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Monetizing ‘Make Money Online’ Blogs

by Melvin · May 17, 2009

Well reading the title, I am pretty sure you were thinking this one is a long and lengthy informative article but the truth is its not.

Anyway w/regards to the previous post I created about my blog income report w/c got a pretty good response, I’m working on an e-book that would reveal some of the tactics I use to monetize my blog (which somehow got into the mmo niche). I am looking to sell the info for a dirt cheap price for the first few buyers, then eventually increase the price and test the market more.

This is going to be my first e-book so please bare w/me for the use of slang terms. 😉

How Adsense Changed Everything (Ironic Way)

by Melvin · May 14, 2009

One of the reasons why Google Adsense has become popular is because it has changed the lives of most people who started using it. For instance Jeremy Schoemaker get started because of his $100,000+ cheque from Adsense. Some of my close friends do also get started with Adsense. After getting their $100+ payments, they reinvested it and luckily grew their business. In that way Adsense has not just become a money-maker, but also sort like an “inspiration”.

For me it’s no different except that it goes completely the ironic way. As what you can read from my about page, I started blogging 2 years ago primarily because ‘we were told’ Adsense can make us rich. The truth is it didn’t! Because earning from adsense is so hard when you a have website that has 10 pageviews a day, I became so impatient that I started clicking my ads and telling everyone (indirectly) to do the same instead of focusing driving traffic . Ok, luckily I was able to get my first adsense payment after 4 months for $102. I thought that was the best back then!

So I continued being a douche and still clicked my ads (and told everyone too) on computer shops and stuffs. I got two warnings then from Adsense about it but still continued. In the next 4 months I saw I have $140+ in my account, there’s every reason to be ecstatic for me (oh poor guy~!). Then the dreaded email from google telling me that I am banned from using them and they are going to reverse that $140 and blah blah. I pleaded my case to no avail. Of course why would I win the case if it’s obvious I was clicking it my own?

That had probably changed everything. That time I was really depressed not only with $ 140 but also expenses I have spent on renting comp.shops everyday just to pretend I’m a different people clicking my ads. It was all boggling my mind. Back then I haven’t received any payments aside from Adsense! So what I did was start working on what’s their and not on what isn’t there. I had accounts in Kontera, Moreniche, SponsoredReviews, PayPerPost, stuffs and stuffs. One common thing about it is I still haven’t reached the amount for minimum payout so I worked hard on it!

Long story short, I’m now here w/this blog that somehow people respect. I’m here with craploads of knowledge on affiliate marketing. Here, slowly but surely understanding the whole online business thing. That wouldn’t probably happen if not for Adsense banning me. Sure I’m not like other marketers who grew their business big time up to 6 figures but who cares? I’m far more happy w/where I am and how i’m doing things.

Every time I tell this story to people they were kinda wondering how I got lucky getting an Adsense payment while clicking the ads fraudulently. To be honest I don’t know either. Maybe i just really have done it patiently and carefully or Divine Intervention?LOL! But anyhow I’m far more happy w/how I got optimistic despite being banned and losing all the money I thought would be the money I could all make, how I became focused despite being a douche in an online world, and everything.

Sure its not the “better-hearing” story you could ever hear but it’s still nice story for me. How about you, any inspirational three-paragraph story to share? 😀

Don’t Let Me Steal Your WordPress Files!

by Melvin · May 11, 2009

I was bloghopping for the past 30 minutes with some blogs within my niche and noticed something in common.

So today I’m going to make a really quick article about protecting your wordpress folders and directory. A lot of bloggers I’ve noticed, have their blog’s folders browsable which is NEVER a good idea. I’d pick a cool kid name Desmond from DesmondBlog as an example. If you type the url desmondblog.com/wp-content/uploads you could pretty much see everything in the folder:

Seeing the whole content of the uploads folder is no bad (who cares about it?). But because his blog’s subfolders are browseable, we could pretty much view his themes @ /wp-content/themes (and get his premium themes),as well as its subdirectories and how about the plugins folder located at wp-content/plugins? Hackers could just go in it very simple and discover that you actually run an out-of-date wordpress plugin and exploit in it.

What should you need do then? Simply go to .htaccess file and put “Options – Indexes” on any line and save. The little code prevents your wordpress folders from being accessed by anyone. The second option if you only want to restrict access to some selected folders is just by creating an index.html file and uploading it to your desired folder. Say you just want your plugins folder to be the one unaccessible, then go to it and upload the html file. That simple! 😀

Like what i’ve said for every 10 blogs that I visit, 7 of them are usually unprotected. You could let them know it by sharing this post (or just simply telling them. 😉

Driving Traffic With BlogCatalog

by Melvin · May 9, 2009

Blogcatalog is one heck of a social community website with hundreds of thousands of users everyday. The best thing about the users there is they’re so active. In case you don’t know, blogcatalog is one of biggest traffic referrals on this blog when it was on its earlier stages. Traffic from there is really massive and its just the matter of how you are going to convert them into loyal subscribers.

Well everything started really well with me using blogcatalog until I abused them and I got banned eventually. Anyway right now I am going to share some really good tips to you on how you can get a share of the massive traffic on BG:

Carve out your profile well – It’s funny that a lot of people after signing up don’t even look to edit their profile page. They immediately jump into discussions w/c is wrong. By having a nice written profile, you’re giving yourself a chance to really introduce who you are, what niche you are into and what are your blogs.
Add Friends & Interact – Like any social community, blogcatalog allows you to add friends and grow your own community. The more friends you have the more traffic and readership you would get from it. So take some time to scan profiles there and hopefully interact with them the right way. Add me as your friend. 😉
Discussions – The discussions page probably is the most trafficked part of it. This is a part where there is a free-flowing discussions of literally about everything. Make sure you blend well w/it. If utilized properly it can bring you hundred uniques a day. Don’t be spammy as people there easily remember who adds value and who adds crap! A bad rep is not good!
Join Communities – By joining communities you are putting yourself in a larger scheme of people w/common goals. Examples of the communities there are the “stumble” community, the “make-money-online”, the technorati, the twitter community and a whole lot more.
Paid Sponsorship – There are two options in this one, first is the premium sponsorship w/c costs $60 and the category position ad w/c costs $8 per month. I find the rates really cheap since what you’re getting by having your site there is just too much. I’ve tried the $8 per month on my other blogs and I would say it really converted well. If you have some budget to promote, then I would really recommend this option.

All in all blogcatalog is really a nice social community. You want traffic, you get the traffic! But getting traffic is not the end right? We, as bloggers or marketers have to find our own ways on how we can convert their curiosity to loyalty. How we can convert those first time visits, into returning readers. It’s not about the quantity of traffic, it’s about the quality of it. What do you think?

Is Direct Ad Sponsorship Really Worth It?

by Melvin · May 6, 2009

When the Google Adsense era came to oblivion (wtF!) or when most people realize that using AdSense isn’t really as lucrative as 123, they forget it and turned their head to what is known as Direct Ad Sales or Sponsorship. Well you might have read a ton of post about direct ad sales and I can’t argue that this could possibly be the highest form of income earner for a blog. What I can say here is that it isn’t really as easy as what it seems especially for newbies or for people on the more unorthodox niche and I know most people can testify for it.

So positive things with direct ad sales is of course, you’re cutting the middleman, then its better for blogs in this niche and for branding, it also makes a lot of income possible. The problem with it now is that, even though you’re on an Alexa of 100,000 and below it still cannot assure you that you can get out $100 on ad sales on a month. I know some people who are really on a situation like that. Another problem is that, because the value of almost everything is close to being a junk, advertisers are not lenient anymore to advertise for a month. They test for the first 5 days, if they want the results, they’ll continue if not they’ll take their ad again!

One more problem is when the blogger or publisher gets desperate because no one is advertising for their blog, they’ll do a firesale! They sell their ads for so cheap, which is not bad but is not good either because you’re making your income source underachieve. In which if you put up a WidgetBucks Ad or maybe shoppingads you can likely get some more. Again, Im not degrading the value of Direct sales, its just that sometimes it’s not for everyone.

What other alternatives for unsponsored sidebar? A lot! You can let CPM banners take that or you can run some affiliate products there or you can just remove the sidebar and optimize it contextually! The thing here is that you always want to get the highest income possible. If you’re on a debt niche, then Im pretty sure you’ll get no private ad deals w/c means no income, but when you run AdSense there, more likely it will generate you some income. If my memory serves me right I think ads related to it pay $1 up to $5 per click. I guess thats it for today and let me know you’re strong voice.

Win a 40″ Samsung HDTV

by Melvin · May 5, 2009

Am on a short travel today until tomorrow maybe. Will get back to regular posting soon. 🙂

Well anyway here’s a quick post about a contest held by Blackhat marketer Nicky of Nickycakes.com. The contest basically gives a 40 inch Samsung LCD HDTV to one lucky winner. Everyone in any part of the world is qualified for the contest. The mechanics of the contest is pretty easy as well and would probably just take you 20 seconds to do so.

For those who are not aware of him, Nicky is an affiliate marketer who’s become famous for ridiculing people. LOL, but the truth is that he’s really helped a lot of newbies start making really good amount of money w/affiliate marketing (including me). He’s been always speaking at some major conferences and is an authority in the industry.

Anyways, nuff said! Join his contest, and you never know! 😉

Make Sure You Upgrade Your Feed Link

by Melvin · May 4, 2009

It has not been new to everyone that Feedburner has been acquired by Google. Because of it we have to upgrade basically everything and migrate and lose some subscribers in the process.

Anyway this is just a very short reminder to everyone to please update your feedburner url. That is because the current url of the feed is not redirecting to the new feed address which gives you a ‘page cannot be found’. If you’re using Feedburner FeedSmith plugin (which you should be using anyway), just change the previous url (‘feeds.feedburner.com/blogsname) to the new one (feeds2.feedburner.com/blogsname). I do also suggest to update your feedcount chicklet’s url and image url so that your feedcount can be shown. It can be done by simply appending ‘2’ after the word ‘feeds’. Most of us have our feed address set at http://blogname.com/feed, if you try to click it, it would just give you an error page. Not sure though how long it would last.

What I have noticed is that a lot bloggers, even big bloggers haven’t changed it yet. So what to do now? Change it! Believe me folks, you’re letting a lot of potential subscribers go away by having an erratic feed link, even if its just for one day.