at site 24* 7. They offer a free basic account, with the option of upgrading to premium accounts. I will let you know how it progresses and whether it is worth joining.

If anyone has any other suggestions for monitoring uptime rates I would be interested to hear.

Recently, I received my first cheque from affiliate marketing for a new blog about cycling. It was only a £100, but, it is good to open up income streams other than Google adsense.

I have experimented with several affiliate schemes and these are some of the things I have learnt.

Amazon.

Amazon offers one of the most attractive affiliate schemes becaise it sells such an extensive range of products.   I have an account at both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. It has been a little slow, but, slowly the accounts are building up. The only downside of AMazon is that it has one of the lower commission rates, reflecting its popularity.

Text Links vs Banners.

People often have a blindness to banners. Text links often offer the best click through rate. If the text link is relevant to the blog post, then you have a much better chance of getting customers to click through than a banner. I think that using text links and linking to specific products is the secret of successful affiliate marketing. This does take a little more effort, but is worth it in the long run.

• For example, look at this post at Gardening tips. It is a post about plants for Kids. The links go direct to the relevant page. This makes it more successful than just a banner.

Don’t Be Discouraged By Low Click Through

If you start off with a blog, you are likely to face a lot of frustration as initially, affiliate links offer a poor return and low click through rate. However, as you accumulate more pages and more affiliate links, you gradually build up a cumulative effect of greater sales.

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Good post here at Daily Blog tips about the benefits of being 1st on Google

Although the data isn’t comprehensive it backs up my own anecdotal evidence

Data From One Empirical Study About Google suggests:

1. 54% people choose no.1
2. 13% number 2
3. 9% number 3
4. 4% number 4
5. 4%
6. 3%
7. 1%

• Position number 9 may only be 1%

It may be better to be number 1 for a less competitive keyword search, rather than no. 9 for a  highly popular one.

One thing I would note is that it will vary from keyword to keyword. Some keywords like a definition of a word, people are likely to be happy with 1 page. Other keywords where there is more ambiguity and differences of opinion, people will be less satisfied with just choosing number one and will look throughout other pages.

For some keywords I get the occassional traffic, even though I am ranking something ridiculous like number 80 or even 224!

Recently I had a number 1 postion for a very popular keyword search related to economics / finance. The increase in traffic was amazing. But, I always feared losing the position, and a couple of months later I slipped down to number 3. (Beaten by the Guardian Newspaper)

One thing I did was to buy a domain name with the keyword in. It is worth having a site exclusively for that keyword hoping to cement the number one spot.

 How To Get Number One on Google?

Pay an SEO ‘expert’ like me loads of money

Alas, you’re not the only one trying to be number one. But, here are some tips. How To Improve Ranking on Google 

Recently, the great Humphrey Lyttelton, passed away. He had a marvelous voice, ideal for the radio. I often spent many hours listening to ‘I’m sorry I haven’t got a Clue’ Often I didn’t understand all the jokes, but, I enjoyed listening just for the sense of fun and offbeat humour. As mentioned in this post - The Real Meaning of Words, “I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue” often played on the meaning of words:

Quotes from Uxbridge English Dictionary

Satire - seated in a more elevated position.

scandal - footwear you should be ashamed of

telepathy - you can’t be bothered to turn on the TV

Varnish - to disappear in Mayfair

Xenophobia - fear of Buddhists

From: The Uxbridge English Dictionary Seventeenth Edition (approx) Completely revived As heard on I’m sorry I haven’t a clue.

at Amazon.co.uk

at Amazon.com

When I started my websites, I spent a lot of time and energy in writing articles for ezines. These are websites that allow you to publish articles on their sites in return for a link back to your site. Overall, I think ezines are an excellent way to help your blog / website get established.

These are some of the benefits of Writing For Ezines

Increase Number of Links

Firstly, you get a link from the ezine. But, more importantly your article is invariably copied by other websites looking for free content. Some articles have been copied by 20-30 other sites, therefore, you can quickly build up a range of inbound links. Many of these links are of low quality. Sites which just scrape content are not valued by Google. However, sometimes your article may get picked up by a good quality website in your niche. These links are more valuable than the initial ezine where the article was published.

Choose Anchor Text Keyword

• When writing ezines it is important to carefully choose the most useful anchor text keywords. Don’t just link to your home page. But, link to specific articles with the most valuable keywords.
• For example, quite a popular keyword at Net Writing is ‘writing good email’. Therefore, I will include this anchor text and link to the specific article. The important thing is to focus on particular articles and vary the anchor text.

Traffic.

One of the most surprising things about the ezine articles is that they have provided a good source of traffic. It is not a huge amount, but, to my economics site, ezinearticles may send about 50-60 a month. It is quite a small % of total traffic, but, the traffic is quite targetted and google analytics suggest the traffic from ezines spends a long time period at the site. By linking to my blogs, this traffic can help to build up RSS subscribers. True I have written quite a few articles, but, if you write 1 article per week, you are constantly adding to your traffic sources. There is a powerful cumulative effect. Just don’t expect to write one article and then sit back.

• This is always the sign of a good link - does it send traffic? If a link is sending traffic, it is likely that Google is valuing the site and therefore more likely to value the link.

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