Can your blog sustain a predictable income? We all know it’s not that easy to pad your bank account by blogging (well, at least those of us who have been doing this for at least a few months quickly realize).

For those of you who have earned money so far, is it enough to offset your costs? If you’re running a self-hosted blog, we’re only talking under $100 US a year. And I’m not even going to get into the countless hours you’ve poured into setting up your site, researching topics, writing articles, and promoting your site. Be honest with yourself, are you earnings worth your effort so far?

So why is it that some people can earn as much as they want while others struggle pulling in pennies? There are many parts to the success formula that it can’t be simplified in a single blot post. However, what I want to do today is to at least offer a few tips for earning an income. Not just any income, a predictable income. That means you earn when you want to earn. It may not be a lot at first but it will be on your schedule.

This predictable income is applicable to large blogs and small blogs. Obviously the amount of money that comes in is scaled to the number of visitors you’re able to attract to your site. We all know about the passive ways of producing income like Google AdSense and text links. We also know how little you can make with just those so let’s take a look at a few other more active income tactics.

Ways to earn a predictable income blogging

1. Post an article about your affiliate

I don’t do this as much as I probably should but in the past, I’ve written an article about nearly every one of my affiliates. Case and point, look at this article that I wrote about GoDaddy a few weeks ago. My GoDaddy affiliate link gives me a steady number of sales per month. However, when I write about using GoDaddy for hosting, I get a spike for a few days every time. BTW, an average GoDaddy sale nets me $70.

Since I only post a handful of articles a month, you won’t see more than a few of these from me a year. However, if you’re a more frequent poster, feel free to try an ‘affiliate plug’ article once a month.

2. Ask for advertisers for your ad blocks

Some advertisers will give you a certain amount per month for an ad block. You just have to make it known that the space is available. If you have six ad blocks, you can always fill five with your affiliates and leave one open that’s labeled for sale. The amount depends on your site’s traffic but $25/month for a 125×125 block above the fold is reasonable for a site that’s under 100k Alexa ranking and at least Google PageRank 2.

Of course, if your Alexa and PR aren’t where you want them to be, then you may need to ask for less.

3. Offer to write a sponsored article

Post an article offering to write a sponsored article. If you are a good writer (and have supporting evidence based on your other articles), someone may pay you good money to talk about their site. Remember, they are not going to pay you just for your awesome writing skills. You’ll also have to provide a few backlinks.

I’ve written a few of these over the last few months. Each of those netted me a nice boost during those periods. Again, the amount depends greatly on your Alexa and PR but if you’re just starting out, $25 for a 500-word, 3-backlink article is a nice start. Once you’re more experienced and your site has more traffic, charging over $100 per article is perfectly reasonable.

Find your earning sweet spot

Personally, as many of you regulars know, I don’t sustain this site just to earn an income. I actually enjoy it and I really don’t do it just for the money. I treat this site as a fun job — just not my full time job. This site provides me with a satisfactory level of earnings based on the time I’m willing to spend on it. I enjoy my other jobs as well and this is just one egg out off many eggs in many baskets. Only you can decide how much money is worth your time spent on your site. Hopefully this article makes it easier for you make that determination.

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Yes, here we go, another Google PageRank article. It’s just that all this PR banter gives me more to talk about! But this time, I’m going to expose how much I’ve actually raked in because of my PR.

I’ve had some people tell me that they don’t care about PageRank. Some because they don’t think it’s relevant, or it’s not worth thinking about, or it doesn’t make them money. Well, let me put this to rest, if PR can make you money, does it solve the other “concerns”? My bet is that the answer is “yes”.

One thing that folks don’t realize is that a site’s PageRank can actually make you money. I’m not just saying that I get more visitors or more comments, things that indirectly lead me to more money, but I actually earn money directly. I’m not talking pennies, either. I’m talking hundreds of dollars per transaction!

As you know, I’m not one to boast about money. I don’t like to disclose how much I earn from here or any of my sites. However, what I will do is provide a few examples of what I’ve been able to pull in over the last 30 days.

• Posted site reviews (average ~$125 per transaction) – each containing 200-500 words, 3 backlinks
• Added sentences on archived articles (average ~$300 per transaction) – each includes 10-30 backlinks
• Added backlinks on archived articles (average ~$50 per transaction) – each includes 3-5 backlinks

Not bad right? That doesn’t even include my income from affiliates or other sources.

So, to drive my point home, do you think any of those paying customers would have seeked me out if my PR was 0? These people wanted juice and I gave it to them!

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Those of you who have tried Google AdSense (let’s face it, who hasn’t?) had to make an important decision at one point — “Should I go with an all text ad or an image ad?” Ironically, many people start by letting Google choose by simply selecting the ‘Text and image ads’, which is the default setting. Is that bad?

Well, yes and no. I get asked that question from time to time and it really all depends. If you do a little research on what has been successful for others, you’ll find a mixed bag. For instance, some say that text ads are more effective because they blend into the rest of the site. Conversely, others claim that image ads bring in more revenue since they are more visually appealing.

Let’s look at some of their pros and cons:

Text ads

Pros

• Can be configured to blend in with the site content
• Almost all advertisers have text ads available
• Take up minimal space per advertiser, leading to more per ad block

Cons

• Looks very bland and generic

Image ads

Pros

• Can be visually attractive
• Are larger and easier to see
• Can tell a story through basic animation

Cons

• Fewer advertisers can be displayed since one image could replace up to five text ads
• Some visitors are “blind” to image ads (they have been conditioned to ignore banners)
• Can limit the number of advertisers since not everyone has an image ad

One way to determine whether text or image ads would be better is simply looking at your market. Niches in glamorous industries would benefit from sexier ads, where image ads excel. Conversely, blogs that focus on topics that visitors just want to read through quickly, text ads are probably more appropriate. Below are some examples of categories where one type of ad may have an advantage over the other type are:

Text Ads: Business, Science, Careers, Politics, Self-Help, Making Money, Health, Educational

Image Ads: Gaming, Sports and Fitness, Music, Movies, TV, Fashion, Arts, Celebrity News

Text and/or Image Ads: Technology, Auto, Pets, Food and Drink

By no means are the aforementioned gospel but it gives you a starting point. You may have a micro-niche that bucks the trend.

In short, the question of text vs. image doesn’t have a clear cut answer. It really depends on what type of site you have, what you’re trying to accomplish with the ads, and who your audience is. Personally, for Google AdSense, I prefer text ads because I already have sponsors with image links throughout the page. I choose to display text ads with a look and feel that’s similar to the rest of the site. Although that has worked well for me, I may still use an image ad from time to time, just to test its effectiveness. Like all other moneymaking tactics, a lot of trial and error is involved. Experiment to see which works better for you.

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In my last post, PPC 101: Pay-Per-Click basics, I described PPC as a form of marketing advertisers could use to bring targeted audiences to their sites. This guide will detail the steps you would take to actually create a PPC ad campaign.

1. Go to Google Adwords and create an account if you don’t already have one. You may use other search engines but if you’re new to this, I suggest starting with the most popular, Google Adwords.
2. Perform research on keywords for your site.
3. Create a keyword list that you want to display your ad upon being searched.
4. Choose how much you’re willing to pay per click. This is known as your bid amount.
5. Choose or create a landing page for your ads. This is where you want your targeted audience to show up. If possible, it should be a page developed specifically for your campaign and usually not your home page.
6. Write your ads. Stick with text ads for now; for each ad you will need a headline (max 50 characters), a description (max 200 characters), and the URL for your landing page.
7. Activate your Google Adwords campaign!

Those are the steps to create your PPC campaign but you are not done! Just like any ad campaign, you need to monitor your performance closely. If this is your first dive into a online ads, you’ll find that you probably need some fine-tuning almost immediately. Luckily, unlike traditional ads, you can be as agile as you want. To be candid, you can almost chalk up your first campaign as a learning experience and if you somehow make a few dollars in the process, then that’s a bonus.

A final tip: the parts that advertisers should evaluate (and constantly re-evaluate) are steps 2 and 3. Getting the keywords right is an art and a science. Even if you eventually get your keyword list to what you think is perfect, it’s probably time to look again.

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Anyone who has surfed the web has seen their share of ads. Some good, some not so good. For many of us, we’ve conditioned ourselves to ignore most ads.

So why do advertisers still make ads? Because they work! The law of large numbers reinforce that only a small number of visitors have to click on these ads for the advertiser to make a profit. The goal of any ad, especially in the PPC (pay-per-click) world, is to get the message in front of the right people.

I actually just got off the phone with one my partners about a client list that we just received from a software giant (they’re headquartered in the Pacific Northwest — you figure it out!). We’re in the process of identifying our audience for a workshop that we’re hosting next month. After reviewing their client list, I felt that it wasn’t targeted enough. One thing I said was that there’s a big difference between 1,000 emails that they’ve collected over time and 100 emails of people who are ready and willing to spend money on our solution today. I, of course, would much rather have the latter. Just as with PPC, our numbers will improve drastically with the right targeted audience.

As I wrote in my Types of Affiliate Marketing post, PPC, aka CPC (cost per click), advertisers pay every single time their ad is clicked. Below is an excerpt as written for an affiliate marketer:

Cost Per Click (CPC)/Pay Per Click (PPC)

One of the more well-known affiliate types, CPC pays you every time a visitor clicks on the ad. Although this seems like a surefire way to get paid by simply abusing the ads, the top search engines have technology to prevent this from happening.

Anyone can create their own PPC ad campaign. The trick is getting it right, which takes time to perfect; after all, as a PPC advertiser, you are paying for every click, even if people don’t actually do anything when they get to your site. Obviously, you’d rather pay for relevant clicks. That means for your pet site, for instance, you want to bring as many people who want to spend money on their pets as possible. A big part of that is creating a keyword list that is appropriate for your targeted audience.

In my next post, I’ll give you a step-by-step process on how to create your own PPC ad campaign.

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Have you written Google ads that haven’t produced the results that you wanted?

Many of us have received Google Adwords credit either from their hosting company or from Google directly. Often times, we take that amount, create an ad in less than a few minutes and cross our fingers. Sure, you might get lucky but the reality is that writing really effective ads take years of practice. There’s a reason why people go to school for marketing and hone their skills for many years.

I believe in Pareto’s Law, which many of you know as the 80/20 rule. In this example, I believe I can get you 80% of the way to writing effective Google ads in 20% of the time. In the long run, to be really good (practicing and learning that remaining 20%), it will take time and a lot of trial and error.

So let’s focus on starting that 80% right now.

The secret to writing better ads immediately

The biggest problem with many untrained marketers is that they fail to place themselves into the shoes of the target audience. Once you determine the keywords you want your ad, before you even start writing, take a moment to wear the hat of your target. Literally, I want you to “become” that person.

Let’s say you have a website that sells natural soaps. You decide that the keywords you’d want this particular ad to appear for is ‘goat milk soap’. So when someone types ‘goat milk soap’, what do you think they are looking for?

So if you are thinking like the target, are you looking to buy it or make it? Do you want to learn about its benefits or adverse reactions?

You decide that you are typically looking to learn about benefits and then acquire the product. Now what type of ad would draw you in?

Secrets of Goat Milk Soap

10 reasons people switch to

look and feel healthier and younger!

www.PureNSimpleSoap.com

If you typed ‘goat milk soap’ would that ad make you want to click it? If not, start tweaking. Keep going until you can answer with a definitive yes. Before you butcher the ad, I have several business degrees and have many years of marketing under my belt and I still won’t claim that my first pass at an ad for goat milk soap is perfect.

However, even if you think you have the perfect ad, you must monitor the ad and fine tune it. But at least now you have a great starting point to work from!

Those of you who have played with Google ads, what are some ads that have worked for you?

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With so many blog “experts” out there, how can you tell the difference between really useful information and dated, irrelevant hype?

There are some of us who have been blogging or running our own sites for years and the best endorsement is what other bloggers have to say about our sites, our content, and our products.

That said, I’ve been a fan of Daniel Scocco from dailyblogtips.com for a while now. I’ve frequented his site regularly and have also participated in his most recent group writing project with my 10 free killer WordPress themes article last year. He successfully runs one of the top blogging/MMO blogs out there (under 5k Alexa ranking!) and there’s a lot we can learn from his experience.

What you may not know is that Daniel wrote a making money with blogs ebook and it’s one of the most useful blogging tools out there. It’s like someone took the vast making money and blogging content from all over cyberspace and created a concise package that can be used by anyone. The best part is that it’s FREE!

Honestly, when I say it can benefit anyone, I mean anyone. Blog beginners will have a field day, saving hundreds of hours by not having to scour the internet for information, much of which isn’t even good. More advanced bloggers will be able to either pick up a few tips and tricks or simply reinforce what they’re currently doing. And if you’re a MMO blogger, you’ll also pick up lots of great ideas for your own content.

So if you haven’t downloaded Daniel’s ebook, what are you waiting for? I did it a many moons ago and I still open it up for a quick read every now and then. I’m sure that you, too, will find it’s a valuable resource in your blogging reference library.

If you’ve already read it, I’d love to see a brief review of what you think.

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