Physorg has posted an article highlighting the outrageous cost of sending a text message.

From the article:

“The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that’s £374.49 per MB - or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.”

For those of you that don’t speak in British Pounds, that’s $732.17 per MB! Want to text message your music collection? It’ll cost you a cool $61,356,851.20.

Maybe technology really hasn’t brought us that far…

When I started this blog a year and a half ago, I didn’t really have any intentions of making any money with it. Though, I guess you could say I’ve had a change of heart.

There’s lots of opportunities out there, but few that will work for low-traffic blogs. One of these programs that does work, however, is payperpost. Back before I went AWOL on my blog, I did a few PayPerPost opportunities and made a little cash on the side. For a blogger that’s making pennies on programs like Adsense, PayPerPost can be a goldmine.

How Much Money Can I Make?

The majority of PayPerPost opportunities pay between $5 and $20. In fact, I’m getting paid 20 bucks to write this now. Some people will say I’m whoring my blog out. I say, I don’t really care. I’m getting $20 for 30 minutes of my time. If you’re an active blogger, these opportunities can really add up. Blogger Robert MacEwan made $2,500 in one month from PayPerPost alone!

Most of PayPerPost’s more lucrative opportunities are reserved for blogs that have a PageRank of 3 or better. This tends to be somewhat of a flawed system as greater page rank doesn’t always equal greater blog. This really gets out of hand with some of the top paying posts. As I type this, the top paying post nets the blogger a cool $135, but requires a pagerank of 7. 7? Problogger.net, with over 45,000 RSS subscribers is currently sitting with a pagerank of 6. So you’re telling me that a blogger with hundreds of thousands of visitors making a six-figure blogging income doesn’t qualify for a $135 opportunity on PayPerPost? A little ridiculous. But I digress…

The bottom line is that PayPerPost is great for the low-traffic blog, but can quickly be outgrown as your readership increases.

If I didn’t just talk you out of it, check out the button at the top of this post to sign up for PayPerPost.

!Tornado Sirens! greeted me on my drive home from work this afternoon. Now, for Oklahoma, this really isn’t that unusual. Tornado sirens don’t mean a whole lot to us. Tornado siren? Eh? Check the news….it’s more than 5 miles away? Alright, we’re good.

Today was no exception to the rule. Except, I took some video and pictures for you…

Screencap of the 124mph wind

Video of some of the action. (That circle on the radar at the end shows the rotation right over my house)

If you hop onto Google and attempt to search for ways to make money off your blog, you’ll inevitably come across such giants as Darren Rowse, John Chow and Steve Pavlina. These behemoths of the blogosphere boast earnings well into the six-figure range. Most of this comes through the direct sale of ad-space on their blog (as opposed to using a 3rd party to connect the blogger and the ad purchaser,) services such as ReviewMe or affiliate programs they’ve directly negotiated with the product’s creator. Well, that’s great for them, but what about us small guys?

Secerets of WallerBlog.com

Over the life of this blog, I’ve tried dozens of text link ad services, sponsored posts, banners and affiliate programs. Let me tell you, most of them flopped. I’d let a program run for months only to go find that I’ve made some paltry sum for my labors. The reason this happens is that the majority of these programs are designed for the big-dogs. There are very few programs that will work on blogs that only get a few dozen visits a week.

There’s three programs that I am in love with. My money-makers are:

LinkWorth - This is, hands down, the biggest money maker on this blog. I consistently earn $30-$40 per month with this program. This service is similar to the more popular Text-Link-Ads but they seem to do a much better job of finding advertisers looking for links from smaller blogs. Text-Link-Ads currently generates a phat $1.50 or so per month for WallerBlog. Obviously LinkWorth is the winner here. Check out my shameless affiliate banner at the top of this post.

Google Adsense - This one’s kind of a no brainer. Google Adsense is present on sites of almost all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, earnings can vary wildly and is based heavily of traffic. However, WallerBlog.com tends to earn a modest $10 - $20 per month with it. Its a keeper for now.

Kontera -You may or may not have noticed the Kontera links on this site. (If you haven’t, hover your mouse over any of the words with a double blue line underneath them) Some people don’t like to put these on their blog saying that they’re too intrusive and interfere with the reader’s experience too much. I say, meh, if it makes money and people aren’t leaving over it, then keep it! Kontera is also somewhat based on traffic flow, but not as much as Adsense tends to be. Kontera generally nets 5 bucks or so per month here.

So there you have it! Three great ways to generate some extra flow on your blog, even if you aren’t generating as much traffic per day as Yahoo.com!

So, this end an 8 month experiment I’ve done with this blog. At the beginning of September, when my last post was made, I began to loose interest in this site. My schedule was filled to the max and I had to re-prioritize my life. I began to wonder what would happen if I walked away for a bit and let the weeds grow, so to speak. Well, as you can see, that’s exactly what I did. It’s been 8 months to the day since my last post. Here’s the breakdown of activity since…

Traffic:

7,984 Unique Visitors
4,097 of those were in December
Traffic for each of the other months was relatively flat

Revenue:

September $49.58
October $39.73
November $92.18
December $55.64
January $49.66
February $54.27
March $50.05
April $34.13

Total for 8 months $425.24

This brings up an interesting point. In the period that I did absolutely no work on this blog, it still managed to earn just over $425!

As I pick this blog back up, I’m very curious how much I can increase the income on this blog. If this is your first visit or if you’re a former subscriber that is coming back again, be sure to stay tuned! This blog is now an open book. Each month you can expect an update on traffic and earnings. I’ll let you know what is working and what isn’t. My hope is that through this, you will have the opportunity to experience success alongside of me!