Wow, time sure flies. If you’re wondering why there haven’t been posts for a few months, it is because I have been taking some time to focus on other projects. As a result, this blog has been neglected. But I intend to get back to blogging on a regular schedule.

There’s no doubt that the number of blogs and blog traffic is continuing to grow. Take a look at these trends:

These are just blogs hosted on Blogger and Wordpress. We’re not even talking about blogs that are self-hosted. So as you can see, the potential of blogging is huge and there are tons of ways you can generate an income stream through blogging.

Also, check out Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere. It gives a deeper insight into the growth of blogs in 2008. Some of the stats are staggering. For example, consider this:

There are an estimated 77.7 million unique visitors in the US to blogs
The number of users in Facebook: 41.0 million and MySpace: 75.1 million
Compare this to the estimated total internet audience 188.9 million

Wowzers.

Check out Day 4 which covers blogging for profit. Here again, some interesting stats are uncovered.

“Bloggers with advertising invest an average of $1,800 annually in their blogs. U.S. bloggers earn an average of $5,000, though bloggers in Asia earn 50% more on average and European bloggers earn an average of 75% more than U.S. bloggers. High revenue bloggers skew the mean revenue. The median revenue for U.S. bloggers is $200 annually (and the median annual investment is only $50).”

and this…

“The top 10 percent of blogger respondents earned an average of $19,000 annually. Three-quarters of these successful bloggers are male, and four in ten are self employed (twice as high as the average blogger). They are also more likely to be professional or corporate bloggers. Overall, the high revenue bloggers are more sophisticated in terms of the tools that they use, their usage of readership events, and advertising platforms. They also invest far more resources (both time and money) in their blogs.”

So you see, blogging is still on the rise and it’s not too late to start your own blog.

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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

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Some people have way too much time on their hands! Here’s a quiz that you can try. See how many you can get correct.

This is a good way to get traffic to your blog. You can incorporate something that goes viral like this. If you can’t do it yourself, ask friends to help or hire someone.

Technorati Tags: funny, programmer, serial killer

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Update: 24 hours after word was out that RT needed help, bloggers helped to raise over $3,000. And RT was even contacted by SkyNews that wanted to do a story about this.

It’s not everyday that you can really do something tangible to help out a fellow blogger. If you haven’t read RT Cunningham’s blog - Untwisted Vortex - go read it now. Anyway, the main reason for this plug is that RT needs some financial help related to a family emergency.

For a bit of background, you can read his post on why this is the hardest thing he’s ever done and more background on the situation here.

If you want to help out a fellow blogger, you can do that by using the PayPal donation button on his blog.

Technorati Tags: RT Cunningham, untwisted vortex, help a blogger

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I thought it would be fun to look back at the gifts I have received from the companies that I have worked with online.

Here’s what I got from Google for Christmas 2006:

And for Christmas 2005:

You can see more photos of the goodies here.

For Christmas 2004, it was a mood radio:

This was something I got when I was a YPN publisher. I think it was from 2005.

These little gifts are thoughtful and makes us affiliates feel appreciated and motivated to achieve loftier goals.

Technorati Tags: Google Christmas gifts, Yahoo Christmas gifts

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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.

Like this post? Please consider joining our MyBlogLog community.

Technorati Tags: blog business models, blogging success

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One way of learning how to monetize your blog is to check out what other bloggers are doing. For the sake of an example, let’s take a look at JohnCow.com, which is a parody of the infamous JohnChow.com. Here are the ways that they are making money off the blog.

1. Banner ads

You’ll see these banner ads on a lot of blogs. The top banner is usually a 468×60. Some blogs, depending on the design, also use the 120×600 on the sidebar. You can run different banners depending on the target audience of your blog.

Private ad space

The nice thing about selling private ad space is that the income can be quite predictable. Besides the 300×250 banner next to the post, there are six other 140×140 ad spots on the right side of the blog. Once your blog gathers steam and has a good number of readers, it is generally not difficult to sell out your ad inventory. If not, you can populate some of the spots with your own ads for affiliate products.

As a blogger, you can also capitalize on some of the ad spots to increase your traffic. But just be sure to target blogs that your readers are likely to come from. I noticed that one of the 140×140 ads was for propertyireland.net which given the type of readers frequenting JohnCow.com, I think this is purely a waste of money. Better to advertise on a real estate blog.

Google AdSense

These familiar Google AdSense blocks are situated between posts. Notice the color matching the green background of the blog. Good strategy to try to blend in the ads. Normally, AdSense doesn’t work that well for making money type of blogs. After all, the target audience is already familiar with AdSense and the clickthrough rates are likely to be dismal. Test it out yourself and see.

Affiliate links

Include affiliate links in the text as part of your post. These usually convert the best as compared to banner ads. You can use the text to presell the product. Making money type of blogs like to post reviews of products and then include the affiliate link as the link to the product.

Note: You’d want to protect your affiliate links… for instance, all the redirects on JohnCow.com has the same structure of johncow.com/milking/affiliate-link but if you just type johncow.com/milking you will see a listing of all the affiliate programs being promoted. Usually that’s okay if you’re not blogging in the money making niche. But if your audience are savvy money makers as well, you’d be better off protecting your links.

Donations

They call it “buying them a pint of milk” instead of a donation. Very clever way of going along with the whole cow theme. Don’t expect too much from donations, but if you want to monetize to the max, every little bit helps.

Competitions

While competitions don’t make you money directly, they do build buzz and bring more traffic to your blog if done right. Therefore, you should definitely consider it for your own blog as well. Try to offer something that will get people talking about your contest. A large sum of money often does the trick. Also, you can include rules that make people have to link to you in order to participate. This will increase the number of backlinks to your blog from closely related blogs. But be careful. Too many links generated in a short period all with the same anchor text can raise red flags as they appear unnatural.

So there you have it. There’s nothing really fancy or groundbreaking here. Just all the tried and true ways of monetizing a blog. Now, go and think about how you can apply some of these things to your blog. Take action.

Here’s something that I read taken from the book “Action!” by Robert Ringer (I highly recommend it):

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle; when the sun comes up, you had better start running.

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As a blogger who is going to stand out among the rest in your market, you’ve got to differentiate. Try to brand yourself (especially if your exit strategy is to get acquired by a larger blog network or company). Forget about using free accounts like Blogger or Wordpress.com. Spend the few bucks per month and get your site hosted on a shared server. Register a unique domain name and make it something that’s easy to remember so that people can come back to your site by just typing in your URL.

I think that the whole blogging and affiliate marketing industry is maturing and you’ll see many bloggers fail and give up. The days of getting easy traffic through Technorati tags, blog and ping, etc. are over. You have to be more creative and use every single tool in your arsenal in order to win in this game. SugarRae has a good post on the evolution of affiliate marketing which you should read. Even though it’s not focusing on bloggers, everything can be applied just the same.

Technorati Tags: blog branding

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It’s 2007 and it’s time to revive this blog. I haven’t paid enough attention to this poor thing since I’ve been mainly blogging on Marketing Tools Review and also taking care of running my business. I’m going to refocus this blog on issues that are particularly relevant to bloggers who are trying to make money with their blogs.

One of the ideas I have is to do a series of interviews with bloggers. If you’re making some money with your blog, I want to talk to you. It doesn’t matter if you’re making tens of dollars or thousands of dollars per month. Your story will inspire others who are starting out. There’s something about a good story. I think as human beings, we’re always learning from hearing stories.

Technorati Tags: blogs that make money, make money blogging

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To kick off a new forum targeted towards webmasters who make money online, Earners Forum has started a remarkable contest by offering cash, services and products totalling $20,000 to 5 winners. The owner of the forum, Lee Dodd, is offering to the top 5 winners:

- $1,000 in cash
- A niche article web site getting traffic - VALUE $500
- 1 Year Text Link at SprintUsers.Com - VALUE $600
- 1 Hour Consultation with Lee Dodd - VALUE $400
- 5 Minute Guest Appearance on the Won Li Do Sho - VALUE $500
- A copy of Aaron Wall’s SEO Book - VALUE $79
- BlogSmart’s Business Blogging Audio Workshop by Dave Taylor + A discount on a 1 Hour Coaching Session - VALUE $699
-A copy of Mark Widower’s Landing Page Cash Machine Ebook + 1 Month in his Coaching Club
# - VALUE $147
$100 Lead Package at Lead Factory + Access to Lead Gen Magic - VALUE $147

Enter for the contest by registering at Earners Forum (If asked for a referrer, say you’re referred by internetguy (that’s me!).

Make sure you fill out the application after you register and post an introduction in the forum. There are many friendly people on the forum who are there to answer your questions. This forum is not just for bloggers who make money but also for affiliate marketers, freelance writers, website designers, etc.

Technorati Tags: forum contest, Lee Dodd, Earners Forum

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