Here are some posts that I’ve found to be helpful:

Tips for becoming a top blogger

How to become a famous blogger (funny!)

Lessons from running a huge contest

Traits of successful blogs

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Build Readership, Then Monetize

Many bloggers who start blogging get into it because they are enticed by the potential of living off the blog earnings. Who wouldn’t with the many success stories of people who are making a full-time income just off their blogs. However, monetization should not be the top priority. The most important thing is to build a strong readership. And that means you have to blog about something that people want to read about. A blog lives or dies by its readership.

Participate in the niche that you choose. Visit other similar blogs and introduce yourself. Comment thoughtfully and don’t spam in the hopes of getting a link back. Chances are people who read your comments and are interested in what you are saying will click through to check you out.

Building A Blog Network

Build a blog network and grow the network traffic. Sell lots of advertising - generate revenue. Then sit back and hope that some big company comes along and buys you out. The most visible example was Jason Calacanis‘ WebLogs Inc. which was sold to AOL for millions (25?) of dollars.

Selling Your Expertise

Blog often and establish yourself as an expert. Build a sizeable readership and then sell seminars or courses to teach others how to do it. First, look at Darren Rowse who had the six figure blogging course. Then it’s Yaro Starak with blog mastermind. You can also become a speaker at internet marketing seminars. The momentum builds once you get rolling.

The Exit Strategy

After you’ve built a large readership and revenues, then what? You could sell out and cash in.

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Technorati Tags: blog business models, blogging success

Popularity: 35% [?]

Blogging can generate some serious cash these days, although most of the time the business model is one based on selling ads. Will this bubble go the way of the banner ads that were so popular during the first Internet bubble? Some of the ad rates can be quite outrageous and makes one wonder if the advertisers are really measuring the return on investment generated from those ads. Anyway, in case this bubble pops, you should definitely consider other business models for your blog as well.

Here are some impressive figures as reported in BusinessWeek:

BoingBoing - over $1 million last year

Advertising costs range from $350 to display a small button ad for one week to between $2,000 and $3,000 for the minimum 170,000 impressions on banner ads, all sold exclusively through Federated Media. Frequent posting—the four authors update the site 20 to 40 times each day.

I Can Has CheezBurger - Estimated $5,600 a month

ShoeMoney - $12,000 a month (that’s only from the blog alone)

OverHeardinNewYork - $8,100 a month

Kottke.org - Estimated $5,300 a month

TalkingPointsMemo - $45,000 a month

Perez Hilton - $111,000 a month

…24 posts on an average day—and as many as 40 on a day with talk of a Britney Spears meltdown…

Gothamist - $50,000 - $60,000 a month (for the entire blog network)

TechCrunch - $200,000 a month (holy smokes!)

TechCrunch became Michael Arrington’s full-time business in 2006, with $200,000 in monthly revenue from job boards and ads.

Go Fug Yourself - $6,240 a month

Mashable - $166,000 a month

Pete Cashmore started Mashable two years ago, to write about the emerging trend of mashups, which he defines as “the fusing of multiple Web services.” Text ads start at $100 per week, banners at $2,000.

Problogger - over $100,000 a year (multiple sites)

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Technorati Tags: blog earnings, highest earning blogs, popular blogs, blog business models

Popularity: 54% [?]

Eric Nakagawa’s story about accidentally stumbling into blogging for profits is quite inspiring. Here’s an excerpt from the BusinessWeek article:

Eric Nakagawa, a software developer in Hawaii, posted a single photo of a fat, smiling cat he found on the Internet, with the caption, “I can has cheezburger?” in January, 2007, at a Web site he created. It was supposed to be a joke. Soon after he posted a few more images in the same vein: cute cats with funny captions written in a silly, invented hybrid of Internet shorthand and baby-talk.

As traffic started increasing, the income from advertising he sold on the blog became significant, so much so that he quit his job as a programmer.

He saw traffic on the blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, which he runs with his partner, “Tofuburger” (she refuses to disclose her real name) double each month: 375,000 hits in March, 750,000 in April, 1.5 million in May. Cheezburger now gets 500,000 page views a day from between 100,000 and 200,000 unique visitors, according to Nakagawa. The cheapest ad costs $500 for a week. The most expensive goes for nearly $4,000.

After reading this, start thinking about ways you can replicate his success. If he can do it, why can’t you?

Technorati Tags: blog entrepreneurs, blogger earnings, full-time blogging

Popularity: 44% [?]



So far the WidgetBucks program has been very promising. Since the launch on October 2nd, they have reported the following:

WidgetBucks has registered 5,000 publishers, bloggers and affiliates, as well as 25 million impressions during its first seven days.

I’ve installed it on a few different websites. The ones where it works best are product-focused blogs. As far as ad formats are concerned, personally I like the 160×600 (great for sidebars) and the 300×250 sizes (for placement in the main fold of the site or below your top post) as you can show the most information to your site visitors.

But on top of that, the most money is actually coming from referrals. Each referral that you send will make you $25. So you can see how it can add up fast! If you have a list of email subscribers, make sure you tell them about it. The time to promote this is now since it is still relatively new and unsaturated.

If you haven’t already joined, make sure that you check out WidgetBucks.

Technorati Tags: WidgetBucks, blog monetization

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Whether you are an occasional blogger or a fanatic multi-post-per-day blogger, you’ll always need to come up with ideas for things to write about. Don’t worry, even professional bloggers or “pro-bloggers” who blog full-time face the writer’s block from time to time. There is a great source of ideas which can help you in this regard and it’s called Google Trends.

The thing that is so cool about Google Trends is that it is updated daily and often multiple times per day. It gives you the behind the scenes look at what internet users are searching for or what’s the hottest topics of the day. Blogging about these topics will often create search engine bait especially if there aren’t a lot of pages already written about the topic. On top of that, search engines love fresh news and blogs are often the source for them.

Take a look at what’s hot today. Among the top topics are kenny lofton and cc sabathia. That’s right - it’s baseball postseason!

When you’re at the results page, you’ll see links to news story, blog posts and web results. How’s that for research all done for you. If you’re an info-junkie, Google Trends can be quite addictive, so don’t say that I haven’t warned you.

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WidgetBucks can work really well for you for this holiday season if you have a blog that is shopping or product-related. It’s based on the pay-per-click model, that means you get paid for each click and not when someone buys something. If you’re familiar with Chitika, it’s quite similar.

You place a widget on your blog. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Blogger or Wordpress or Typepad. Just copy the piece of code and place it in your blog template. There are no limitations to the number of widgets you can place (they come in different sizes for different locations - sidebar, top of posts, below posts, etc.) but on a site where I tried it out, two different widgets were showing the same products so I decided to stick to a single 160×600 widget on the sidebar.

Also, they say you can run it along with AdSense, but you should check with Google just to make sure.

Widget Sizes

Widgets are available in the following sizes: 160×600, 468×60, 728×90, 300×250, 660×330. As an example, here is what the 300×250 widget looks like:

Categories

There are a number of categories that you can manually select from to display products. The other option is to use their contextual targeting “smarts” to automatically select the products for you.

The categories available so far are:

• Video games
• Sports and Outdoors
• Musical Instruments
• Media
• Kids and Family
• Jewelry and Watches
• Home and Garden
• Camera and Photo
• Electronics
• Computers
• Clothing and Accessories
• Cars

How much can you make from it?

According to the site, “A number of publishers who have tested WidgetBucks are seeing a $3-6 CPM.”

Translation: If you’re getting 10,000 visitors per day, you can $30-$60 dollars a day. It’s too early at this point to point to anyone who has publicly come out to say how much they’ve made with this program since it’s still new. However, I’m sure you’ll see some bloggers report their numbers soon.

Payment Terms

This is important if you have cash flow issues. The nice thing about WB is that they pay on the 1st of the month for all the revenues earned the previous month. You’ll get paid if you’ve made at least $50 and you can opt for payment by check or PayPal. At this point, I’m skeptical about how they will filter out invalid clicks as there’s bound to be people who will try to cheat the system.

How does WidgetBucks compare with Chitika?

From my own tests so far, I see that the WB widget doesn’t reload with too many different products when you reload the page. I have it on the sidebar of a blog in the 160×600 format vs. a Chitika 468×180 banner which actually shows a different product every time I refresh the page.

There also doesn’t seem to be very many products in the inventory at the moment. It might also due to their contextual targeting code not working fully yet. On this particular shopping blog, I have different posts about a variety of products but I only see a couple of variations of the WB widget.

Want to get $25 in your account?

When you sign-up with WidgetBucks, you’ll automatically receive a $25 bonus into your account to get the ball rolling. This means you are half way to your first payout with WidgetBucks.

Sign up for WidgetBucks.

Want to make MORE money?

You can recruit other bloggers to join WB. Here’s how it works. You’ll get 10% of all their earnings for a whole year.

When you refer a new WidgetBucks user, you will receive a 10 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people you refer. You?ll receive this 10 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins. Your referral fees will be credited to your account and paid monthly, along with your commission payout. So, if you refer someone, and they make $100 in commissions, we pay you $10; if they make $1,000, we pay you $100. This continues for a whole year on all the commissions they earn.

All the more reason to join WidgetBucks now.

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