StevePavlina.com was launched on Oct 1st, 2004. By April 2005 it was averaging $4.12/day in income. Now it brings in over $200/day $1000/day (updated as of 10/29/06). I didn't spend a dime on marketing or promotion. In fact, I started this site with $9 to register the domain name, & everything was bootstrapped from there. Would you like to know how I did it?
Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. In case you think commercializing your weblog is wicked, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don't commercialize it.
Do you actually need to monetize your weblog?
In case you have mixed feelings about monetizing your weblog, then sort out those feelings first. In case you think monetizing your site is amazing, fine. In case you think it's wicked, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously think about beginning down this path. In case you need to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your weblog is challenging you don't need to be dealing with self-sabotage simultaneously. It ought to feel genuinely nice to earn income from your weblog you ought to be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your weblog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself filled with doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Egocentric Are You? It's about balancing your needs with the needs of others.
In case you do pick to generate income from your weblog, then dont be shy about it. If youâre going to put up ads, then put up ads. Dont stick a puny small advertisement square in a remote corner somewhere. If you are going to request donations, then request donations. Dont put up a barely visible Donate link & pray for the best. If youâre going to sell products, then sell them. Generate or acquire the best quality products you can, & give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If youâre going to do this, then fully commit to it. Dont take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.
You can expect that when you start commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on the way you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, & I started putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that it was no massive deal. Less than one in five,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most individuals who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, & the site began generating income immediately, although it was low a whopping $53 the first month. If you like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although its definitely not my only source. More on that later¦
Can most people do it?
No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.
If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK, actually I do.
This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.
If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.
Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?
Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:
Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.
Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.
Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.
At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.
I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.
I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.
If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart. I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range options to go further back in time.
Beginner
You know who you are… Low levels of traffic, relatively new blog, little or no internet experience, no design or seo skills, and probably a sense frustration over the lack of earnings.
Some of the options in this section are better then others and matter of fact all of them can be used no matter what level you are currently at. Novices can use any beginner level monetization methods and Probloggers have the luck of using everything and anything they see fit.
PPC – Pay Per Click is an advertising program in which ads are placed on your blog and you are paid whenever your visitors click on the ads. It is the most common method bloggers use to make money online. It involves almost no effort and is so incredibly easy that many blogs have too much advertising on them. Money is maximized as traffic levels increase
In-Text Ads – You know what these ads are. You have probably seen them all over small blogs and websites on the internet. They are links with double-lines below them. While sometimes useful for blog owners pockets, they eventually irritate and annoy most readers into leaving the blog and not returning/subscribing. In-text ads should be used with caution.
Text Link Ads – As your blog builds reputation and traffic your posts/pages become great places for links. Many people will even pay you to put their link on your website or page. While it has earning potential, be leery of this form of revenue as it may be detrimental to your blog in Google’s algorithm. So study it out before you make your decision.
good luck..>>!!!
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