I have used a lot of methods to monetize websites, I’ve done it through advertising like AdSense, affiliate ads, and other methods.  Over the last six months, though, as I have alluded to before, I have taken a special interest in monetizing one of my sites.  This particular site did not monetize well with any kind of advertising that I tried.  However, it was the site most precious to me, one that I love a lot, and really a daily part of my life.  Because of that, I wanted to find a way to make money from it.  So I introduced several new moneymaking possibilities on the site.  These included things like advertising services, much like what Mark is talking about in his video.  Recently, I started offering a few e-books that were really targeted to that site as well.  You know what?  That is my number one earning site now!  And, I’m doing things that I enjoy, things that I love, and in a lot of ways things that I would be doing every day anyway, even without the site.

You know, I have come to the conclusion that offering my own services and selling my own products is the way that I like to go.  Firstly, I find it is more profitable.  Secondly, I have control over what’s on the website.  I am not at the mercy of Google or somebody else putting ads on my site that I can’t approve.  Thirdly, the premium products that I’m selling offer additional value to my readers.  These products are specifically about the topic that I write about, thus it is certain that these are things my readers are interested in.  A year ago I was strongly into the AdSense  thing, but mostly, I kind of abandoned that.  At least I’ve decreased it.  Most of my sites are highly specialized, very niche oriented, and my niche is very narrow.  In terms of how many people it attracts.  Because of this, it can be difficult to get ads that are targeted properly.  However, when I create my own products and advertising things that I do myself, I get to choose how targeted those things are.  And believe me, they are targeted to my customer.

Yes, I still make money off of AdSense, but not nearly what I used to make.  And now my earnings from Google are about one third of what they were last year.  However, my total earnings are higher than they were last year, and these self-made products and services are what accounts for that.  Whenever you’re selling advertising, unless you’re talking about direct ad sales, you only get a portion of what the advertiser pays.  People like Google or others get a cut as well.  When you make and sell your own products, or selling your own services on your site, you get the whole thing.  You can actually sell it to the customer for less than what Google would and still get more money from the sale, because you’re cutting out the middleman.

The other thing that I find is it is easier to make that money.  Why?  Well, if you build up a good side and you have a good following the people, those people trust you.  They know you.  Many of them visit you everyday online and read what you have to say.  You have established a relationship with those people.  Thus, if you come out with an e-book or some other product that you did yourself, they know what to expect.  If they thought that your writing wasn’t very good, they wouldn’t be visiting your site anyway.  Since they obviously feel that your site has value, by extension they would also feel that your products have value.  If the product that you offer is something that they are interested in, it’s likely that they’ll buy.  So it’s good for you, and it’s also good for them because they get information that they want and need.

Thanks to Mark for bringing up this topic on his site, 45n5 is a site that I like to visit every day.

I do want to leave Wordpress and move on to something that is more stable, in terms of not having to do constant upgrades.  For a person who has one blog, or a couple, it’s probably not a big deal to do an upgrade a few times per month, as is often the case with Wordpress.  However, I have dozens of blogs, and those upgrades can be quite a time waster.  If there is a problem with an upgrade causing a site crash, you can throw away a full day or more.  Throw in the fact that plug-ins need constant upgrades too, and you’ve got a full time job there!

There is a problem, though, with leaving Wordpress.  Switching to a different platform means problems.  First, you have to migrate everything from your Wordpress installation to the new client.  This is not always an easy or seamless thing to do.  Sometimes it can’t even be done.  For example, I have one blog that has nearly 10,000 comments on it.  Moving comments is not easy all the time.  Almost all of my Wordpress sites have custom themes that I have either built myself or paid to have done.  Those themes won’t work with other software, they will have to be abandoned, or ported over to the new platform.  That won’t be easy, it will take time, or money, or both.

Thinking about this whole thing gets some ideas flowing in my head.  Is it healthy for so many people to be tied in to a single platform?  I am talking about the health of the Web here.  I mean, if you build up a site with thousands of posts, lots of content and such, you are kind of locked in, as I have pointed out above.

With all of this thinking, I have come to only one conclusion so far… Leaving Wordpress isn’t easy!  As with other aspects of life, I guess… breaking up is hard to do!

Conflicted about what?  Well, I am debating about whether to go the traditional way of writing a book and having a publishing house print it and distribute it, or whether I should self publish.  If I decide to self publish (which is the way that I am leaning), I can see two paths to take there too.

1. Go the traditional route of printing the book on paper, and distributing it to book stores and such.
2. Go the new route of doing an e-book (electronic book) and distributing it over the Internet.

It’s a tough choice.  Each route has advantages.  I know that from my past experience, you can expect to get maybe 10% of the sales price as your share of the money.  So, a $15 book would bring you maybe $1.50 per copy sold.  This, of course, is if you use a publishing house.  If you self publish, you would get a lot more than $1.50 per copy, but that means that you also have to front all of the costs for printing, distribution and such yourself.

One nice thing about living in the Philippines, though, is that you can self publish a printed book relatively cheaply here.  So, let’s say that I got 5,000 or 10,000 copies printed and then distributed them myself.  I can imagine that most sales would be off my own websites.  I’m OK with that, because I have a lot of traffic on my various sites, and I think that I could sell that quantity of books relatively easily.

The electronic press path is attractive too.  You just write the book, publish it as a PDF file, and you are ready to go.  No real costs involved, except for your time (I already have all the software that would be needed for the project).  You could then sell the book, even at a lower price, and still make more money.

I feel that I actually have several different books in me, just waiting to come out.  I just have to decide the proper path for publication and selling.  It’s been a decade and a half since I’ve done this, and a lot of things have changed in that time.

So, what do you think?  Which method of publication is best in today’s environment?  If you are buying a book, do you feel that a paper book is better or more desirable than an electronic book?

Share your thoughts, I need them!

I blame Wordpress.

“Why Wordpress,” you say?

Well, I blame Wordpress because it has become like a treadmill that never stops.  First of all, you have a never ending parade of updates to the software.  As soon as you update to a new version and get all the kinks worked out, it seems like there is a new, critical security update that you have to do immediately!  If you don’t update on time, it’s like running around in public naked - you just don’t do that!

Here’s what happened today.  I had a couple of improvements that I wanted to make on one of my sites.  When I went to that site, I noticed that the Plugin panel on Wordpress was telling me that two plugins were out of date.  Oops!  I better update those right away.  So, I went and downloaded the new releases on these plugins, and installed them.  What the….   I just checked my blog and the whole top half of my screen went black!  Hmm… turns out that one of the plugins didn’t work!  So, I reverted back to the old version, it worked fine.  That second upgrade that I did didn’t work either.  So, I eliminated that one.  I have dozens of blogs, so all of this piddling around took me half the day (or more).

The thing is, I am feeling like with Wordpress, it is getting to the point that there are so many Admin tasks that need to be completed, that I rarely have time to produce the quality content that I want to share with my readers!  If I had one blog, maybe two it would not be a big deal, but I have more than that.  It is making me wonder what I should do.  Abandon some of my sites?  Find a new software to run on?

I have been playing with the idea of moving to Drupal.  Today I took the step of installing Drupal on one of my inactive domains, and playing with it.  It only took a few minutes when I realized that if I changed platforms, that meant that I had to re-learn the whole system again!  I had to create a lot of new templates.  Hmm… I have sites with thousands of posts on them, which means that I had to import all those posts into a new platform.  Importing thousands of posts usually doesn’t go as smoothly as it should.

Hmm… I don’t think I want to change platforms.  I also don’t think that Wordpress is the right platform any longer.  Updating plugins and platform software doesn’t bring in any money.  However, if you don’t do the updates, your site will end up getting owned by somebody else who hacks in.  Either way, you haven’t written content that keeps your readers coming back.

For me, the call comes down to what direction to go in order to make the most money.  Problem is… right now I can’t figure out which direction will achieve that goal.

What do you think?

So, if it is Really Simple Syndication, what does that mean? Well, simply put, it means that if you offer RSS on your site, people can subscribe to it and have it delivered to their desktop. When you publish an article on a site with RSS, that article will be pushed to your reader’s desktop in a matter of moments. If people choose to subscribe to your site, the text (and photos) of your articles will be available in the reader’s “Feed Reader.” Feed Reader is a piece of software that collects all of these RSS subscriptions and the reader uses this software to read the articles. Most current software, especially blog software (Wordpress, Typepad and others) and other Content Management software (Joomla, Mambo and others) include RSS as part of the package. I would say that probably about 75% of current websites offer RSS of some form.

So, there are also special programs that a user can have on his PC for gathering his RSS subscriptions. There are dozens of Feed Readers out there. Bloglines, Google Reader and many many others. Personally, I like to read blogs from within my browser, and I use Firefox to gather RSS headlines, then I go to the site to do the reading.

The number of RSS subscriptions that you have has kind of become a way of measuring the success of a blogger. Personally, though, I feel that this is not a good metric for measuring success. You see, in my case, I don’t really push RSS or encourage people to subscribe.

Why don’t I encourage people to subscribe?

Well, if somebody is reading your site through an RSS reader, they generally don’t see the ads on your site. Let’s face it, I primarily blog to make money. I do it for other reasons too, but if I could not make money doing it, I would at lease have a lot fewer blogs than I do. If somebody reads through a feed reader, they don’t see my ads, and thus can’t partake in my advertiser’s products. Yes, you can also place ads in your RSS feed, but from everything I have read, those ads are not nearly as successful as ads on the website. Thus, I actually prefer it is people come to my site, rather than read me through their feed reader.

Now, I am not an expert on every topic, and I readily admit that I might be missing something here. So, if you are better educated on this topic, let me know where I am straying. For a writer who wants to make money from what he writes, how can he successfully convert readers to profits when they are using a feed reader to subscribe? Honestly, I hope that somebody can point me to something that I don’t know about this, because I might be missing some opportunities.

Any opinions?

One quick final note here. When it comes to reading, I love RSS. It’s just that I am looking for input on the writer’s side.

So, if you are a blogger, or have any kind of website, this should teach you an important lesson.  What is that lesson?  Always keep providing fresh content on your site!  If you don’t, people won’t keep coming to your site.  You know, as I’ve discussed in recent articles, getting people to come to your site is not easy, and it takes time too.  If you squander these readers by basically forcing them to leave, then you must keep on trying to gain readers every time that you re-activate the site.  It would be much easier to keep your readers coming back to your site and adding new readers over time, and there is only one thing that you have to do in order to accomplish that - keep writing!

Don’t take me wrong, you don’t have to write multiple articles every single day!  But, what you need to do is to adapt a schedule, and stick to it as much as you can.  Your readers will come to understand your schedule, and they will know which days to check your site (and what time) for a new article.  On most of my sites, I try to write a new article every weekday.  I usually don’t post on weekends, because I find that the weekend posts don’t get as many visitors.  Now, does this mean that I have to take time write an article each day, 5 days per week?  No, not at all!  And, believe me, I don’t do that!  So, if I don’t sit down and write an article every day, how to I post an article every day? Well, that is easy, I use the “Post Timestamp” feature on Wordpress!  Sunday is my writing day.  On Sundays, I will write all of my articles for all of my sites.  Before I publish them, though, I choose what time they will go “live” using the “Post Timestamp” in Wordpress.  I can choose what day and what time the articles show up for the public this way.

So, for me, writing on Sundays works.  Maybe for you, it is Saturdays, Wednesdays after lunch, or whatever.  Just choose a time.  If you have nothing to do, go write!  Find the way and the schedule that works for you, and stick with it!

One thing I hear from a lot of people is that they can’t think of anything to write about.  Firstly, I find that the more you write, the more topics you think of.  Another important thing that I do is that I keep a pad of paper and a pen handy.  If I am sitting there watching TV, or if I am doing something else, and I think of something I want to write about, I write it down!  Maybe I am watching the news on TV, and a story comes on that is on the topic of one of my sites, I write that down, and on Sunday when I am ready to write I look at my list and choose the subjects that I still want to write about.  I find that by doing this, I usually have a lot MORE topics to write about than I need or want.  Also, as I am writing an article, I often find that a new idea, or a tangent of the article I am writing comes to mind.  Quick - write that one on the list!  Also, with my list, if I have 8 or 9 topics and only intend to write 5 articles for the week, I will evaluate the unused topics to see if I want to carry them to the next week.  Sometimes I feel after further consideration that the topic I wrote down is not good after all, but if it is just a topic that is still good but I didn’t write about, it will still be good next week too when I am looking for topics!

The moral of this story is, though… don’t stop writing!  Don’t let your website dry up!  You worked hard to build up the visitors that you have, don’t squander them!

So, write some articles, then start publicizing the site, as I suggested the other day. Then, keep writing on a regular schedule. Yes, I know, hardly anybody will read those articles as you write them, but there really is no better way to do this. As the months go by more and more people will start visiting your site (as long as you keep promoting the site). You will get subscribers to the site, and regular visitors who come and visit you daily, or at least on a schedule. As time goes by, people will start making comments, and a community will develop around your site. These are good signs.

I had mentioned that it might take 6 months before you have many readers. So, what happens to all those articles that you wrote and nobody read? Well, firstly, as people discover your site, many of them will go back into the archives and look at your older articles, so that they can “catch up” with the current writing on your site. Another thing you can do is to go back into the archives, choose stories that you feel are especially good or important, and re-post those! You don’t have to write them all over again, just change the time-stamp on them, and they will re-appear at the top of your site again!

Another thing you can do is to automate this process. I have one blog that I have over 2,500 entries on. It is not a topical blog that features news or something that is quite timely. Any of the posts can be looked at any time without looking dated. I have a Wordpress Plugin that I use on that blog which automatically moves the oldest post on the blog to the newest post. In other words, the post that is last on the blog, becomes first. I can set the interval at which I want this to happen. I have it do that every 12 hours. So every 12 hours the oldest post on the site suddenly becomes the newest post! There are so many posts on that site that most people rarely even realize that the post they are looking at is very old! This plug-in is called “Oldest to Newest.” Keep in mind, though, if you have a blog that is topical and timely, this is not for you. If you are suddenly reposting a news article that is a few years old, people will be wondering what is going on! Also, if you only have a hundred posts or so, don’t do this, as it will rotate the posts to quickly, and a lot of readers will get tired of seeing the same articles over and over again!

So, don’t worry about having to write a lot of articles that nobody reads! You can recycle them later when you have readers who are following your site!

My initial reaction to that question is to start out by blogging.  Write interesting articles that people will enjoy reading.  Put some ads on your site, sit back, and the money will start rolling in.  Well, I guess you don’t get to sit back much, because you must keep on writing for this to work.  If you put 3 or 4 articles online and stop, pretty soon people will stop coming to your site.  I mean, even if people love your writing and find it informative, they can only read it so many times before becoming bored!  So, keep writing!  Don’t expect that the first day that you post your first article people will instantly start beating down your door to read you!  It doesn’t work that way.  You might have to write for 6 months before you get a single comment on your site.  Don’t give up!  Most people can’t ride out those lonely days when nobody is visiting their site.

Make sure you follow the tips I gave you yesterday.  Those tips will help you get visitors and readers.   But, it still takes time.  Don’t make it hard to read what you write.  What do I mean by that?  Well, make sure that you spell the words right.  Sure, we all make mistakes, but for the most part you can eliminate mis-spelled words.  Don’t write in all CAPIITAL LETTERS- it is hard on your reader’s eyes.  Make sure that what you write makes sense!  I know some bloggers who write articles which, I must confess, I can’t understand!  Make sure that this is not you.  It’s much better if you write in a simple way that most people can understand and comprehend, than to insert all the fancy words that you know (and some that you don’t) to try and impress somebody.  If you write like that, people won’t come back.  Make reading your pieces pleasurable, not a job.

Try to focus on a single topic on your blog.  For example, if you have a blog where one day you write about dentist visits, the next day you write about choosing a new car, the next day you write about your trip to the beach, and the next day you write about your new cat, it will be hard to get visitors.  Oh sure, your friends and family might come and read that if they have nothing else to do, but people you don’t know won’t come to visit your site regularly.  Why?  Because they are not interested in most of the things you write about.  Choose a topic, and stick to it!  You like going to the beach, OK, no problem.  If you write about the beach, people who like the beach will read your blog.  But, if you start sticking in stories about new cars, why would the beach lovers come back to read that?  Answer is - they won’t.  With a scattering of topics, you can never build up a loyal readership, and thus it will be hard to make money.

Keep in mind.. it’s OK if you enjoy the beach, and you like new cars!  You know why?  Because there are no laws that limit the number of blogs that you have!  You can have a Beach Blog and a Car Blog!  That way, the Car lovers will come to your Car Blog, and the Beach lovers will come to your Beach Blog.  Know what… the people who like both Beaches and Cars will subscribe to both!  Now, isn’t that a revelation?

These are just a few of the guidelines that you should keep in mind when starting up your blog or website!  Do you have more ideas?  Why not leave a comment and share it with all of us?

For today, let’s talk about Google AdSense. AdSense is probably the number one means of blog monetization around. There must be literally millions of people using Google to make money from their sites. I know that I do, and I bet you do too, if you have a site earning money for you already.

Google has rules for just about every aspect of using them to monetize your site. For example, there is a limit as to how many ad units you can put on any given page on your site. You can’t have a few sentences of content and 40 ads on the page! Google limits you to putting 3 ad units on a single page. Yes, they have other products that you can also include in the page, but for actual ad units you are limited to 3 such units on a single page. If you put 4, you are in violation of Google’s terms, and you risk losing your AdSense Account.

So, since you are allowed 3 ad units, you should make sure that you put 3 on each page, right?

NO.

Not Necessarily.

Sometimes, putting fewer ad units will earn you more money! Of course, a lot of people are reading this and thinking that I must be crazy. The more ads you put, the better chance somebody will click on one, right? That part may be true, but you should also consider that you can get MORE clicks, and still earn LESS. How can that be? Let’s have a look.

How does the whole advertising game work on AdSense? Well, if a company wants to advertise on the Web through Google, they open an AdWords account with Google. They sign up and they bid for keywords. For instance, they might choose the word “flowers” as the Keyword that they are targeting. And, they might say that they are willing to pay 50 Cents (US currency) for every time that somebody clicks on their ad. Another company may also choose the keyword “Flowers” and they might bid $1 for that Keyword. Other companies may also bid on that same word, and bid as little as 1 cent. So, for instance, let’s say that a total of 20 companies have bid on the Keyword “Flowers” and the bids range from $1.00 per click all the way down to 1 Cent per click.

OK, next, on your blog, you write a post about Flowers. Ding Ding Ding! Google sees that this post is about Flowers, and suddenly the whole process kicks in, and those people who bid for the keyword “Flowers” have their ads placed on your site. The person who bid the highest amount gets his ad placed first. The second place bidder gets his ad listed second, and so on. Now, if somebody clicks on those ads on your site, you get a share of that money that was bid for the click.

So, let’s say that you put the maximum of 3 ad units on your site. Each one of those ad units can have multiple ads, as many as 5 ads on each ad unit. So, if you put 3 ad units on the page, you may have as many as 15 different ads from Google. This would mean that you have the top 15 bidders advertising on your post about flowers. Advertiser #1 bid $1 per click. Advertiser #2 bid less, and Advertiser #3 bid even less than that. So, in having put 15 different advertisers on that one post, you may have a bunch of guys bidding 5 cents or even 1 cent per click! Those clicks are not worth very much. It takes a lot of 1 cent clicks to make up for just one click from the guy who bid $1.

Let’s say that you put just one ad unit on that post. Suddenly, you have only the top 5 bidders advertising, and the lowest click might be worth 50 cents or so still. So, in this case, you could get 10 clicks on that page that has 3 ad units, and make less than if you got just one click on that page with only 1 ad unit. It sounds kind of complicated, but if you think it through, you’ll find that it is actually quite simple!

So, if you are blogging in a niche that has few advertisers, you might explore the possibility of cutting back on the number of ads that you place on your site! You might make MORE money that way! One thing to keep in mind - it doesn’t hurt much to experiment and see what pays off best in your case. You can always switch back after a few days of testing!

I am having a problem with that widget, though.  It’s slow!  Have you noticed?  I am finding that my sites hang up waiting for MyBlogLog to load!  Actually, it often shows that it is trying to connect to MyBlogLog, and that holds up the whole rest of the page from loading.  Have you noticed this?  I am considering removing MyBlogLog from my sites because it is getting too slow.  I like MyBlogLog, because it is great for building a community on your site.  I mean, when you go to your site and see people that you “know” even just recognize as regular visitors it’s a nice feeling to know that they have been back again.  But, is it worth your site hanging for 15 seconds or even up to a minute?

For me, it has no value if it is going to hold up your site.  What do you think?