Written on February 18th, 2005 at 06:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Entrepreneurial Blog Consultant for Hire
Update: Due to a very high level of demand and other projects - I’m currently not taking on new consulting clients. Please feel free to ask after reading what I offer below - but please don’t be offended if I’m unable to take on your work at this point. I’m working to clear some time for more of this type of work - but it could be some time before I can do so.
Since starting enternetusers back in September I’ve had an increasing number of requests from Bloggers and potential bloggers to help them think through how they might generate an income through their blogging. To this point I have been happy to offer some basic free advice or to point these people to appropriate articles and/or resources that might help them.
On a handful of occasions I’ve given bloggers more specific and advanced advice and have assisted them in putting into action a money making strategy for their sites. In one of these cases the blogger in question increased their earnings from $5 to $55 per day within 48 hours!
I get a lot of satisfaction from helping bloggers move towards their goals of earning an income from blogging and have decided to make more time available in my schedule over the coming months to work with a small number of bloggers as a consultant.
The areas of experience that I can offer potential clients advice and consultation in include:
- Adsense Publishing Program
- Amazon Affiliate Program
- Other Advertising and Affiliate Streams
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Sourcing Content on Niche Topics
I’m also open to approaches to write on different blogs as an editor or contributor.
If you would like to engage my services in any of these or other related areas please do not hesitate to contact me with your requirements or ideas. If they meet with my areas of experience I would be happy to speak further with you and prepare a proposal that would be mutually beneficial for us both.
Written on February 18th, 2005 at 06:02 am by Darren Rowse
Search Engine Friendly URLs
I just stumbled upon this useful article on Search Engine Friendly URLs which is filled with wonderful tips on choosing the right URLs for your website. It isn’t written specifically for blogs but the information is useful to keep in mind when setting up the way in which your blog comes up with URLs. It has a good section explain the pros and cons of ‘Dirty URLs’ or those URLs that tend to be filled with numbers and punctuation marks rather than words.
This article will be more helpful of course for blog users using systems like WordPress and MoveableTyle that allow you to customize the way in which your URLs work. Here’s a taster:
‘The first path to better URLs is to design them properly from the start. Try to make the site directories and file names short but meaningful. Obviously, /products is better than /p, but resist the urge to get too descriptive. Having www.xyz.com/productcatalog doesn’t add much meaning (if a user looks for a product catalog, they might well expect to find it at or near the top-level products page), but it does needlessly restrict what the page can reasonably contain in the future. It’s also harder to remember or guess at. Shoot for the shortest identifiers consistent with a general description of the page’s (or directory’s) contents or function.’
Read more at URL Rewriting - Search Engine Friendly URLs
Written on February 18th, 2005 at 04:02 am by Darren Rowse
NY Times Buys into Blogging
The New York Times now own the largest blog network in the world. They have just agreed to pay $410 million for About.com from Primedia Inc. in an all cash deal. Primedia bought About.com in October of 2000 for $690 million in stock but had trouble in capitalizing upon the purchase.
‘The company says the deal will give it the 12th-largest Internet presence and a platform for future growth on the Web. The Times Co., whose digital properties include NYTimes.com and Boston.com, has a current base of 13 million users, while About.com has 22 million monthly users.’
Read more at Crain’s New York Business news, lists, rankings, directory and more
Written on February 17th, 2005 at 10:02 am by Darren Rowse
Adsense in Newsletters are Coming - Eventually
Jensense has some good news for bloggers who also use newsletters to keep in touch with their readers - sources within Google say that Google is looking to extend its offering of newsletter ads to smaller publishers as well as the larger ones that it currently is testing the program with:
‘Google plans to eventually expand the newsletter option beyond its direct AdSense partners to include the smaller publishers who use AdSense’s online self-service program.
“It’s a goal, but we haven’t put any dates around it,” Axe said.’
Written on February 17th, 2005 at 05:02 am by Darren Rowse
Why Adsense Doesn’t Work…For Everyone
Jim at BlogKits has a good article on why Google Adsense Doesn’t Work for all Bloggers. His argument is sound and his figures are good. He does a case study whereby he comes to the conclusion that a blog with 200 visitors per day with 1000 page views would earn $2 per day if the click through rate were 10% and the value per click were 2 cents each.
His thinking is similar to a post I did a few months ago asking ‘is contextual advertising Viable on a Blog?‘ I gave some tables there that showed a range of different potential earning levels depending upon:
1. Click through rate
2. Traffic levels
3. Value of Clicks
Earnings varied vastly with different combinations of the above ranging from 10 cents to $6250 per day!
Jim’s numbers add up and I agree with the main thrust of his argument that Adsense is not a good option for all (or even most) bloggers wanting to make a substantial income from blogging however there are just so many variables to consider. Of course you need to keep a couple of things in mind in reading Jim’s article:
1. Jim uses Adsense on his BlogKits blog - maybe its just as a bit of research, but I’m sure the few dollars a day it earns are helpful
2. Jim does of course have a bit of a vested interest in bloggers trying other advertising methods.
Jim finishes his article by saying:
‘Forget Adsense, Bloggers are better served creating custom partnerships or sponsorships with advertisers. In arrangements of this nature, a blog with niche-specific content, that is straddled with low traffic, has the opportunity to earn much more by converting less.’
I agree with his argument in principle but I’m still waiting to see examples of it working out in practice. Most of the new blog advertising programs like BlogKits are pretty new and from what I can tell their sign up rate is not huge yet for either publishers or advertisers - it will take time for it to catch on and for us to find out if his hypothesis of small traffic blogs earning good money is in fact proven to be true - Lets hope it is!
Written on February 17th, 2005 at 02:02 am by Darren Rowse
Last In Text Link Auction
Paul has an interesting article on Harvesting his High Page Rank. He has a travel site with a page rank of 5 that he sells text links on. However he has a novel approach to how to determine which link is first in the list - he auctions the top spot off using a ‘last in auction’. If you want to be on top spot you simply bid another $1 and you get top spot - til someone else bids another $1. Interesting system which appears to be working if you check out the long list of sponsors he’s got (currently 38). You can sign up for a link here. Paul explains the system:
‘My solution? A last-in auction. Whoever is willing to pay to be number 1 gets the slot — everyone else gets moved down. If someone doesn’t like being #2, they can pay again to be #1. The price doesn’t change, just $1 — It’s determination, not finances, that keeps a link at the top. And, as an added incentive, the #1 link is guaranteed to be on every page, #2 on down may or may not show, depending on how long the article is. How long does a dollar keep an advertiser on top? Five minutes or five days, depending on how long it takes for someone else to pay a dollar.’
I just bought a $1 link - interested to see if it brings any traffic.
Written on February 16th, 2005 at 02:02 pm by Darren Rowse
Surfing the Wave after a Scoop
I love days like today. You get out of bed after a nice night’s sleep and the sun is shining, the birds are singing and you have a gem of a scoop waiting for you in your inbox from a reader of your blog giving you the story of the month (maybe year) exclusively.
I had to do a little background work but the story was right, a new DSLR camera from Canon - the Canon Rebel XT, and no one else had posted about it yet (most other sites are bound by agreements with the manufacturers and can’t post til tonight), so I posted it a couple of hours ago and am now enjoying watching the traffic flood in.
It’s quite exhilarating to see your traffic graph come alive - it just jumped from 350 visitors per hour to over 2000. This is going to be a fun day.
Written on February 16th, 2005 at 01:02 pm by Darren Rowse
WordPress 1.5 - Latest Stable Release
World Press users might like to upgrade to the latest stable release of WP 1.5.
Written on February 16th, 2005 at 11:02 am by Darren Rowse
2005 Business Blogging Awards Results
Congratulations to Security Awareness for Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless who have unofficially taken out the Best Overall Business Blog at the 2005 Business Blogging Awards (they are still tabulating the votes but the result is pretty clear). Thank you to all who have voted for enternetusers your votes took us way out in front early but unfortunately we might have peaked too early and couldn’t keep up with Security Awareness in the past few days who had a couple of big surges in voting over the past two days to blow the rest of the competition out of the water.
They are a worthy winner of the award and our congratulation goes to Greg and his team for some fun competition. Congratulations also to Blog Business World, Slacker Manager, How to Save the World and Coyote Blog who each made this category one that was an honor to compete in.
Written on February 16th, 2005 at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse
Is Google Adsense Making Me Rich?
Jim at BlogKits asks if anyone would like to share their success or failures using Google Adsense to generate revenue for their blog? He writes - ‘I’m curious as to whether or not you have made it work, and to what level? Making just enough to make it worth it?’
This is a question I get asked every few days by entrepreneurial bloggers - it is a tricky question to answer because Adsense do not allow publishers to share details of how much they earn or how their ads perform. I am also hesitant to answer it because I was always taught not to talk about money or how much you earn. However I get asked it so many times that perhaps its worth writing a progress report of how Adsense is going for me - so let me share a little of my own experience without getting into specifics.
Rich?
Adsense has been a very worthwhile venture for me - it has not made me rich, however it could. I started using it because I wanted to find a way to cover my ISP and hosting fees for my blog. I now make a good living from it. Whilst it is not my only source of income from blogging at present (I use affiliate programs, sponsorships, text ads to name a few of my other income streams) Adsense is currently the largest source of money from my blogs. I’m unable to go into specific dollar terms except to say that it pays my rent and is well on the way to giving me a deposit for a home.
More than I’ve earned before
I’ve just taken a look at the last 12 months of Adsense earnings and the total is beyond what I’ve earned previously in a calendar year in any other job (not that I’ve ever been in law, medicine or any other highly paid profession). Of course the first few months of the last 12 were no where near as good as the last few of 2004 so I’m expecting the next 12 months will be significantly higher as the exponential growth continues.
I’m not writing this to big note myself (I’m just an ordinary guy who is working hard at making an income from his blogs) - rather I am keen to spread the news of the opportunity that Adsense presents. I’m also not blogging to become rich - I do it to earn enough to be able to volunteer time to other community activities that I have a passion for.
What’s the catch?
So yes - Adsense has been successful for me. However let me qualify what I’m saying here before I start sounding like a ‘get rich quick without any work’ type motivational speaker.
Making the income that I’ve earned with Adsense (I’ve been using it for 18 months now) is not a walk in the park - this is not ‘easy money’. As I’ve written numerous times before - I work long hours (its 12.36am as I write this) and I’ve taken a long term view of it (in the early days I was earning less than I did when I was 7 and getting pocket money). I post 20-30 posts per day and work hard on networking and ethical SEO. Blogging is my full time job. You get out what you put in.
I don’t just run a single general blog - my approach is multiple blogs (I currently run 17) on niche topics which I aim to post daily on. My traffic levels are not massive but they are reasonably substantial with around 16,000 unique visitors to my site each day.
Adsense is not for every blog or every blogger. Some topics are a lot better than others - and it is not always the blogs you think that will be successful that are. Its a fickle game and one that you had better be ready for some bumps in the road in. Some months can be lean whilst others can be breathtaking - it is feast or famine and at times it all feels rather surreal. I am taking things one step at a time and am not putting all my eggs in the Adsense basket as I know it could all disappear tomorrow.
Adsense Tips
I won’t expound all my tips here - I’ve written extensively on how to best use Adsense in my Adsense Category and have a series of my best Adsense tips that starts here.
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