Recently, Marc Galeazzi bought a money making blog called One Man’s Goal for $10,000. His move has been met with some skepticism by other bloggers on the wisdom of spending such a large sum of money for a “money making blog”.

Frank over at OpTempo tries to give Marc some advice.

Here are the blog stats for One Man’s Goal - so you can decide for yourself if it’s money well spent.

Traffic
4/5/08-4/10/08 - 1,135

Alexa - 83,114
Technorati - 16,847
Earnings (As quoted by Bryan for past month) $1,150
Posts - 230
Comments - 3,535
Rss feed - 616 (This is low because Bryan only recently coverted to feedburner) Real Est. - 1000, but will will use the 616.
Inbound links - Google - 165 Yahoo - 7,226
Page Rank -4
45n5 ranking - 50
Aweber Newsletter Subscribers- 396

Based on one month’s earning, the blog sold for about 10x monthly earnings. But we don’t know if those earnings are consistent. You usually value a blog based on the stability of past earnings and projections of future earnings. Other factors like the number of readers and the size of the email list can come into play as well. Personally, I don’t care about 45n5 ranking, Alexa ranking or the number of posts and comments.

Will Marc succeed? I don’t know but I think that he will put everything he has into it because of the amount of money he has invested into it.

I wish him luck. The “make money online” blogging niche is really crowded and you have to really stand out and be able to carve out your own piece of the pie.

Technorati Tags: one man’s goal, marc galeazzi, blog valuation, buying a blog, money making blogs

Popularity: 79% [?]

What do fancy sports cars and make money bloggers have in common?

Well, ever since John Chow put up his blog with a photo of a fancy car in the header, there have been numerous copycats. Surprising? No. After all, people like to copy those that have found success.

Here’s John Chow’s blog header…

and a few admirers copycats…

Now let’s have a bit of fun and go down memory lane.

Here’s the evolution of the cars on John Chow’s blog.

circa November 2006

we like blue better than red!

maybe TWO blue cars are better than one.

Seen a make money online blog with a car in the header lately? Let me know….

Technorati Tags: john chow, make money blogs, headers with cars

Popularity: 84% [?]

There is an article in the NYT that highlights the fact that blogging may be hazardous to your health. The article mentioned Russell Shaw who is a blogger who suffered a fatal heart attack recently. Another blogger mentioned was Marc Orchant who also had a heart attack.

This story should be a wake up call for those who are trying to make money online through blogging. While you’re at it, be sure to ask yourself what you’re doing it for and whether it is worth all your sweat and tears. Truth be told, it’s not as easy making money through blogging as some may have you believe. It does take a LOT of hard work.

Be sure to take care of the important things first - family, health, etc. Keep things in perspective!

image credit: Vicky’s Pics (Flickr)

Technorati Tags: blogging and your health, priorities

Popularity: 86% [?]

If you don’t have a way for readers to subscribe to your email list, you are losing a lot of repeat traffic. Think about it, how many blogs do you visit on a daily basis? There are too many blogs to keep up with - yes, even the good ones. Sometimes I visit a blog that I find interesting and I will check it frequently for a while until they start going off topic and I lose interest. However if I sign up for their email notification list and I get a “friendly email reminder” that a particularly interesting post has been written chances are I will go and visit that blog again.

Previously, I have written about capturing all your blog readers. Having an email subscription system is one of the ways to keep in touch with your readers. Of course, if you’re into social networking, there’s also Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Pick your poison.

Sidenote: By the way, if you use Twitter, Tweetscan is a great search engine specifically for Twitter.

My favorite autoresponder is Aweber. With Aweber, they claim you’ll get great deliverability (how does one check?). But the features I like are the ability to set up different sub-lists and transfer subscribers from one list to another based on certain actions. Suppose you’re selling your own product and you collect a list of prospects.

Now if someone on the prospects list buys your product, you can have them automatically switched to your customer list. This saves a lot of manual work.

Another feature that I like is the ability to do a split test on your email list. If you have a list of 6000 people, you can create a 3 way split-test message and you can partition it evenly (2000/2000/2000) or in any proportion that you like. This is a good way to test message titles (think direct marketing) and also message styles.

For those of you who are crazy about tracking, the reporting options are fantastic. You can keep a tabs on the daily trends of new leads, unverified vs. verified leads, countries, states, area codes, follow up status, etc. This is particularly useful if you want to keep a tab on how many people subscribe to your blog after a post that really appeals to your audience.

At $19.95 a month (if you have less than 10,000 people on your list) Aweber is unbeatable value!

Technorati Tags: autoresponders, Aweber, email list, followup

Popularity: 95% [?]

If you are interested in promoting eBay as an affiliate, you should know that they are no longer using CJ as the affiliate platform. They have their own in-house affiliate program now called eBay Partner Network.

This is something you should really consider if you’re interested in promoting a brand that’s recognizable worldwide.

Be sure to read the terms and conditions before you join. Specifically, you’re not allowed to do direct linking from a PPC search engine ad to an eBay landing page. Going through your own site first is okay. Maybe you can check out BANS if you aren’t already using it. That’s a great way to construct highly targeted landing pages for this purpose.

The compensation is based on a tiered structure and you’re paid based on a percentage of the winning bid (promote high ticket items!) or the number of active new members recruited.

Technorati Tags: eBay partner network, affiliate program

Popularity: 96% [?]