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The Ultimate Make Money Online Questions and Answers Discussion
Posted by garryconn • 11/22/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: make money advice, make money blogging, make money help, Make Money Online, make money online answers, make money online questions, make money online tips, make money tips
So many bloggers want to make money online using their blog. This is a wonderful thing and an excellent goal to have for yourself. Making money online can be challenging, but the challenge isn't quite what you would think. The process of running and maintaining a successful blog isn't difficult at all; however, the difficult aspect of making money online with a blog for many is realizing that this doesn't happen over night, and that you have to educate yourself (just like any job).
With that said, I will briefly tell you a little bit about myself and what I do and then I am going to turn this discussion over to you. My name is Garry Conn, I am 31 years old and I am full time professional blogger. Blogging is what I do as my full time career and I make very good money doing it.
I run and operate one blog that provides bloggers, such as yourself, with advice tips and tricks on finding success with blogging. Aside from that blog, I run multiple blogs for the purpose of making money online using some of the more popular programs such as Google AdSense, CommissionJunction and ClickBank.
Now that you know a little bit about me, let's get down to business and provide you with some long overdue and needed help. For those who have been wanting to make money online with a blog, the purpose of this discussion is to allow you the opportunity to tell me more about yourself, your blog, explain to me a few of the goal you have in mind and most importantly communicate to me about how you want to make money online. (Example: AdSense, Amazon, ClickBank, CommissionJunction, etc...)
From there, I will read what you have written, visit your blog and then reply back with some very helpful advice that will aid you in your journey towards making money online with your blog. When you ask me for advice, it is important for you to include the URL to your blog so that I can visit it and evaluate it.
At any given time, I want to invite you to add me as a friend here in BlogCatalog and also welcome to visit my own blog. Also too, if you feel like you can provide some good advice to others within this discussion, please feel free to do so.
Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com
User Comments
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You'll need to explain yourself further.
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@garyconn
Your post above is so lengthy and meaty that it scared the crap out of me. I have never monetized a blog before. I have a negative view of blogs that are covered with advertising but I may want to monetize my personal blog in a tasteful manner.
Blog description: thistimethisspace.com personal development, growth and relationships contains posts about conscious living, personal development, health, relationships, self improvement, alternative medicine and politics. My goal is to motivate readers to consider the time and the space they are in, and then embrace it as a way to maximize their own personal potential. My focus is on relationships.
The theme I am using allows for an advertising insertion in the very wide sidebar that's common to most magazine style themes. I have not focused on doing any SEO on the blog which contains 415 posts. I added you as a BC friend and I have read several of your blog posts. Where do we go from here?-
I can see how many people have a negative view on blogs packed full with ads, links, pop-ups, etc... and I feel the same. Many bloggers have different intentions with their blogs. Some bloggers pure outright create splogs, I can't stand these type of sites. Then you have people completely on the opposite side of the spectrum who have wonderful blogs without any form of monetization and honestly, that is ok!
Bloggers should have the freedom of choosing to advertise on their blogs or not. I believe that things come with balance. Your blog is a social blog that caters to a following of readers. Your blog is a blog where you'd not really want to throw away new traffic to an AdSense click for a few cents in your pocket.
One way that you could make money from your blog is when you write articles such as this one:
thistimethisspace.com/2008/02/16/essential-carrier-oils-for-home-massage/
and provide your readers a way to purchase the products you recommend. You can join various affiliate programs such as Amazon.com which allow you to collect a small percentage of the sale on products that get purchased by your referral.
This in itself would work great for you simply because you don't have to trash up your blogs with tons of banner ads and other various forms of advertising. You can continue doing what you have been doing while also making some extra cash on the side for nice things around the house or extra cash to spend on loved ones for Christmas.
Your blog is very nice and I enjoyed visiting it. I can tell that you put a lot of time into it and really have a passion for blogging. -
Thanks for your response. If I were to choose to become an Amazon affiliate and begin to write for money by promoting specific products in my posts, then how would that affect page rank?
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@timethief,
I wouldn't look at it that way. You shouldn't adjust your writing for the purpose of making money. Simply write your articles as you have been doing, and then after the article is done, search to see if there is an affiliate program available where you can make a commission by offering the product that you recommend. If there isn't a program available, then oh well.
The point I am making is that obviously there isn't an immediate "Need" for you to make money online. While the concept does interest you, the desire to do so is secondary to the other goals you have in mind.
With that said, if you adjust your writing and how you run your blog and then do product reviews for the purpose of making money online, then you may start to have an adverse reaction among your readership. What you have on your blog is a wonderful thing. As long as you don't change anything about your blog, then things will continue to grow in a positive direction for you.
You can easily go back and re-visit older articles you have written and edit them to include a "suggested place to purchase" the product you educated your readers about. That would never cause harm to your PageRank because you are truly providing an excellent resource for your readers.
Do you have Google Analytics installed on your blog? If so, then you might be surprised to discover the number of people that come to your blog from search engines direct to older posts you have written in the past.
While it is your goal to convert this traffic into becoming regular readers, lightly monetizing your content by offering your readers a way to purchase what you review shouldn't have a negative impact on your blog's growth. Instead, people will trust you and in fact you'll start to get much repeat business.-
The other path to remember is making money from your blog as opposed to on your blog. It's a harder path, but it is doable. Aaron Wall is a good example of someone who got known doing this as opposed to someone like Seth Godin who could do it because he was already known. -
@Garry
I really appreciate your help with this. Thank you.
@Dane
Gottcha
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@timethief
You are welcome!
@DaneMorgan
lol.. I had to read that twice but I got it. Well said.
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@ riverstyxxx
Like I haven't heard that one before... haha, very original. -
Hi,
I just learned about this opportunity and wanted to share it with you - quick and easy setup:
Earn extra cash today with your very own People Search Engine. Earn Affiliate Commissions EVERY TIME Someone Uses Your Search Engine to Get Results!
GUARANTEED Earnings of at Least $125 Within 24 Hours of Starting Your FREE Advertising! And Best of All its FREE..........Get Started today!
Acme-People-Search.com/signup.php?ref=1227468089FJJS-
The above is a PRIME example of how you do NOT want to market and promote affiliate based products and services on the Internet.
How many of you people who read things like the above, actually purchase what is being offered? Anyone want to answer that?
I will tell you, none!
This is an example of an affiliate link, lets dissect it so that you can learn how to look for these in the future:
Acme-People-Search.com/signup.php?ref=1227468089FJJS
[Acme-People-Search.com/] = the domain name.
[signup.php] = the sign up web page.
[?ref=1227468089FJJS] this contains the referral ID# assigned to tubbi77.
What happens is when you click the above link, it stores a cookie on your computer. This cookie can stay valid for a very long time (sometimes up to 90 days or longer). What this means is, if you don't buy this product TODAY, but then decide to buy it three weeks from now, tubbi77 will get credit for the sale and receive a commission.
As you know, tubbi77 just spammed the threads here because he is playing a numbers game. He knows that if only ONE person clicks that link and happens to buy the product, he'll score some money. Unfortunately, in order for him to find success with doing this, he has to invest a lot of time and energy into dropping this link anywhere and everywhere possible. Some people purchase software that does this automatically.
The point being is this, if this product or service that tubbi77 is actually a good (which again, there is nothing wrong with selling affiliate based products... look at Amazon.com for example) the best thing you can do, is start a blog and provide a very nice review about the product you are selling and then market your blog to a target audience that is actually interested in what you have to offer.
Anyway, I figured that someone would appreciate knowing how to sniff out an affiliate link. lol
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hi,
I just started blogging and my only income from my blog is coming from adsense. Eventhough I have 2 affiliates, it still hard to convince people to sign up. Any advice or help may appreciated. Here's my blog pinoyinvestorsmoneyjournal.blogspot.com/-
I am overwhelmed with the amount of information being presented to me. You should really simply your blog because there are too many places to go, too many places to click, and that can seriously dilute your traffic, making it very difficult to effectively study the effectiveness of the things you are marketing.
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The blog is very nice though and it is well designed... there is just "SO MUCH" on the blog that I find it overwhelming.
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Greetings,
Names Don. Ive been an affiliate marketer for about 1.5 years now, after not soliciting any contracts for my IT company over the summer, I spent about 6 weeks non-stop educating myself on blogging. I was able to soak up a great deal of information through various ebooks,vidoes,websites,training courses and other guru's and implemented what I've learned and launched my first MMO blog about 3 months ago.
One thing Ive learned is to maximize the potential of my computers by automating alot of tedious tasks. Next I will be out-sourcing some more very important SEO tasks (Backlinking,SE submission,Promotion) as well as doing alot of them myself but what better way to get faster results than to multiply your efforts via outsourcing. Utilizing FREE resources is great but you get faster results when you pay for a reputable service. Just my opinion.
My blog is still a work in progress but what I like about blogging is that it's WEB REAL-ESTATE, meaning work that you do today you can still profit from months or even years from now. I feel confident with the knowledge that I know already to make this a profession but I know there's still more to learn and to keep on learning as I progress.
Everything on the internet is all about numbers, once I realized that I started to make even more progress, with that being said I know there are a number of things that I could be doing to my blog to further achieve success, would greatly appreciate if you could critique my site and let me know any improvements that can be made to help stay on the right track.
Thanks in Advance!
D. Mega
www.megaonlineprofits.com-
First off, I have to say that I am very impressed with the amount of time and energy you have invested into educating yourself prior to going live. I think that is great. So, I am not sure if you'd call what I am writing "advice" but I am just going to speak my mind.
I have "One" blog that is a social blog, or a hub site where I have a readership and have a group of friends who interact with me and follow the advice I give to them. My blog teachers people how to make money online with their own blogs. And that's it, end of story.
With that said, there is no way my one personal blog could support me and my family. Running my personal blog is not what I do for a living. Yeah, I have advertisers, and I do offer some affiliate products from time to time that make money, but my blog is not a large income source for me.
My business is in creating many small and very focused sites based on topics that monetize very well with AdSense and a few other programs as well. I literally have lost count of the number of sites I have running. Now, the reason I am sharing this with you does lead to a point.
You had asked me if I would come to your blog and offer you some constructive feedback. My advice to you is that I really believe that you are chasing your tail if you intend to try to tap into the make money online niche.
It is extremely competitive, and so very over-saturated. I tell you this because I can strongly tell that you have a sincere desire to find success online. Secondly, you have put forth a ton of time and energy towards educating yourself. The chances of you making a full time income from a blog such as the one that you have shown me is slim to none.
This is NOT a reflection on you, I promise you that. This is a reflection on how "dog eat dog" world the make money online niche is. If you were to use only 20% of your time, energy and effort towards targeting a different niche, you would be absolutely amazed with the results you'd get.
So take that lightly, it's nice to meet you and I am very impressed with the amount you have put into learning. That is very cool.
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@garry
Here's one for you www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/help-12-
Does she still need help? I went over there and saw tons of responses.
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I have read all topics and discussions, just by reading it and implementing the advice techniques is enough for me, without giving further comments.Thank you all
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You are welcome. Glad the discussions could help.
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Gary,
Thanks for the great information, advice, and modest critique. Honestly the MMO niche as in any new blogger was just too tempting to pass up for me although I knew the odds in the beginning and the competition that I would be up against. It's seems so effortlessy profitable but only a small percentage of bloggers/affiliates earn a substantial amount from it because they invest a substantial amount in the begining.
The MMO site was just one of many niche sites that I intended to get underway and mass produce, I just got tunnel vision once I started creating my first site, and was amazed at the power of the simple plugins that the wordpress platform provides to tailor your blog with.
Ive realized that niche sites are the way to go and I just wanted to get familiar with the plugins that I would use for the base-set of my blog army. In my studies I read a simple strategy about Niche sites that I would use to create my army of blogs, it was to create a Niche site and monetize it so that I could recieve at least $5 a day in earnings and then just duplicate that process creating endless numbers of blogs that would all combine to bring in a decent income, much like you've done already.
Wow. You mentioned that you've made so many Niche sites that you don't even keep count anymore. That's amazing. And a goal that I will set for myself, I just need to get focused and stop trying to create an authority site with each blog that I make.
I totally agree that MMO Niche is way over-saturated and to even make a dent into the realm of MMO would be very pricey to say the least. There's pro bloggers/affilate marketers spending thousands of dollars a month just to compete in that saturated Niche.
During my studies Ive accumalated so many resources for building Niche sites including templates,content,software etc. I have the material but haven't decided on a efficient method to implement what Ive learned. Do you recommend any particular software to make it painless or automated and at what point do I go live and set-n-forget? And move on to the next?
Thanks again for providing your honest and sincere opinion on this topic, I feel like Ive read most of what is being advised to me but hearing it from someone that is actually doing it and providing tips on the learning curve is priceless, much better than words in an ebook or ecourse many of which the authors are not doing themselves it's just rehashed theories that they think will work and sell it to others. Appreciate your time man.
Don-
You are welcome, I think that you'll do just fine.
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Hi again Garry
I put in place your recommendations for enhancing my blog from your earlier post - How Do You Make Money Online With Your Blog. As such the top right of sidebar now has a 250x250 adsense image unit.
I have had no success with other affiliates such as CJ, pepperjam, adbrite, etc. So I'm resorting to using only adsense.
Having said that, revenue for adsense is miniscule in comparison to your good self and other big players in the world of blogging.
I am currently learning the art of building a blog based on keywords. This I am actioning with a second blog I have just launched.
Regarding my SolReka blog - are there any fundamental mistakes I am making. Why aren't my earnings in the $1/day range? Not that much to ask for... Is it?
Cheers. -
I answered my own question here and was just posting it just in case anyone was following my post and had the same question that I had:
Step #6: Put Your Site on Autopilot
After her promotions have paid off and Sydney's site is earning around $10 a day, she puts it on autopilot...
"Once I get my $10 a day - it can be $8.97 or $11.46, somewhere in that market - I put it on autopilot.
And the way I do that is my tech partner built me this software that does what they call dripping. It has roughly 30 articles on there. And I add another 30 articles into this drip software. And every 3 to 4 weeks it adds another article automatically without me having to mess with it.
Drip=(Auto Blog Posts) Many software/Plugin can do this.
So I don't have to mess with that site again for another two and a half years. I can build that site, get it to $10 and then go on to the next one.
Although I don't mean to imply that I can build this site and then everything comes to total a halt. I don't do that at all. But I have 3 or 4, maybe 5 at any one time that I'm promoting."
Whatever your info product is - an ebook, a special report, an audio product - using this method is a fantastic way to use eBay as a lead generator. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
www.megaonlineprofits.com -
I have read all posts here and I find them all very interesting and informational. I am in the midst of giving my blogs face lifts and doing some research on what works and what does not.
I'm glad I found this discussion.
Thanks for the info
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