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Can you make money blogging? Yep

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How To Make Money Blogging

I’ve been using the internet since the time of Bulletin Boards and 286 Windows computers. Yeah – the early 90’s for those of you who have no idea what a Bulletin Board is. LOL. Basically that was the precursor to forums and even forums are starting to die down these days.

So I’ve established that I’ve been using the internet and computers for quite some time. I’ve also been a webmaster for quite a while too. My first website was started in 1995 and it’s still in existence. It’s even my most popular site – even today!

Now, when I started on the internet and started making my first website I really had no idea that one day I might make an income on the internet nor that I might even be able to make a living via the income that I earned on the internet, but over the last few years that has been the case. Through necessity I’ve been stuck at home and blogging became a way to earn money.

I don’t believe that there’s any easy or fast way to start making money on the internet or by blogging. It takes time and it takes quite a bit of hard work if you want to be successful.

Hey, I’m being honest. I could tell you to just start a blog and post five times a day and in a week or two you’ll start earning money but that’s not how it works. Not at all. No, I think you have to have a passion for what you are doing, what you are writing about and you do need to write regularly, perhaps not several times a day, but several times a week to eventually become successful.

These days most of the advertising companies that might eventually become interested in your blog will not let you sign up with their companies until your blog has been around for a while – say 6 months and has a fair amount of content on it.

For example, one of the best Ad programs that I’ve been involved with is Google Adsense – it pays it’s publishers well, but your blog has to be 6 months old before they will accept it into the program and it has to qualify. Do not even apply if your blog doesn’t qualify or you might lose your chance to get an account later on when your site really does qualify.

There are many ways to make money blogging. Another great program is Chitika. I’ve been using this program for quite a while on a number of my sites and it can be used in conjunction with Google Adsense.

Other programs that you might try on your blog – not all at once mind you – are Kontera, Text Link Ads, Adbrite, Infolinks, BidVertiser or many others.

Eventually as your blog becomes more popular you’ll be able to sell some privately sponsored advertising spaces as well. In fact you might not have to go out seeking advertisers at all, they might come seeking you – daily! When that begins to happen you’ll know you’ve reached a modicum of success although all of the offers coming in might not be real or might not be the best deal. Do your research and get paid before adding a banner to your site! Lesson learned here, I know what I’m talking about, believe me.

I have a number of blogs now and as I said at the beginning of this article I earn a decent income from what I do on the internet. I could always earn more but it’s not bad. My biggest tip is dedicated yourself to what you are doing and don’t spread yourself thin. Don’t start 50 blogs – start one and make it a good one, make it a really good one. That’s all it takes.

So … Have you started earning money from blogging?




How to convert your keywords into higher affiliate sales…

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You already know that the affiliate with the most clicks gets higher sales, the question is how can you too get more clicks and higher sales.

The answer is simple: turn your blog keywords into affiliate links. With this cool tool you can actually not only do that, but also hide your links [protect yourself from thieves] and even display keyword-rich links at random through your blog post [this feature is truly powerful].

I’ve been using this amazing WordPress plugin on several of my blogs for months now – take a look through some of the posts on this site and you find several customized affiliate links. I’ve had an over 200% increase in my affiliate commissions since I began using this fantastic tool!

Check it out yourself at:

MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate

Oh and this plugin – Ninja Affiliate is on SALE! You can get $30 off the regular price if you buy before Midnight on Friday August 21st!

PLRpro opens it’s doors today – exciting site creation software

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The doors to PLRpro are opening again today at 9:00 a.m.. If you’ve been waiting for your chance to join this fantastic PLR content site here’s your chance!

Note: that time above was wrong. It was supposed to be 9:00 pm PST but I think it will be more like 11 PM. Sorry.

I decided to check out PLRPro a few months ago when the doors to this membership site last opened, and I must say that I’m impressed with the content, the resources and the level of service.

I’m impressed, not just because of the quality they bring to the table in regards to PLR Content, but also because of the additional education and material that they provide for free. In fact, something you’ll probably want to checkout before you join PLRPro is their http://www.ninetydaychallenge.net site which takes a user from start to finish, and they offer that for free.

When I first joined PLRpro there were offering the following:

  • 440 articles across 11 niches (40 articles in each niche)
  • Full keyword research in each niche
  • Affiliate lists for each niche
  • Header Graphics for each niche
  • 5 Website Templates each month
  • Articles done in 8 languages
  • 50 PR4 sites that you can get links from to get your sites indexed and crawled

In addition to the above I also joined because they were creating a new system, Project Green Button, which would make it easy to create HTML and eventually WordPress Websites within minutes.

“Imagine A “Push Button” System That Automates 95% Of Site Creation, Content Creation and Traffic Generation… Now Open Your Eyes, That “Push Button” System Is Here…”

I’ve had a chance to use the Project Green Button or PGB software and I’m impressed. Right now this software is in Phase One and with PGB you’ll be able to

  • Site Creation – Automatically building HTML sites that are fully structured and ready to go with perfect onpage optimization in just 3 minutes (you can do it in under 60 seconds but you have to type fast…) that requires zero technical knowledge.
  • Content Management – 440 articles each month across 11 niches
  • Site Templates – 25 beautiful templates as the initial “bank of templates” from which you can draw upon to build your niche sites
  • Adsense Monetization – Stage one of PGB introduces the core monetization method behind building an income online… Adsense. Stage two will add additional monetization such as Kontera, Clickbank, eBay and Amazon.
  • Full Silo Keyword Search – Each and every niche has all of this already done for you so you don’t need to go search for the next greatest keyword…just look for, and find an ideal keyword for maximum traffic and speed. The keyword research for each niche is done in an easily laid out Excel sheet that you can quickly glance at and find perfectly targeted long tail keywords to start generating traffic in as little as 5 days.
  • 10,000 strong blog network – This networks makes it easy to get one way backlinks via PLRpro’s Article Marketing Automation system. As a Member of PLRpro you’ll get access to this system completely free of charge.
  • RSS Feed Submission module
  • Social bookmarking poster module
  • PGB desktop command center. You simply install the PGB software on you computer and from there you can access the site building software and traffic related modules.
  • $0-6000 a month training plan – If you follow the system that the guys at PLRpro have put together you should be able to make between $2000 and $6000 every month.

There are many additional features that are available right now too many to tell you about in this article! Product reviews, the ability to drag and drop YouTube videos into your articles, aided rewriting of your articles to make them unique, weekly live training and more! Plus Project Green Button isn’t finished! There will be a second and third phase which will add even more modules that will assist in the building of site and generating traffic.

They could easily charge double or triple what they are charging for membership.

I’ve used the system to create a few sites and it works. I’m pleased with the sites I’ve created, I’m pleased with the quality of the PLR content and I’m excited about Project Green Button.

Now, as I said at the beginning of this article PLRpro is opening it’s doors this morning and it will likely only be for a short time as there are only 262 spots to fill. That’s it. When those 262 memberships are taken the doors will be closed again and likely won’t open again until sometime in 2009.

So if all that I’ve written above sounds like it might be something you’re interested in please go and check out the PLRpro website today.

Company misses payment glitch – now I’m at fault?

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Can you believe this? A company that I’ve been doing a little internet work for over the last two years or so just discovered that they’ve been overpaying me by about $80 since FEBRUARY! Now I either have to pay them back to the tune of about $500 or do a ton of extra work for them to pay off my debt.

What kind of company doesn’t notice that they have a glitch in their payment system for over 6 months?

A few months ago when I noticed that my payments had increased I wondered what was up, but the site that I do work for them on had increased in rank and popularity so I thought I’d just had a pay increase. Unfortunately their system is kind of hard to get into and it’s difficult to see just how they pay for different tasks. So I don’t consider this my fault although I guess in hindsight I should have thought to question them about the payments.

This totally sucks. I hope that the extra stuff I’m going to have to do to pay off the debt doesn’t ruin my site! Argh!

BTW I’m purposely not mentioning the company name as it’s against their TOS and well I don’t want to suffer a slap from the internet gods – even though it’s not this site that is involved in the glitch.

AspDotNetStorefront E-commerce shopping cart

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If you have an online store or perhaps want to start one in order to sell your merchandise you should visit the AspDotNetStorefront e-commerce by design website.

Perhaps you’ve been using another service for your e-commerce store or have been struggling with freeware e-commerce software, but you’ve found that it doesn’t offer you flexibility or the ease of use that you had been hoping to find. If that’s the case you need to visit AspDotNetStorefront and download a free trial of their ecommerce software solution.

AspDotNetStorefront will not only make it easier for you to set up your ecommerce storefront, but it will also help you promote your site on search engines. The software provides integrated seamless support for search engine indexing. Every page of your storefront can be indexed on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. There is also full control over all meta tags, page descriptions, titles, and keywords. All of which will ensure that your site is indexed properly.

There are actually so many features it’s hard to know where to begin to describe them to you.

AspDotNetStorefront is designed to be flexible. The creators of this innovative E-commerce shopping cart software have ensured that you can make your store unique. You can design store front skins using Dreamweaver or Frontpage.

Merchants can access their storefront via a web based control panel.

How will your clients pay for your merchandise? That’s up to you! AspDotNetStorefront supports a number of payment systems such as Paypal, Linkpoint, Verisign, credit card, E-Check, Check by mail and Authorize.net. Shipping rates are also integrated into the software for services such as FedEx, USPS, DHL, and Canada Post.

There’s no limits on the size of the database or the number of products that you can sell from your e-commerce site. Nor is there a limit to the amount of departments or categories that you can create.

AspDotNetStorefront users can password protect topics, set minimum quantities, and have the ability to track affiliates through order records and customer.

I’ve barely touched on the number of features within this e-commerce software package. You really need to visit the site for yourself to read about all the features. It’s mind boggling! If I were setting up an e-commerce storefront I would seriously consider this product. Check it out.

Widgetbucks creates new CPM ads to serve non-US and Canadian traffic

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Widgetbucks has again updated their program policy in regard to sites with a good mix of international visitors. In an email sent out earlier today to all of their members they stated:

International CPM Ads

Here’s an upcoming feature. In early December, we will start serving CPM ads to the non-U.S./Canada traffic. This will give you revenue, per impression, for your site visitors who come from other countries. This is designed to help publishers who have a blend of traffic from a variety of countries.

Our system will do the geo-location for you, determining where the visitor is coming from. Then we’ll either show the regular pay-per-click widget (to visitors from the U.S. and Canada) or show an ad that pays per impression (to visitors from other countries). You’ll see a new column, called “CPM Revenue” in your earnings reports.

So it appears that they listened to the concerns or more likely complaints of those who have a good portion of their traffic from non US or Canadian visitors and implemented this new CPM ad system.

Now hopefully they’ll do something about their widget slowing the loading of a site. I had, had Widgetbucks on my main blog Tricia’s Musings, but I only had it up for a few days before I removed it. It didn’t severely slow my page loads but I found that it didn’t load until you reached the portion of the page that the widget was located on and if you were trying to scroll past that point you had to wait until it finished loading. I didn’t like that.

On that site I had the widget code in the middle of my sidebar. I have ads near the top of my sidebars that I can’t move due to my TOS agreement with those companies. I do believe that Widgetbucks probably does best when it’s near the top of a sidebar and loads when the page is first visited. At least it wouldn’t impede a visitors ability to scroll a page if it was near the top and already loaded.

I’ve decided to try Widgetbucks on this site and a few of my other sites again to see what happens.

The New Amazon Widgets

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Hey did you hear that Amazon has created new and easy to use widgets? I love them!

There are several types of Amazon widgets that you can configure for your site so that you can feature various products or product categories in your sidebar or on your pages. It literally takes one minute to set up a new widget for your site.

Amazon announced their new widgets on the 21st of September, but I’d discovered them and had started playing around with them the day before they were publicly released.

You can select colors, the layout and or theme to match your website.

Amazon affiliates will earn referral fees of up to 10% on these new widgets.

There are 6 new widgets – Slideshow, My Favorites, Quick Linker, Wish List, Product Cloud, and the Amazon Unbox Video Previewer.

Go explore the new widgets. They should be easy to find in the left sidebar of your affiliate dashboard.

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Have you monetized your blog?

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Over the last year I’ve been experimenting with various ways to monetize my websites and blogs. Some affiliate programs have worked well and others have only netted me no more than a few cents! I’m sure you’ve had the same experiences and what works for one website owner might not work for another because it all depends upon our blog category and audience.

I’ve written about some of the programs I’ve tried on this site, WebStyle and of course my main blog Tricia’s Musings either as I’ve added them to one or many sites or after I’d been using them for a while.

I’ve been using Amazon on my main website for a number of years. I can’t remember exactly when Amazon started up it’s affiliate program but I’ve been using since the late 90’s I believe! In those early years I made quite a bit of money with Amazon and it was in fact the only way I monetized my website. These days I still make money with Amazon, but no where near as much as I used to due to changes in the program and I suppose a huge increase in the overall amount of affiliates!

I added the WP-Amazon WordPress plugin to my blogs a couple of months ago, but I’ve yet to really get going with using it. I think I’ve only created two affiliate links within my posts so far! Shame on me. Part of making money with affiliate programs is using them when appropriate. Of course I can still go over my old posts and add some Amazon links to them.

Text Link Ads has also been a very successful program for me. I joined a couple of years ago when I only had one HTML based website. I could never figure out how to get Text link ads to work on that site though! (if anyone can help me with this I’d really appreciate it! I know there’s a way to do it.) So I didn’t earn anything on my account until I got around to starting some blogs in 2006.

Google Adsense has worked out fairly well for me too. I don’t earn anywhere near as much as I think I could be making with the program, but I earn more than enough to get paid every month by Google. Again, I only had Google Adsense on my two websites for the longest time. Then sometime last year I put it on a couple of blogs but not my busiest ones. I’ve now rectified that mistake and I use Google Adsense and the utilize the Adsense Deluxe plugin on all of my blogs.

I only added Google Adsense to my busiest blogs about a month ago and I’ve already almost doubled my income. Hopefully once the Google Media bot fully indexes those sites I’ll really start to do well with Google Adsense. I’m still of course going over old posts and using the Adsense Deluxe plugin to add ad blocks to older posts. I don’t like to use them in my newest posts. Perhaps I’d earn more if I did, but I prefer not to irritate my regular readers with too many ads. Those coming in from search engines to the older posts will get the full extent of the advertising on my sites.

This actually brings up a good point.

When you monetize your sites do you consider how it might appear to your visitors? We’ve all seen sites with far too much advertising and for me it’s a total turn off. Links everywhere, advertising to the full extent, all kinds of different affiliate program banners and so on … I try not to do that. As I’ve just said I’ve been going back to older posts and adding in a bit more advertising, but I still try to keep it as tasteful as possible.

Everyone’s got to find their own balance between developing content, advertising and continuing to build traffic. Too much advertising can make people close your site and never return.

It’s fine to experiment with different affiliate programs. Even trying different badges and products to advertise on your site with each company. Just don’t try everything at once. If you overwhelm your visitors they won’t click on your ads. They’ll just click over to another persons website.

How do you monetize your sites? Do you think you’ve accomplished that fine balance that allows you to successfully monetize your site while keeping your visitors happy?

What programs do you use to monetize your site? I’ll discuss other programs that I’ve been using successfully in future posts.

Use Niche Secrets to boost your online earnings

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I was sent an eBook the other day. It’s called Niche Secrets, and you know what? I do believe I’ve learned a few things from this 29 page eBook.

Niche Secrets is a very well written and easy to understand booklet. It describes exactly what a Niche is, how to discover your own Niche and then how to begin writing articles, websites or eBooks about that particular Niche.

I actually learned a fair amount about Niches, marketing a niche product and how to write great articles and make money by creating product for a niche that I have a passion for, and I plan to use some of this information right away.

I’m excited about this. I’ve already got some niche blogs and since they’re already established it should be even easier for me to apply what I’ve learned from Niche Secrets and begin seeing results and having success quickly. I really believe that I could begin writing a Niche article this evening and see results by Monday – it really seems easy once you know how to do it.

I knew some of this information prior to reading the eBook, but you know how it is – you read some good information on one site, and something else on another and you try to remember all these good tips that you can apply to your own sites or to your writing techniques, but since these tips you’ve found are scattered across the internet and you’ve found them over time you never fully apply the techniques as you should right from the beginning.

That’s what’s great about this eBook and eBooks in general. You get all the information you need in one place and you can begin applying the tips and techniques right away.

If you want to learn more about making money by writing about and promoting Niche topics visit Niche Research and get a copy of Niche Secrets. This eBook is only $7 until July 31st so get your copy now.

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