Category — Money Makers

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!

For more info on this series check out How Can I Make Money On The Internet? and Internet Money Makers.

PayPerPost started by paying bloggers to review products and services in posts just like this one. I visit them from time to time to see if there’s anything finance related to write about. We’ll on my last visit, I was presented with:

This is a new feature offering cash to those who review posts made by other bloggers.

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve added this button to the bottom of all of my posts. Why? Because both you and I can make money with it! Every time you review one of my posts, you get an easy $7.50. In addition, I get $7.50 as well. We both win!

I must say that this is a great marketing move on PayPerPost’s part. The blogoshpere is getting flooded with similar sites. As more and more “paid post” sites pop up, the market gets diluted and those who want to advertise on blogs have more and more options to choose from. Well, PayPerPost is stepping it up a notch by differentiating itself. Bloggers are generating a buzz about this new feature causing more bloggers to sign up which makes PayPerPost look more attractive to potential advertisers.

If you have a blog, go and check it out. Just so you know, the blogs have to be at lease 90 days old with 20 or more posts on them. When you do review my post, leave a comment here and let me know how the easy the process is.