Let's Build Bigger, Better Blogs - and Earn More While We're at It

Sixer

I really don't think there is a huge future in keyword blogging. Not only are the search engines waking up to them and penalising them, but the content mills (ehow, about.com etc) have already decimated blog earnings across the pond and they've only just got started here. There's also the question of the value of the inward links. And there just isn't the room for that many big earners.

JennyP

Darth_Trader wrote: »

Go for Wordpress.org if you want to self host, or maybe Blogger if you want free but risky.

Why is Blogger free but risky? What's the risk?

GavB79

You don't own your Blogger domain, so it can be closed at a moment's notice or the terms and conditions can change. Does free outweigh this? If you own your own domain and get paid hosting, you have total control.

JennyP

OK. Thanks for clarifying.
I deliberately changed hosting packages in the summer allowing me to have an easy instal of wordpress on my own site but it's taken till tonight to fathom out how to work it..... finally! So now I can host my own blog.
Presumably if I'm hosting myself, I can allow ads even with wordpress....?

GavB79

You sure can. There is Wordpress.org and Wordpress.com, one is for hosted the other is for self-hosted. If you self-host you can do what you like. There are plug-ins that allow you to put adsense on your site, but it's not that hard anyway, you just copy and paste the code.

JennyP

So it doesn't make a difference what theme I use? I noticed one theme had a special bit for adding the adsense code?

GavB79

So long as your theme supports widgets, which I think they all do

JennyP

OK....thank you. I don't really understand what a widget is!

davidjwest

I've got two blogs, one owned by me with a domain I chose and the other on Blogger - the one on Blogger hardly gets any hits (only been going a month or two) and so has earned me zero, but the one I own, that has been going a couple of months has earned me around £30 so far.

Make of that what you will. I don't use Adsense on the blog that I have the domain name for as in my experience you're lucky to get more than £5 a month from it.

FairyShazza

I have a few different blogs, three which are pretty active but at the moment I don't have any kind of money making stuff attached to them as I thought it would put people off reading them.

Am considering adding something to them to try and create some revenue but am pretty clueless about the best things to add. One is based on a Wordpress template but has my own domain and is hosted on my own server and two are just done via Blogger.

Any tips or ideas welcomed