Money Making Blogs

In this post on July 8th where I wrote about Uptimebot, I had the following pages indexed in the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN):

Google: 110
Yahoo: 4
MSN: 8

As of today, these are the number of indexed pages:

Google: 85
Yahoo: 176
MSN: 9

Looks like Google dropped some pages but Yahoo has picked up quite a few more pages.

Another good tool that’s free is GoLexa. Once you get to the page, type in the URL without the “http://”. One of the nice tools on this site will tell you how fast your site loads depending on the type of modem/connection the site visitor is using. You want to make sure your site doesn’t take too long to load up. Most surfers don’t have that much patience. So if you have to have graphics on your site, make sure that they don’t take too long to load up. Usually you can keep graphics file sizes down by saving them as “.jpg” or “.gif” files.

Make life simpler for adding Adsense to your blog.

See how it works here.

The guy who developed this plugin is Wayne Walrath (thanks Wayne!) of Acme Technologies and you can download it from here.

The plugin is easy to install. After you download the zip file, unzip it into a folder and then ftp a php file to your wp-content/plugin folder. Then go to your WP blog and under “Options”, you’ll see a link for ‘Adsense’.

Click on that link to set up your Adsense block. Now wherever you want to insert Adsense, just include a little block of text. Very cool.

Having a mailing list for your blog can help to generate traffic on demand to your site. Be sure to offer your blog readers a chance to sign up for your newsletter. Generally, your newsletter will be related to the topic of your blog. For instance if you’re blogging about the latest electronic gadgets such as MP3 players, you may want to have a monthly newsletter with reviews of the latest MP3 players in the market and offer tips on where to find the best deals.

Offer an incentive for people who sign up for your newsletter. Along the lines of the MP3 player blog, you could offer your subscribers a free report on the top 5 MP3 players that you have reviewed. This will be something of interest to anyone who visits your blog looking to purchase an MP3 player.

With the mailing list, you can earn additional income by including your affiliate links to merchant sites where your readers can buy the product. You can also include in your free report suggested online sites where readers can purchase the gadgets that you’ve reviewed. Once again, you’ll earn a commission if they buy after clicking on your affiliate links.

So while putting Adsense on your blog may serve as a nice income stream, be sure to think about other ways to generate revenue with your blog.

If you need a good company to host your mailing list, check out Email Aces which as you can see is what I use for this blog.

If you have a hobby or a favorite pastime, that can be the topic of your blog. If you don’t want to blog all by yourself, you can gather a group of friends and do it together. Maybe you are not as computer-savvy and you know something who shares your hobby and knows how to set up a blog. Team up with them.

For example, take a look at this team blogging effort on the topic of gardening. The title of the blog is “You Grow Girl” - very catchy. But don’t let the title fool you, the site has some male bloggers as well.

The blog is well designed and very easy to follow. Short blog posts along with photos immediately capture the reader’s attention. I noted that one thing was missing - Google Adsense. If the creators of the blog had included Adsense, they could easily create an additional income stream. It looks like the only thing that they are promoting is the book which is written by the creator of the blog.

This post at Jason Calacanis’ blog says that Weblogs, Inc.’s income from Adsense is reaching the $1 million per year mark. Granted they have many bloggers and blogs in their network. But even if you emulate their growth on a smaller scale, you should see your revenues increase. Here’s a rundown of their growth numbers:

January 2005: $580/day on average.
March 2005: $737/day average.
May 2005: $1,585.57/day average.

Now those are daily averages - very impressive. If we calculate the total earnings for the month of May based on the reported average, this will give us $49,152.67. That’s a very respectable figure.

Check out Push Button Health where you can get private label content on health topics. If you’ve got a health related blog or you’re planning to start one, this is the best place to get some great content.

What’s private label? It means that you have the full rights to modify the content to suit your needs. The content provided by PBH is in the form of an ebook, but you can easily break it down into short articles for your blog since you’ll get the Word file.

It’s the best thing since sliced bread!

I just read on Darren Rowse’s Problogger that he’s now making between $10,000 and $20,000 per month from his network of 20 blogs. You can read the post where he talks about it. It’s interesting that he mentions the top earners are only 2 or 3 of the 20 blogs. So he’s understandably concerned that if those blogs should drop off in the search engine listings, his earnings will take a dive as well. It’ll be interesting to watch and see if the earning levels can be kept up month after month.

Once every week, you’ll want to check the progress of your blog getting indexed in the search engines. If the number of pages indexed are growing, then your traffic from the search engines will start to increase as well.

One free tool you can use to check your site with is UpTimeBot. Just type in your domain name and you will get a summary of results from Google, Yahoo, MSN (the big 3) and other smaller search engines like AlltheWeb, AltaVista, HotBot, Teoma, Lycos, AOL as well as Alexa rankings.

For example, when I type in ‘moneymakingblogs.com’ I see the following results for indexed pages:

Google: 110
Yahoo: 4
MSN: 8

One thing I’m not sure about is the accuracy of the results for MSN. I did a manual check at MSN using ’site:moneymakingblogs.com’ and it actually shows 44 indexed pages. I did the same thing for Google and Yahoo and the results matched. So only MSN is showing more pages indexed than what UpTimeBot tells me.

By the way, the tool also shows you the number of backlinks that you have.

After you have done your research and created your blog, you’ll be ready to get your site listed with the search engines. When developing your marketing strategy, it is important to include a plan to get your blog spidered quickly. In order to get your blog indexed you must let the search engine spiders know you are there in the first place.

You may have wondered if there are ways to lure the spiders to your web site other than manual submission. But first of all, I don’t see any harm in letting Google know that your site exists.

The best way to get your blog spidered quickly is to link your web site from another site that is already indexed, that is related to your site, and that is spidered frequently. Sites having a higher PR usually are spidered more often. That’s why if you link from one of those sites, the spiders will find a link to your new site and visit it. In the long run, you’ll see the value of building a network of closely related sites. For example, you may have a site for baby toys, another on baby clothes and yet another focused on parenting.

Having your site mentioned in news releases can get your site your web site spidered very quickly, sometimes within days. Check out PRWeb where you can submit a free press release.

You can also use the more traditional methods including posting in forums. If you choose this route, be careful not to spam. Follow the posted rules, give helpful answers, and do not go overboard on your “sig file”. Put a link to your blog in your signature file. A word of caution - private forums are not always indexed, so make certain that the forums where you post display recent posts and are listed in search results.

You can also write some articles and submit them to popular articles directories such as EzineArticles. Once again, check the PR of the article directories and specifically the pages for the category where your article will show up in.

No matter which method you choose to get your web site spidered, you will need a good site map. A site map lists and links to all pages on your site. If your site consists of over approximately one hundred pages, consider using a multi-page site map. Make certain that every site map page links to all other site map pages. You should have a link to your site map on your home page and preferably on each of your pages. You should make sure your web site pages are simple and free of useless clutter.

There is also a new product called RSSIndexer. I’m still testing this product so I don’t have results to report so far. However, I think that it’s a valuable concept. RSSIndexer will spider your entire website and create an RSS feed which it will then submit to various RSS directories. It will do this little by little daily so that it looks “natural”.

Getting your web site spidered quickly is the most important thing you can do to achieve success as an internet marketer. Using the methods suggested above can be very helpful in getting your web site indexed.

If you’re looking to register more than a few domains, I suggest taking a look at NameCheap. Dot info domains are only $2.88 each with complimentary Whois protection.

The other domain registrar that I use often is GoDaddy. I’m happy with both of these registrars. I’ve used them for both .com and .info domains.