Making Money Blogging – Blog Stew

Sachibhat from http://2ask.ws/seo/free-seo-guide-from-google/

Has just alerted me to this very basic SEO guide compiled by Google.

I highly recommend anyone who reads this downloads this basic guide and gives it a read through.  Even if your experienced in SEO is good practise to sit down and refresh yourself with the very basics every now and then.

There’s nothing worse than missing out on traffic due to silly basic mistakes!

Thanks again Sachibat for giving me the heads up.

Let me break down exactly just what this ’smart pricing’ really is.  There is a lot of confusion as to the exact definition of the system adsence uses.

What is Smart Pricing?

Google’s smart pricing feature automatically reduces maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bids for certain pages in the Google Network.

Essentially if Google decides the click on any given ad is less likely to result in a sale for their advertisers they reduce the price of that click, so in theory the advertiser saves money which makes them happy, Google makes less money a long with the publisher.

Lets break this down and look at just how Google come to these conclusions on smart pricing.

Continue reading after the break.

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So I’m on my daily rounds of the major SEO blogs and I come across this little gem of a bitch fight.

So there you have it, Matt Cutts has stopped following Shoemoney on Twitter, why you ask?  Well it seems he doesn’t agree with people who

‘…do sponsored tweets’

For the full story head over to http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/06/14/matt-cutts-and-me/

There is also an active disscussion taking place over at netbuilders

Everyone who uses Adsence is looking for the next ‘holy grail’ in profitable niche’s.  Selecting a high paying niche when building your next site can dramatically increase the amount of revenue generated by Adsence.

The ‘key’ is to target keywords which have the highest cost per day estimations.  This means that businesses and companies are actively competing for these advertising spaces and therefore more money is being pushed into specific niches.  The advertising budgets of these companies is a good indicator of the profitability to be found in certain niches.

After the break I’ll include a table which outlines the cost per click, clicks per day and cost per day of some keywords.

Read more…

Netbuilders.org will be announcing the keywords for their new SEO competition today.  If your looking to improve your overall knowledge on and about SEO then I highly recommend you take part.  If your not wanting to take part then there’s nothing stopping you from simply watching how others fair in the competition.

Myself I will probably enter but I will also actively follow the progress of the many veteran SEO players Netbuilders has.

This is definitely going to be a competition you do not want to miss!

Finally made it, its taken 2 months but I’ve finally hit the magic $100 on Adsense!

Ok so lets look at how I actually managed it.

Sites displaying Adsense:

• 2 blogs, this one and another on a popular mmorpg pc game.
• 2 content driven sites.
• 21 web proxies.

The main bulk of the income has come directly from Adsense which is displayed on the main page of the proxies.  The very nature of proxy advertising is to get burst traffic, generally over time the revenue generated from proxies tends to drop, that’s why setting up new fresh proxies as often as possible is the way forward.

My current Adsense total = $102.12 that’s as of 2nd March 2009 (date of this post)

My goal was to try and break the magical $100 mark in February, but I think I can let myself off for missing the mark by 2 days!

The question is, what to do now?  Well more of the same really.  I’ll be looking into updating my content sites along with adding more.  Creating more web proxies and focusing on services I can provide.

My latest project is www.corelogo.com which has taken off really well.  I’m happy with the design of the site and I’ve just started to advertise the services CoreLogo offers around webmaster forums.  Its nice to have something different to do, its all very well staring at text for hours on end but that can soon become a drain and off putting to some extent.  There’s nothing better than whipping out Illustrator and Photoshop to get the old creative juices flowing!

Its been 10 days since my last post, that’s to long and its going to change!

So what the hell have I been doing online since this blog started?

My first goal was to reach the fabled $10 amount on Google Adsense, that was the first major mile stone in my greater online money making plans.  I managed that fairly fast with an average income around $0.10 per day at that time.  That’s nothing great but it was the start I needed.  It showed me how easy it was (in theory) to make good amount of money online from advertising revenue only.  My first angle of attack was to start setting up content driven websites, based on WordPress.  I have a solid understanding of WordPress from some past experiences so it made sense to stick with what I know.  I looked at things in my life which I currently enjoy or have a good interest in, then I began to produce sites based around those subjects.

One of the first criteria in making successful sites is to base the site on subjects you know and understand.  Making content driven sites to produce income is all well and good, but its a hell of a lot more difficult when you have no interest in the given subject.  My advice is to stick to what you know, all day, everyday, then you can’t go wrong!

Eventually I had produced 4 content driven blogs/sites.  Then it was time to learn SEO methods.  I have a good knowledge on the more common easier methods, but I need to expand this knowledge.  That’s what my current focus is aimed at.

Read more…

There are many way to make money online.  Sure you can make money from Adsense and other ad networks, but what about selling services you can provide?  Take a hard look in the mirror and decide what you can and can’t do.  The beauty of selling your talents online is you past work acts as the qualifications.  You don’t need fancy degrees in this or that, you just need to know how to complete the work.

The hardest part can be forming a back catalogue of work, known as a portfolio.  If your just starting out then you have nothing to show, so people are less inclined to take you on.  You can either try and push through this phase or produce work for yourself to primarily act as portfolio content.  Once you have a developed portfolio of work you will need somewhere to show it all off.  This would be a good time to find a catchy domain name and develop a site to suit your services needs.

There are many components to making money online, simply putting all your effort into one sector can become boring and maybe not be as profitable as diversifying.

Finding work can also be tricky to begin with.  The best option would be to post on active webmaster forums announcing your services, showing your portfolio off.  You could then move on to job forums, people ask for specific jobs to be completed.  You tender for the job, giving a quote and hopefully given your good portfolio you get taken on by the client.  When I first started to look into offering services that I can provide myself, I was astonished at the sheer amount of money being thrown at things I could do!  It seemed silly to me to ignore this possible stream of income.

So my message is this, sell yourself online.  If you can design logos, code websites etc then look into the market and find a gap for you to fit in.  People want jobs doing all the time, and people pay.  They pay for knowledge and time, that’s ultimately what you are selling.  You’re selling yourself.

I want to move into graphic design, offering my services for logo and banner design.  I have no qualifications in design, no certificates to show I can use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, yet I have years of experience with both.  So I need to depend upon a solid portfolio of work.  From reading various forums I came across a quote similar to this:

Self taught people have confidence, they had no teacher to help them out during the hard times.

I know people that run small the medium size businesses here in the UK.  They have no degrees in business or anything like that.  They have the drive and focus to succeed.  Confidence is key in this world; you have to be confident in what you can do.  Then you need to get out there and do it!

First of all let me hit you guys and gals with some figures.

Domains cost = $7.13 for 6 domains, of which I’m only currently using three.

Hosting = $5.98 per month

Domains + Hosting = $13.28

Adsense Earning

27th = $1.13 (Running 2 proxies with  addition to Tech-FAQ toplist only.)

28th = $2.98 (Added both proxies to tons of toplist sites.)

29th = $4.68 (started a new proxy. added to all toplists as previous two.  Now running three proxies.)

Total running costs – Adsense earning = -$4.49

As you can see from the result I’m currently $4.49 in the red.  That’s after three days using only Adsense.  I fully expect to pay for all my hosting and domain costs today, once the clicks start to roll in.  However I’ll be facing some further expenditures.  I’ll be needing a better hosting plan, after using 11gig out of a 20gig hosting plan so far!  But that’s only a minor increase, and will hardly make a difference if I continue to see the sort of day on day increase in Adsense earning I am at the moment.  I also started a proxy based Google Group, subscribe via www.getworkdone.info !

As far as today goes another proxy or two will be set-up.  I’m on the lookout for some more quality templates to use.  Its best to avoid using the same one over and over, it will only end up bringing you attention from the Adsense goon squad.  Same goes for content, its best to make sure each proxy is unique in content.

I wake up this morning to $3 revenue from the two proxy sites I’m running.  As far as advertising goes I’ve only been adding them to proxy toplists.  This performance so far has been fantastic from my point of view.  I fully expect that with today’s income from both sites I will have paid for hosting and so the sites have become self sufficient!

Today’s plan is to add the current two proxies to more toplists.  The best place to find quality toplists is to copy the competition. Using the Tech-FAQ toplist I was able to find active proxies and then using the links they display, add my sites to those toplists.  Hey if they are using them, they must work!

I also want to get another proxy up and running, which should be easy enough.

I also need to look at adding none Adsense adverts to the proxified pages.  These are the pages the site produces when people use the proxy function.  You are not allowed to display Adsense on any sites you do not own, also people may visit sites with content not allowed by Adsense, for example gambling sites.

AdBright and ExitJunction are two I’ll be looking into.

Also on a side note, I’d like to say thanks to free internet media for the write up they have kindly done on Blog Stew, which can be found here Blog Stew It’s What’s For Dinner.

Thanks Guys!