Blogging for profit - Part 10: Interactions Between Blogs

Hi guys,

As your blog’s content increase, people in your niche will definitely mention you for intelligent or interesting discussions. This is, in a sense, an initiation of an interaction. When people speak of you, you should thank them for the mention and build up the interaction!

When you use a traffic tracking script such as the free www.statcounter.com, you can see where traffic comes from. If a large number of visitors come from a certain blog, you can be sure they have mentioned you in their latest post or linked to you from their sidebar or links page. What you should do is pay them a visit, leave constructive comments on their posts and build up a conversation!

As you continue doing this, you will start to gather a lot of friends in your niche. This is helpful later on when you decide to do collaborations such as interviews. In fact, when you’re out of ideas for writing on your blog, you can interview other blog owners in your niche! Human beings are curious creatures, so naturally they would like to know more about a person whose writings they read so often.

If you’re using Wordpress, Textpattern, MovableType or any other advanced blog engines, you can also post trackback links on your posts. This means you can post an article about what other people have posted! Your particular post will then appear as a link on that post you have written about. This is definitely a great way to get traffic if you post brilliant insights about a post on a very famous blog. Since the famous blog already has a per-existing pool of readers, this is like a shortcut to hog their visitors! The only thing you would want to observe is to keep your posts sensible and insightful, or you’ll be viewed as a spammer.

On the other hand, if you’re using Blogger, you would not be able to use trackback links. However, you can post insightful comments on other people’s blogs and subtly include a link back to your blog. You can make it seem like you’re pointing to your blog as an extra reference to the subject of discussion. Of course, this technique is not only limited to Blogger users and users of other blog engines can employ this strategy as an additional traffic source.

Delia.

Received payment: OGR

Hi guys,

I love this kind of post...received payments!

Today one interesting news: Online Global Recruiting (or better OGR), a medical surveys panel in English about therapies and medicinals, that pays really well(from 3$ to 50$ for one survey... my higher compensation was 35$ for just one survey!).

OGR has also an optimal referral program: for every survey finished from your referrals, you will earn 5$. I had had some problems with my referral account and,because of this I had never received compensations, but thanks to their kind webmaster, now all is ok and I begin to receive payments.

I suggest you this panel, because the payments are punctual (every 4 weeks, with PayPal) and, even if it sends few surveys, those that arrive are always really gainful!

Ciao,
Delia.

Blogging for profit - Part 9 – More Monetizing Options

Hi everybody,

we’ve discussed about using Google Adsense program and other merchants’ affiliate programs to generate profits from your blog. However, we have a lot of other options to monetize your blog, so we’re going to look into that today.The first option we’ll be looking at is Chitika (www.chitika.com). Chitika is a very innovative contextual advertising program because it can serve very detailed advertisements. For example, on your technological gadget blog, Chitika will show advertisements for tech gadgets such as iPods. The way they show it is in different tabs: one for “Best deals”, another for “details”, another for “reviews” and so on. This way, it is more of an informational section for your visitor rather than an advertisement, and naturally the click-through will be higher. You can apply here: https://chitika.com/application

You can also be an affiliate for Amazon.com. Amazon offers a wide range of products but its predominant domain is in books. Whatever your niche is about, you can probably find a book about it on Amazon.com. Join their Associate program here: https://associates.amazon.com/gp/flex/associates/apply-login.html/

Once you join them, you can refer visitors to them and earn up to 10% commission. It’s not a lot but if you can manage to refer big volumes of visitors, Amazon is for you. This program really shines when it comes to the ways you can refer visitors: you can use their predefined templates to pull up recent items that match a certain criteria you set, you can target your ad to show a specific item on sale or you can just simply weave your referral links into your blog posts.

Last but definitely not least, you can sell advertising space on your blog if your blog is truly popular. Just take a look at blog like http://xiaxue.blogspot.com. That blog receives over 10,000 page views every day and naturally merchants will want to strike a deal with the blog’s owner to post their advertisements there. If you manage to pull in huge amounts of traffic like that blog, you can definitely get people to buy ad space on your blog for prices from $150/month upwards, depending on your blog popularity.
To gauger how much page views and visitors you get everyday, just use the free tool available at www.statcounter.com. They have a very detailed setup guide there so I won’t go into it.

If your blog has not acquired large amount of visitors yet, you can still sell ad space on your blog on a per click or per impression basis. Just visit sites like www.adbrite.com. For a complete list of these sites, visit http://performancing.com/node/60.

Hopefully, that will help you maximize earnings and profits from your blog!

Delia.

Happy Christmas!

Hi guys,

I wish you a Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year!



Happy Holidays and thanks for stopping by my blog!

Ciao,
Delia.

Received payment: Gainpay and Amity-Cash

Hello,

a short post just to let you know that I have received 2 payments today from two PTR:
- Amity-Cash, PTR of old date, that sends only 2/3 mail to the day. The searches are demanded. Payout 0.5$.
- GainPay, old but consolidated PTR, that always pays. It sends few mails, but, in this case, the searches are not obligatory. Payout 1$ for verified PayPal accounts, 5$ for all the others.

I must confess you that, lately, I have left to go many PTR and PTC, because I am tired to click tons of mails and links for just 0.25/0.50 cent...recently, I have found a virus in one mail and I have lost the all enthusiasm for this kind of gain. I dedicate myself, instead,to the surveys and paid reviews.

Ciao,
Delia.

Blogging for profit - Part 8 – Monetizing Your Blog

Hi everybody,

you have been working hard to produce good-quality, original content on your blog and you have attracted a decent amount of traffic by doing so. However, money is not going to appear out of thin air just because you have traffic. You have to turn your traffic into money.

There are several ways to generate profits from the visitors of your blog, and Google Adsense program allows you to do so with ultimate ease. First, visit their website at http://adsense.google.com/. You’ll find out more about their advertising program there, but here are some extra bits I’d like to tell you.

First, Google Adsense program is a really useful way to monetize your blog because when users finish reading your newest post, chances are they want to leave your blog because they have nothing else to do on your blog. If your Adsense advertisement block is visible on your blog, they might see advertisements relevant to them and click on them to exit your blog. Ka-ching! You’ve just cashed in on your first virtual cents!

But yes, your profits will only be cents if you don’t “do it right”. This involves placing your Google ads in the right places and ensuring they blend in to your site so that they appear more like links rather than advertisements to your visitors. Consult the page https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html to see the “heat map” of your blog. The “hotter” a certain area, the greater the chances of someone looking at your blog.

Once you get a Google Adsense account, you can change the color of your advertisement text and links. You will want them to match the colors on your blog. If your blog text is black and the links are red, do the same for the ad blocks too! It’s that simple.

Another way to earn profits from your blog is to recommend products to your readers. When your visitors buy from the merchants you recommend, you get to keep a little commission too. This is known as affiliate marketing and it is very easy to start because you don’t have to create your own products or services.

Anyway, let’s refer back to our technological gadgets blog example. Let’s say you discover this Gadget X on a merchant’s website, and they offer an affiliate program. What you would do is to create a post in your blog and do a mini-review on this Gadget X. Rip it apart and point out its benefits and bad points, if any, and include a link (which is given by the merchant) for the visitor to purchase the Gadget X online.

If your visitor clicks and purchases the gadget, the merchant will track from the link that the purchase is referred by you, so they will send you your share of the profits. Imagine if 1 out of every 100 visitors you get purchases this product, and you earn $27.00 commission from each purchase! If you get 10,000 visitors in a month that would be a $2,700.00 paycheck for you just for writing about ONE product.

Now, affiliate programs are very nice ways to generate profit, but how do you find affiliate programs that are related to your blog theme? Easy, just go to Google and search for +”affiliate programs”. Another slightly better way is to go to http://www.associateprograms.com/search to look for affiliate programs in your niche.

The two ways mentioned above are basic ways to generate profits from your blog. We’ll be discussing other great, profitable ways, so keep your eyes peeled!

Delia.