As I've pointed out often, income is great, but it barely holds a candle to what you can make when you sell a site. If you follow a wise plan, you're looking at at least a 5X buyout and quite likely 10X or more. 10 years' worth of income would be more than enough for many people to sell and move on to the next ... Keep reading »
You'll never get rich blogging. 18 months ago that was the very first thing I wrote on this blog, and I still think it's true. However, that's no reason not to make some money from your blog. Depending on what you're blogging about, even 10,000 to 15,000 monthly visitors could earn you $5,000 or more annually. Not enough to quit a job on, but who couldn't use an extra $416.67 every month? So what I want ... Keep reading »
Many women regularly go out dressed scantily and then wonder why they don't get the respect they deserve. Dave Chappelle answers that question with another: "If you're not a whore, why are you wearing a whore's uniform?" I can't tell you how many sites I see wearing a whore's uniform -- selling themselves out for a quick AdSense click, not realizing that they're sacrificing greater long-term benefit. Take a good, honest look at your site ... Keep reading »
Alright, I know I said you need to think beyond AdSense, but I'm also all about grabbing all the low-hanging fruit you can. This is one of those cases. If you haven't read Joel Comm's AdSense Secrets, you need to get a copy. I bought it back when it was $97, but I made that back in a week with a site that was getting less than 100 visitors/day. Now ... Keep reading »
Too many times, I see people focused on AdSense as the sole source of their revenue. That is a huge mistake. Even Eric Giguere admits that AdSense is a crapshoot. Don't get me wrong. It is often fantastic for getting a site off the ground -- very often I can instantly make my money back with good AdSense placement -- but you're leaving a ton of money on the table if ... Keep reading »
Back in February, I wrote about "The Top 3 Ways to Generate Revenue from Your Blog" -- number one being advertisers: Dedicated advertisers are usually your best source of revenue. They pay a much better rate, they’re a guaranteed revenue stream every month, and they tend to stick around. The only downside is that you usually need to have really healthy traffic levels to make it worthwhile for advertisers to work with you directly. I noted later in the comments that what constituted a "healthy traffic level" really varied from nice to niche -- some sites may be able to attract advertisers with a tenth of the traffic of others; it's just so dependent on what type of readers you're attracting. Additionally, you definitely want to avoid monetizing too soon. Very few things can kill a site quicker than letting your advertising overwhelm everything else. Let's suppose, though, that you do have healthy traffic levels for your niche and are indeed ready for advertisers. How do you go about finding them? Keep reading »
Frequently, each of us blogs something that, given the resulting user feedback, we would have written differently given a second chance. That very thing happened over at ProBlogger.net yesterday with 10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers. The guest blogger, Chad, strongly recommended not using AdSense on your blog. Well, readers had quite a bit to say about that, and if you are in the habit of reading only blog posts and not the comments, ... Keep reading »
Since most large advertisers are experimenting with video now -- large advertisers who most often have the largest budgets -- Google recommends the 300x250 Large Rectangle format because that's the format they most often use. That's the format I'm using prominently over on my website design gallery, Unmatched Style, and this morning I noticed the ad you see to the right. (It's just an image here, so it's not clickable.) My problem ... Keep reading »
One of the most difficult parts of selling advertising on your site is actually figuring out what rate to charge. Here's a super easy way to get started, though. When you determine where you want your ad(s) to go, put an AdSense ad there. After a few days or a few weeks you'll have a firm idea of how much that ad is making you. Then, you can simply mark up your advertising over that rate. For example if ... Keep reading »
We'll get into all of these in much more detail over the next few months, but I wanted to go ahead and give you a quick run-down of the top 3 money-makers for your blog. Keep in mind, though, not to let monetization become your focus. Advertisers Dedicated advertisers are usually your best source of revenue. They pay a much better rate, they're a guaranteed revenue stream every month, and they tend to stick around. The only downside ... Keep reading »
.org