Monetization The Basics
By Vic on Dec 23, 2007 in Monetization
Let’s start that most of what you have read on how to blog for money sites is wrong. One of the key topics on these types of sites is how important it is to get your readers to come back again and again and to convert them to loyal readers and hopefully feed subscribers. Now they not only talk about this, but actually it is a key point of the success of a blog. Now if success is defined by having a loyal reader base and starving at the same time, then I guess they are right.
Fact: NON DEBATABLE, the more page views per unique user the less money you make. Now the question is why. We have touched this before but I think it is crucial for you to understand the logic behind this. Why do Black Hatters make spam sites? I bet when you go to a spam site as soon as it open up you say WTF another spammer and you leave, now guess why I know that is what you do? Because you are a smart user, you already are in the make money online business and now you already know the ins and out of spam sites. But I ask you why do you think then BH are still making spam sites? Because they work! The fact is that the largest percentage of internet users still do not know of spam sites.
So this is what normally happens. Let’s say I start a YACG site 90% markov about mortgages. I upload 100 mortgage keywords, I want to go full blast spam and I am looking for quick returns in other words I am looking for that site to provide me around 50 dollars a day in adsense income and I am willing to lose the site in a week or less. Now this is what happens I get the site indexed quickly I build thousands of links using BloggerGenerator I also tag the hell out of it with BookMarkingDemon so in no time I am having traffic, now because it is a refreshing markov Google just takes me quickly to the top of the SERPS and I start receiving traffic. When the person reaches the site after searching for Mortgage Loan my site opens and looks pretty but the content is really not legible it is a bunch of words out of order and it has many times in it Mortgage Loan but again the content is not legible and worthless. But since I know what I am doing I have placed an adsense ad left top inline post so when he is ready to leave after 10 seconds instead of closing the window and start searching again he will do the natural thing be lazy and just click on the ad that has a bunch of mortgage links chi ching I just made and $8 dollar click. Now folks in this type of site CTR can be as high as 50% it is just disgusting.
Now we look at the guy who followed the advice and has a well written blog with no spelling mistakes he explains in detail his subject matter and now has 500 readers that read his blog every day. I ask you how many times will the same people click on the same ads? This is the basis why new make money bloggers make no money what so ever and they just can not figure this out. The perfect example of this and she actually says it herself on her blog is Caroline Middlebrook now her blog has 943 Feed Readers (On a side Note I have no idea why because most of her post are worthless for actually making money online) now if she tries to monetize this blog she will make no money what so ever, the question again is why? Simple all her readers are probably the same readers that other make money bloggers have and if you notice they all have the same ads. Bloggers do not click ads this is a fact. Remember they have ads themselves on there blogs and this goes again to the fact that bloggers are self centered bitches.
Example lets say I make a niche blog about, how to fix bikes. I will write keyword stuff post on common search terms for a guy who is looking to fix his bike but do you think I will actually explain how to fix the bike? If I do that why would he click out with an adsense ad, I just gave him the solution he can now go fix his bike he does not have a need anymore. But If I write a post that was intended to bring him in to the site but actually does not resolve his problem he will be clicking out as soon as he can and now I made some money. Now if you go ahead and not only explain how to fix the bike and also make a post on how to wash it and protect it and how to make sure it does not ever break again, you just earned yourself a feed subscriber and a loyal reader and at the same time you just made sure you starve.
This post is also tied to Blogging For Money Or Not. When I wrote this post it was an opener to this time when we started talking about monetization of a site. You have to ask yourself will this blog I am making is for the long term opportunity to make money or is this blog about making money now? There is no problem with making a blog that you want to gain something else then immediate money, but you can not bitch when you are not making money.
Folks for now again I leave you to think about why you are blogging? If your goal is to have 943 Feed Subscribers and have them all kissing your ass like Caroline Middlebrook then that is just great. If you want to make money online then you need to think of what you will do.
I will give a perfect example. As you folks know I write and do not proof read there are two reasons for this. One I do not have the fucking time, I have tons of shit that pays the bills to do on a daily basis. Reason TWO and think about this. Today I had up to now 195 Unique hits from Google on misspelled words. Think About that! If I avg 200 unique hits from Google a day on misspelled words that is an extra 73,000 unique readers to my blog a year, mmm I wonder what is more important to the guy making money online, writing perfect or having an extra 73k unique readers. But this is a decision you have to make.
Popularity: 4% [?]
I’ll have to catch the video later when I’m at...
Thanks Vic, another great blog, with a classic final paragraph.
I think I know what my make money blog will be, and I even mentioned it to you a week ago on a BZ email.
All of this is helping and giving me the tools I need to go forward.
I think I just need to find that PR3-4 domain name out there and turn it into a winner.
Mike make sure you do a good backlink check. Make sure they are solid PR links.
Blunt, to the point but I get it. You have to be heartless, ruthless and unethical to make money off unsuspecting people clicking on links to find what they really need.
Black Hatter Spammers are like pedophiles of the internet. They lure you in with candy just so they can get their jollies off of you from clicking their links.
Tim yup pretty much that sums it up.
Thanks Vic for another great point! I need to quite worying bout my spelin and get to makinggg some sereus money!
LMAO!
LMAO yeah again it goes all tied what you are looking for. If you are building a branded site then you need to be as perfect as you can the only difference is time, the other way it takes time to build.
Great post Vic! Really helps people like me separate my current blog from one that will make money now. I think my current one will grow to make money, but it’s definitely not the case now and that’s totally fine, I know where I want it to be and know it will take time.
In the meantime, I’ve been poking around godaddy looking for PR 3+ domains, but my god is it timeconsuming. Any tips to make this process more efficient?
Scotty since I started blogging I knew that there separate types of blogs and many people where developing blogs expecting to make money from them and the reality was it would be beyond difficult.
Court is the perfect example of making the distinction from one type to the other. Court never had any expectation to make money from that blog, his whole intention was to use that blog to launch other projects like Blogging Zoom.
I am in the process of starting a new niche that I want to develop beyond a niche I want to brand it. So there will be no misspelled words and actual perfect grammar. I expect no rapid income but instead a developed project that down the line I might end up selling for 200k or more.
As for the domains Scotty I promise you if I had a better way I would tell you. Their has to be one though. Every time I go domain hunting I know I might spend the whole day. But tell you what it is worth it.
@Vic - I was doing a little poking around about expired domains and a couple articles stated that sometimes the PR 4-5 site will go down to a PR 0 after a short time. Have you had any experience with this?
That is when they expire these domains are transfered to you before they expire. I have some already working fine and the PR is there but if the domain expires and gets deleted it loses it’s PR
Oh crap, will they get sandboxed too you think? if they expire?
Hi Vic,
I’m a new reader and now I’m hooked! Have you written anything in detail on how to bring in traffic from misspelled words?
I keep hearing that misspelled keywords are a goldmine but I can’t find any detailed info.
Any suggestions?
I will make a post on that. Welcome Jimmy
Hi Vic,
Here’s a funny thing that I’ve noticed on OpTempo and VB Notebook. When I advertised directly to the niche, I get very few, if any, conversions (although Adsense does OK on the VB site). When I started advertising toward complementary areas, like edgy T-Shirts or geeky trinkets, that have a low price point now I’m getting a much higher CTR and CVR.
Shit Frank I forgot to mention your site. I actually had you in mind as an example. You are doing exactly what you had to do. You have ads know body has including me. I found myself clicking on one of your ads today because It peek my curiosity.
People love those t-shirt sites and BustedTees has some good ad media for it.
My sports site has a few of them, they all have chicks on them who are all sexy and whatever, and they get the most clicks of any ads I have on there.
I plan on monetizing AMikeLife.com early next month, but I may need some help in picking stuff…
I figure Adsense will be good, and maybe use whatever CJ stuff I can…
But I like your OpTempo site with the big ad on the right…I may need to do that.
Hi Mike,
The “Big Honkin’ Ad” test on OpTempo has been successful so far. I think one of the keys will be to shake things up and watch which ads are getting clicks and those that aren’t and to slip new ones into the rotation from time to time.
(This is also a test to see if I’m still being blackballed by Akismet)
Cool man.
I added some CJ links this morning in the forum of 3 125×125 ads, so we’ll see how that works out.
Busted Tees, NBC Store, DVD online stuff.
Sadly, got declined by DirecTV and blockbuster online, not sure why…
I had some adsense up, but haven’t gone hog wild yet, I’m sort of scared to put a big 300×250 in my posts.
Hi Mike,
The problem I had with the 125×125’s on OpTempo was that nobody clicked them. They just kind of sat there, doing nothing. When I went with the big ads, people started clicking them and now on the T-Shirt and iClipArt ads I’m getting a combined CTR of about 16%, which probably isn’t bad considering it’s not a niche content blog.
Getting turned down by Blockbuster is probably not a big deal given the negative publicity they’ve been getting lately. One thing I dislike about CJ is that you get turned down a lot, at least in my experience.
I agree about the CJ part. For no rhyme and reason, you get accepted on some advertisers and got rejected on others.
For example, I got rejected for ebay but got accepted for ebay.co.uk. Weird.
Well, I’ll try these for a week I guess and see how they go…maybe the big ones will be better.
Adsense is next, but I’m afraid to just bust out a bunch of ads all over the place.
who gives a shit about spelling mistakes or luring clickers in - if I wanted to be nice I’d say hey I provide a link from their search queries to actual solutions (the ads - well yeah in a way lol) - Vic, the naysayers are the ones starving lol
hey Vic, I think this is the only mmo blog I read regularly now lol thanks man
LMAO you are right the way I look at it this blog is about making money, not about ethics and videos or photos of me and my family having dinner.
Its a learning process for us all and I’m re-learning all over again like a lot of others who are reading your blog, Vic.
I made so many mistakes when I started out a year ago and screwed with adsense and got kicked out. That was the costliest mistake ever and they’re fuckers they won’t let me back in so I have to use crap like bidvertiser to monetize.
Good news is I’m starting to see some return on a couple of free niche blogs on long keywords - I actually got some money ($35) in my CJ account at last! Ha!
The only thing the make money niche has made me is readers exactly as you said - except raping them for paid reviews and losing PR LMFAO!! Most of the money I make online comes from niche sites, affiliate stuff and CPA.
Now that will explode with the stuff you and Grizz have been writing about so thanks guys!
Terry
Terry it is so refreshing to know you and some others are starting to see some returns. As I have said before I wish I had a magic bullet but I have none, but applying these techniques will payoff. The hardest will be monetization there are just so many factors. I hope to keep explaining them factors to make it easier to figure out how to monetize each niche.
Hey Vic,
Thank you for mentioning Lizard Wisdom in your post!
We usually read your posts right away, and the one time we didn’t you mentioned us. Figures! LMAO!!
When we started Lizard Wisdom, we were clueless about blogging. In the past 2 and a half months, we have learned a lot, most in the past couple of weeks with your and Court’s blog.
We started blogging about eBay because that is what we knew and there really aren’t a lot of useful blogs on this particular topic. We certainly didn’t pick it to be in the make money online crowd, but we guess that is where we are. Oh well, live and learn!
As you mentioned, Lizard Wisdom will be our pretty blog that we will continue to brand. Hopefully some day it will be making us some good money. In the meantime, we will build niche blogs to put food on the table.
With Lizard Wisdom, we are definitely in limbo when it comes to organic traffic, though it is starting to pick up. We need to start writing posts geared towards SEO as you and Court talk about so that we get more organic traffic.
Gotta build the traffic so we can start to bring in some money!
Bye the way, the traffic you have sent our way is the perfect sort to monetize. The average time on the site is 00:00 seconds with a 100% bounce rate. Now you need to tell your readers to click on the damn ads!
Thanks again for your mention and all of your help!
-Marshall and Joli
Lizard Wisdom
Your site is one of the better eBay focused ones I’ve seen. Your articles match my experiences and observations from using eBay.
I think you’ll start seeing organic search traffic increasing over the next few months. One thing people are always searching for when it comes to eBay are (a) how to get started selling and (b) where to get stuff to sell.
Frank,
Thank you for your kind words about our blog!
We are going to do our best to increase organic traffic on Lizard Wisdom ASAP! We have some ideas of how to do this after reading Vic’s and Court’s words of advice.
Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year!
-Marshall and Joli
To all the Vic fans (and Vic himself),
We just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, or whatever your preference may be!
We hope that everyone is learning as much as we are and we wish you the best in 2008. Have a happy New Year and start to bring in the CASH!
-Marshall and Joli
Lizard Wisdom
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Just want to share my experience.
I have just written a article for a new niche blog for a domain I have purchase recently.
At first, I find it damn hard to write the article, as it is different from how I write previously. Meaning keyword rich, not giving too much info and possibly some typo.
After a while, I actually find it quite liberating. I can just keep typing and not worried about the spell checker. Where previously, I need to check Thesaurus for a different word to use, now I just spam my keyword.
Hell, this might be a good way to write. Thanks, Vic for showing me a new way.
I am so glad that you are on your way, the important thing is to keep pushing forward and keep pumping content out. At the same time be promoting like their is no tomorrow. So use the tools I have talked about and build them links everyday take some time and go on a D-list link run.
Wait until you actually see traffic from Google and it has found you because of the misspells you will LYAO
Hey, anyway, just wondering.. Though I know that there’ll be more posts on monetization to come, just cant wait. So are you implying that the BH’s way is the way to make quick money?
How about grizz’s method? Is his for long term?
And for the record, you just had to be voted upon
Muhammad welcome and thanks for your support. No that is not what I am saying. Their are different ways to approach it. But some ways are easier then others. Grizz show different techniques as he has said sometimes their is no such thing as the right or wrong methods just different. My advice is always see what fit’s the individual best and go with that. I can only say both Grizz and me have spent hours and hours perfecting our skills and even then we learn something new everyday. I hope this answers your question. Again thank you for your support and welcome.
As usual you’re the guy to say it when others are just too polite to mention about that blog that has got 943 feed readers but monetization is still out of sight. The blog got a lucky hit with one great writeup about commenting on other blogs but since then other posts are not the type you care to read anymore. Reading between the lines, it shows that blog is still a bit green about making money online. The 943 number only reveals how easily the herd mentality can affect most bloggers. There are still a lot of them out there kissing asses.
I’ve been digesting your tips and ideas and hopefully move into new directions come next year. I’m always modifying my blogs and there’s still plenty to do. I guess learning never stops. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Markk it just kills me how noobs read how to do things from other noobs. If I am having back pains I do not go to my accountant I go to my Doctor who has over 20 years practicing. But for what ever reason in the blogging world people just read the dumbest shit and instead of saying mmmm that is stupid they actually write comments like WOW that is just amazing tip and wow this is the greatest tip ever and while I am reading this I am fucking throwing up.
I found her blog from a comment at Court’s site and I looked at the feed count and said hey maybe their is something here that I might learn, after 20 minutes I could not find one serious useful fucking tip just more rehash shit that other bloggers post. I know for a fact that BU readers are constantly reading shit here they have never read before. With the misspellings and the ADD post they are still learning actual shit that gets you paid.
Let me be clear for what her readers comment she seems to be a very nice lady doesn’t know a fucking thing about making money online but sure is a very nice lady.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Hi Vic,
I can identify with your post since I’m struggling too with getting the right monetization down to a tee. But I also understand that it does take time and will be hit and miss trials for some time.
I actually feel pretty deflated in terms of blogging to my own blog as of late because sometimes I wonder, why bother investing so much time when I don’t make money from it.
Since discovering your blog I have hardly bothered reading others and wonder whether that is a bad thing. I find it hard to get inspired by all the rehashed crap that is floating around the net.
Maybe I should just unsubscribe from them and concentrate on reading stuff that really matters.
Monika as of late I do a quick hit on John Chow and Problogger just to see some stupid shit I can make a post about to prove my point on how useless both are. I do not read other how to bloggers sites 95% are worthless. I only read Court’s and John Cow because he makes me laugh. Besides that I do my BZ run and look at the submissions the rest of the time I am working on my projects and getting links. At then end of the day the most important thing we need to do every day is get links.
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Hey Vic,
I’m a proud Math geek with a blog that I’m building organically over time with good grammar and spelling
I just created a Math directory (http://allthingsmath.com/directory) on a new domain with no PR and no traffic yet. How would you suggest that I monetize it, aside from the obvious selling of links? The directory will be free for non-profit folks to put stuff into.
Do you think adsense would do well on this directory if it has traffic?
Thanks
I would stay away from Adsense as much as I could. I did a quick pass and there is no competition for adwords on the type of words you will have.
Open an account with CJ they have the biggest selection of advertisers and have a lot of educational stuff. To be honest due to the niche you will be really limited. You might also try the generic stuff that applies to all of us like insurance, credit cards we all use these type of services. The one I am sure it will not work is adsense you will be getting 3 cent clicks all day long.
Vic,
Thanks very much for the advice. Have a good one.
Vic: Do you know if I buy an expired domain, will it get sandboxed as well as lose PR?
Dan when you buy an expired domain it retains what ever PR it has unless it gets deleted. The important things is to make sure you do proper research and back trace the links to find where the PR is coming. Remember the PR you see on the tool bar is updated every 3 months or so. So the number you see right now may not exist anymore.
looks like i may be OK since link:www.femaleleadguitarists.com yields 3 PR4 backlinks and a PR6 backlink. it was expired when i bought it.
– thanks Vic!
So today I see a post from Yaro that includes a promotion of Caroline M’s ebook on how to make money with Wordpress niche sites. Do these self-proclaimed ‘experts’ have no shame or is this an example of marketing to the greater fool? Even a free ebook requires an investment in time, and the advice comes from her experience with a 2 month old ‘personal catharsis’ blog.
I have seen this on multiple blogs. She must have done a mass email campaign pushing that ebook. From what I gather though its a good book for beginners to read about setting up wordpress blogs just not monetizing them.
[...] curse words), you might not want to click on these links. But if you want the straight scoop on what really works when it comes to making money online, Vic’s blog is a must read. Two words of caution … you may read some things you [...]