Making Money Blogging – Blog Stew

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.

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I’ve spent the last few days producing content for a number of my newer sites.  Its been pretty fun to my surprise.  The sites involve topics that I have interest  in.  This has helped to no end with content production.  One of my newer sites revolves around the Apple iPhone.  Owning one myself for the last 4 months I’m finding it very easy and enjoyable to produce the original content required.  This only further cements the fact that starting sites in niches you have interest in make the whole process faster, more productive and easier overall.

Then I moved on to the mind numbing task of adding a few sites into and endless list of web directories.  I know the value of these links is fairly low in 90% of cases (I’m talking free directories here) but its still worth spending time I would other wise be wasting, adding to them.  After a while it does become quite relaxing!

Anyway, back to the submission…

Joining webmaster forums has been the most significant thing I’ve done to date.  The sheer amount of information that is all of a sudden available to me is astonishing.  My understanding of how to run websites has exponentially increased over the last few days.

Before joining these webmaster community forums my knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization) was limited at best.  I understood that quality back links were key and that having a few quality links had a much greater impact on SERPS (search engine results pages) than having many low quality links.  Quality > Quantity.

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I spent most of the last 2 days attempting to come up with a good amount of new site ideas which I can work on in the coming week.  The idea is to look for sites that you can easily set-up with good quality content, which require the least amount of time to update and maintain.

Making money online is not complicated.  It just takes time to get a site established and earning money with whatever advertiser you decide to use.  First of all you need to decide what your new site is going to do.  You can’t just throw up new domains, plaster Adsense on them and expect them to earn.  It won’t happen, never.

OK, back to what I’m trying to do with the latest round of site idea’s I have.  I want the sites to make money that’s basically it.  However I’ll also provide a service to anyone who comes across the sites.  Basic services here, such as information which is readily available on the net just repackaged.  The game is to try and rank on the first page of Googles results for as many relevant keywords as possible then simply rinse and repeat.

Below I’ll outline the process I go through with most ideas I come up with.

Hit Read More!

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Google Adsense

Google Adsense can be daunting for people new to the advertising format.  This post will outline what Google says for first time Adsense users.  I’ll also give some opinions on what they say.  Again please understand this is aimed at people newish to Adsense, that’s not to say it might contain some things people who are more familiar with the format can take away and learn from.

So lets get stuck in, I’ll list the guidelines in bullet points then break them down.

Basic Adsense user guidelines

• Use text and image ads.

Text ads have more ads per ad block.  So you might lean towards thinking ‘there’s more ads so more chance of people clicking on them right?’  This is not entirely the case.  People find images a lot easier to look at, also they may be animated giving the eye more incentive to look in there direction.

• Use wider ad units.

Bigger ads.  The bigger they are the more chance people have of seeing them.  But remember not to go overboard, people are still going to visit your site looking for quality content, not an ad fest.

• Use channels to monitor ad performance.

Make sure you use these, its easy for first time or new users to ignore this.  They will allow you to monitor the exact amount of turnover each add is producing.  Naturally from that data you can then begin to fiddle with your ad design and placement.

• Ensure your site is Google policy compliant.

If its not then expect to get banned!  Or thrown so deep into the google black hole (sandbox) you’ll never come back!

• Good quality site content.

This is what will make people keep coming back!  As I’ve said before, sites that I’m interested in writing for tend to do better performance wise.

• Original content.

Copy and pasting jobs can be good for some sites, however its generally better to produce your own stuff, then with some luck you will get well known for it!

Keep reading on after the split….

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First Post!

BlogStew is an idea I have been thinking about for quite some time now.  What’s better than thinking?  That’s right!  Doing!  So what on Earth do I intend to talk about?

First of all I want to create a log about my efforts to make money online.  I’ve always been interested in computers from a very early age so using them to make money sounds like a good idea to me.  I’ve put alot of my time into reading up on ways to actually make money, how to set-up websites, how to advertise them and all that jazz.  I want to share this experience with the World and anyone else interested ;)  I have only just started to publish websites and to date I’m running 3 sites including BlogStew.  Hopefully by chronicling my journey into blogging and using it as a medium to make money I can create a very dependable source of information on the subject.

There’s lots of guides out there telling you how to make money doing this and that.  I want to give me personal story as it happens on attempting to make a damn good living off the Internet.  I’ll also admit this from the start:

BlogStew has been set-up to index my personal Internet blogging adventure that I hope will eventually replace and overtake my current income.  Therefore BlogStew will contain adverts from the word go, I’ll make no excuses for this.

Tom – BlogStew.com

The reasons for having adverts online from the start is simple.  There is no point losing revenue when earnings can be maximized.  That’s it for now as I need to keep working on the site!

Stay tuned people!