Blogging for a second income - does anyone else here do this?

thewaltman

I've written content for a site called Wikinut. Not quite a blog but they handle all the technical stuff and advertising deals and share the advertising with you as royalties.

SunnySusie

thewaltman wrote: »

I've written content for a site called Wikinut. Not quite a blog but they handle all the technical stuff and advertising deals and share the advertising with you as royalties.

I recommend http://hubpages.com/ for that kind of thing.

katelu

Was just wondering how all the new bloggers were doing. I started a blog after reading this tread but struggling to get the blog "out there". Any further hints/tips or do I just need to keep plugging away at it. Have also registered with Stumble upon but how does it actually work? Thanks in advance.

rao_2

katelu wrote: »

Have also registered with Stumble upon but how does it actually work? Thanks in advance.

Stumbleupon and other such sites are basically like shared bookmarks. If someone came across a page or website that they felt was useful and would like to share then they can add that link to a social network like Stumbleupon. It can have varied results of course because anything thats an obvious advertisement on such sites can often be easily seen through. They are at the end of the day social networking sites so to really make more out of them you have to try and use them as such and not come across too much like a spammer. Like this article about Twitter spam:

http://econsultancy.com/blog/4218-the-seven-twitter-sins-a-comprehensive-list-of-twitter-spam-techniques

There are a few articles out there about how to not come across as a spammer on social networking sites (such as not always talking about your business).

You could probably find an application or website that will add on to your blog software so that every time you make a post it gets submitted to most of the bookmarking sites but it would just come across a bit spammy I guess so I wouldn;t expect many to follow through and click them.

An effective but more tricky way is to get a readership up first through other means of marketing and add this button to each of your posts:
http://www.addthis.com/

Which allows your reader to bookmark the article/blogpost on the http://www.addthis.com/services of their choice.

Sorry if any of this has been mentioned before. Just popped in. Good luck.

rao_2

Sorry to double-post but the other thread about Adsense and Blogging got deleted because the Original Poster was advertising themself. But I backed up the post I made in the thread incase that happened and thought maybe it'd be of use to this thread about blogging / adsense.

For those asking what is Adsense. Its basically a program ran by Google where you are paid for ads put on your blog or website. There are lots of other similar programs but Google of course are a big name so their program is the most popular.

https://www.google.com/adsense

Adsense itself is cool. I'd like to make more use of it if possible. I stuck it up on two sites I had going and were promoting at the time, then I focused on other things so stopped promoting them but still got a slight trickle running through and some months later got a £70 payment. Most of that came from when I was actively promoting the site though as one site is pretty obscure topic and the other has a lot of competition. If I was more into writing I'd do more info related websites / blogs and put Adsense on those but I'm into art/design so got to think up another plan for now or pay others or just get stuck in and have a go anyway. There are some less writing-centric sites that did well with ads (think lolcats) but writing is certainly a lot easier since search engines pick up on it better.

The best place for discussion I found was Webmaster World Adsense Section (not attractive forums but big userbase with lots of info) or DigitalPoint Adsense Section. I got a bit of info overload there though but they certainly got some inspiring threads with sucess stories that can give you motivation.

In a nutshell its all about:
- Content ~ make something people will actually want to see / want to read and you'll get more people coming to it. What makes a book a bestseller for example?

- SEO ~ Search Engine Optimisation aka making it so that you get Googled more, there are whole sites dedicated to info on this subject. http://www.seobook.com/ and http://www.seomoz.org/ are good.

- Ad Placement / Type ~ There are some articles around that go on about some of the 'ad hotspots' whetehr that be left-side, right-side etc. And making use of the different ad-types whether it be text or banners or any of the others in the right places.
A Google search for "Adsense Heatmap" to show you what I mean

- Traffic ~ high traffic but also targeted low traffic can work well, e.g. you could spam your website about and get 10,000 hits but if 9,000 of those have no interest in e.g. Travel when visiting your Travel-related site/blog you won't get as much ad interest. This all comes about from marketing / advertising / promotion. Again a biiiig topic that has whole sites dedicated to it. The Digital Point and WebMaster World forums have categories dedicated to it along with other webmaster related forums.

- Playing The Numbers Game. Once you have one site generating e.g. £5 a day. Remember what you learnt from that site and duplicate it a few times for other popular topics/ideas. e.g. £5 multiplied by x sites = £xx multiplied by 30 days in a month = £xxx? But as everyone will say, the hardest part is figuring out getting that first £x amount a day figure rolling. Its a case of trial and error. But its free to trial at least.

There's more of course... I just picked out a few big ones off the top of my head.

For blogs there are some bloggers that pass on valuable nuggets of info. Just avoid the ones that are just trying to sell an e-book or get a few extra hits for their own Adsensed blogs. The ones that give real and detailed unbiased valuable help/info are the ones really hitting it rich with divulging info on their ad-laden blogs.

http://www.doshdosh.com/
http://www.problogger.net/
http://www.copyblogger.com/
http://www.johnchow.com/
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/

There are lots of others out there but a lot of them are very messy and un-biased.

Hope that helps others.

tiff

katelu wrote: »

Was just wondering how all the new bloggers were doing. I started a blog after reading this tread but struggling to get the blog "out there". Any further hints/tips or do I just need to keep plugging away at it. Have also registered with Stumble upon but how does it actually work? Thanks in advance.

When I had a blog I put links to other blogs I read, those people found me and added me to their blog roll too and its amazing the number of visitors I had that way. I didnt have adsense at the start, but I found it fairly easy to get readers (and commenters).

rambo89

blogging for a living is hard work, but so is any job. it takes time and dedication but for a residual income, its obviously worth it.

rambo89

blogger.com is a great site but also consider wordpress

bjarvis2785

Just this week i started a blog about making money in day to day life, and read a lot of the Pro Blogger site to help me. It's a great site with valuable information to new bloggers looking to monetise their own sites.
As well as that, i would get yourself on Twitter and get posting on there, but be careful not to appear 'spammy' as mentioned in the post above.

Other than that the best thing you can do is just post good content. In your first week try and post every day. After that set yourself a posting schedule (i.e. post every other day).
It also helps if you have a few posts already drafted up.
When i launched i had 10 posts already written and saved as drafts, i then scheduled them to post every other day automatically. It frees up valuable time so that you can concerntrate on promoting your new blog.

Good luck to everybody with your blogs, i know it's tough but hopefully we can all make some money

sue341

Blogging for money can be very profitable however it still takes a lot of work - at least in the beginning. I first tried blogging and using "ads" to make money and while that worked - I made very little money. After doing some research i came across making money by selling info products. So basically I would create a blog around "weightloss for kids" or something like that and then after the blog started getting a lot of visitors I would create a pdf ebook "weight loss tips for kids" and advertise it on the blog.