Blogging for Bucks

Status
Not open for further replies.
Symmetry Power said:
seems like a really interesting thread.. and andrew i've spent some time on your site and its really informative.. but i was just wondering if any one can help me with some advice on something.. it seems lots of you guys have lots and lots of sites..
do you guys all go with one host?
how do you guys use any software to keep track of your sites?
and I was curious since you're doing so much sites.. do you put most of the content on them yourself and is the quality or quantity more important?

as always please forgive me for my ignorance.. heh
Click to expand...

Well I've actually cut down from lots and lots of sites to support my most profitable sites, as for them being hard to create, hell no a few hours of building, getting backlinks, and hosting work and your done.

Its true don't use all one hosting account in case it gets shut down for some MFA bullshit or some blackhat stuff you might be pulling, split it up into different hosting companies, so if one gets shut down you'll still be up and running.

As for tracking well I still do that manually, no software involved, just a good memory but I think your more or less talking about having 2000 MFA sites where andrew is talking about building one bigger yet stronger income earning type of blog in this thread.

Just as an example for you though look at this site Microsoft Exchange Hosting and you'll realize if your doing small sites in large quantities you won't need much.
 


I don't think many of the other extensions, besides .com, will gain much widespread public appeal with the exception of possibly .tv (possibly) in the long haul.

The dot coms came in gradually. Many companies registered their company names and keywords only as they saw a use for it. They planned on developing and then bought the name.

Nowadays, the extension landrush comes and everything is bought up by domain speculaters, ensuring that the vast majority of that extension's pages are parked pages, arbitrage, bs mfa or some other good for nothing crap (from user perspective). So the brand has trouble being built.

Visit a dot edu and you get education site. Visit dot gov and it's a government site. When you go to a dot com you're much more likely to get a meaningful site with content. Visit any of the others and you're bound to get some form of span. The extension itself isn't branded and it's nearly impossibly to, for example, restrict .info sites to people building informtaion sites with good content or .name to people with that name.

That being said, it's possible for any individual person, company or business to successfully brand their individual site regardless of extension. The extension may add value to the domain. Wall.St for example would be pretty sweet. I can see .TV potentially making it somewhere and .XXX if it is ever accepted by regulators. But, domain speculators are certainly slowing down the process that they essentially want to speed up.

It's the nature of the beast i suppose. Sorry for the tangent as this is a response to a question a few posts back.
 
Since Aequitas has given a comprehensive answer, let me add to it.

With blogger, your domain will be (blogname).blogspot.com.
Want to sell your domain? Forget it.

Accidentally violate Google/Blogspot's TOS? Expect to have your blog frozen. All that PR, all those backlinks, poof!

Granted you can have blogger hosted on your own domain, blogger is clunky. Even with a new template it still looks ugly.

Granted too that most readers will be looking at content or graphics, but still...the template....

---

I can understand how you hate code.
I hate messing around with it too.
But if you want to do well in the online world, you need to understand some rudimentary HTML, PHP, javascript to get by.
Else hire or buddy up with a programmer.

If you started, and you're using blogger and you're generating big bucks, then I think you're doing great.

I used blogger, didn't like it. switched to wordpress, and it's worked out well for me.

On the technical side of things, once you've figured out html, php, etc, you might want to venture into podcasting and vlogging. if you thought the simple code was a bitch, just wait.

on the positive side, since i started podcasting, i get a couple of hundred more visitors per day, just by pinging the podcast xml-rpc server.

There's always the rumor floating around that since G owns blogspot, it'll get indexed faster. If you know any half decent tag and ping strategies, you'll get a brand new blog indexed within 48 hours.




askthebryan said:
Ok, Andrew, this might be in here somewhere, but you definitely prefer WP over Blogger, right? I mean, the plugins and all are great, but what about those who don't understand the scripting process and find it too much of a hassle?

I was one of those people at one time until I grew a pair and sat down to figure it out (because I am an idiot). But I mean, when I first started, we used blogger, and no one complained about it.

Is it true or false that blogger is indexed faster because it is attached to Google?

Your thoughts, and honestly, please.
Click to expand...
 
the principle in having lots of sites is repeating a good thing.

Once you have your business model down pat, even if it's generating $1 a day in adsense, the theory is having 1000 blogs is going to get you $1000/day.

The problem is that complete newbies who can't even get that $1 on their blogs, get taken in by that idea and go build lots of blogs.
the stupid ones build 100 blogs by hand.
the smart ones buy expensive software to automate the process.

But the problem is that if you can't even make decent money on a single blog, what makes you think making 100,000 blogs will be any better.

My personal advice is to start 1 blog, have it perform decently, then rinse and repeat within the same niche, or branch out.

no point buying 100 high performance cars when you don't even have a driving license...

Quality is more important for me.


Symmetry Power said:
seems like a really interesting thread.. and andrew i've spent some time on your site and its really informative.. but i was just wondering if any one can help me with some advice on something.. it seems lots of you guys have lots and lots of sites..
do you guys all go with one host?
how do you guys use any software to keep track of your sites?
and I was curious since you're doing so much sites.. do you put most of the content on them yourself and is the quality or quantity more important?

as always please forgive me for my ignorance.. heh
Click to expand...
 
If you have a dedicated server, or any other type of hosting account with multiple IPs, you can segregate your 'experimental' sites from your income sites.

I'd 'firewall' my income sites, by not linking them to scraped or otherwise seedy type of sites, although incoming links from 'seedy' sites are ok.

---
How you use content depends on what your strategy is.

If you want a news agregator type site like boingboing or webpronews, you can aggregate RSS feeds and republish them on your site.

if you want to build up your personal brand, i'd suggest having >50% original content and being thematic (Focused on a specific niche).

It might get a little boring to blog about SEO or affiliate marketing all day, but for new visitors who come to your site and find that all the content is relevant to them, it'll make for a very sticky site.

BeerHat said:
Different hosts for different sites.

Don't ever put a blackhat site for example with one of your quality ones.

Some content is original
Some content is bought
Some content is produced

There's no real template system, find what your comfortable with.
Click to expand...
 
tax season just ended here and i've been going through my taxes, so this thread has been slow.

if you've already got your domain and your niche (they should be related), you can head over to borders, or your local library and borrow a couple of books or tapes or DVDs related to the topic.

If you're doing a pregnancy or childbirth site, and you're a guy, this research step is going to be very important for you.

as you go through the book or magazine or tape, start to compile a keyword list.
this includes jargon specific to the niche, brand names, names of past and present personalities (eg. muhammad ali and mike tyson, evander hollyfield for boxing for example).

if you're following this study, this step will probably take you 1-2 days if you're fast.
 
Another thing that no one has really posted in here yet - blogging about something you enjoy isn't required, but it helps. You'll have more motivation, background experience, and general insight on the topic, which makes it somewhat "fun" as opposed to being a chore, looking up information, and disseminating it into your own words. Just a thought.
 
andrew wee said:
tax season just ended here and i've been going through my taxes, so this thread has been slow.

if you've already got your domain and your niche (they should be related), you can head over to borders, or your local library and borrow a couple of books or tapes or DVDs related to the topic.

If you're doing a pregnancy or childbirth site, and you're a guy, this research step is going to be very important for you.

as you go through the book or magazine or tape, start to compile a keyword list.
this includes jargon specific to the niche, brand names, names of past and present personalities (eg. muhammad ali and mike tyson, evander hollyfield for boxing for example).

if you're following this study, this step will probably take you 1-2 days if you're fast.
Click to expand...

First I'd like to say thanks for all your time and quality input. Second I'd like to say.. fuck taxes lol.. or rather fuck income taxes and the bullshit IRS who forces people through trickery to pay their unconstitutional taxes.. http://www.paynoincometax.comFree Yourself From Taxes Whether any person who checks out that site believes it all or not.. you'll still have some great interesting reading
 
Good going! A lot of good tips thats getting me up and started! I will post as a see significant numbers!
 
Ok, by now you should have shortlisted your niche and products/services you might like to promote.

if in doubt, google for "(niche) affiliate" or go research other affiliates in your niche and find out what programs they're promoting.

Note: For the information below, it requires work, and time. it also helps you build a long term/long tail niche. my personal approach is to build blogs and websites which bring me traffic and profits for the long haul. so i generally don't scrape as much content.



as you go through the source materials for your niche - wikis, books, documentaries, etc, you want to compile a keyword/keyphrase list. this can be found in the contents page, index, glossary, etc.

more importantly, you want to understand it well enough to write about it, or comment about it.

you want to identify the key concerns/problems in your niche.

let's say weight loss.
--losing weight is just the first step, but bigger concerns might be:
-is it safe?
-will i continue to keep the weight off?

these are what i call 'deeper' questions.
browsers will typically ask "how much does it cost?' "what does it do?' type questions.

people who are seriously about buying the stuff (say a new car), will ask 'deeper' questions like:
-how much does maintenance cost?
-what would insurance be for a model like this?

so your keyphrase should include deep keyphrases to scoop out the buyers.

---
from there you can move on to content generation.

content is something that is easy to create if you have the right mindset.

there are probably about 10-20 major questions people will ever have about a niche.

and it's no surprise that a lot of content centers around these same tired pool of questions.

beyond just using a synonym substituter, you should be able to write variations around the same questions.

just go look at any trashy mag or gossip rag like the national enquirier, US, people...heck go read PC Magazine or one of those.

it's always the same old, same old. but the writers are able to keep writing on and on about it. go study their writing patterns and model after them.

you'd be surprised how many variations you can write about anti-virus, disk deframentation from the PC mags.

if you're doing this for your own site, this should take anywhere from 2 days to about a week.

i like using content as a traffic gen method, especially good content will make your site very sticky.
 
Andrew,
Great thread you have going and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it develops.

One thing I have found really useful for content generation is Dragon Naturally Speaking. It's a voice recognition program. If you take the time to "train" it well it can be very accurate and allow you to generate content very quickly. I'm not the world's greatest typist so it has been great for me.
 
so once you've got your content, and blog sorted out,

you post to it once or twice a day, visiting pingoat.com each time to ping it.
there's a XML-RPC setting you can load into WP, but i prefer to do it manually.

be sure to list your blog in all the blog and rss directories for some link love and if you dont fancy doing it yourself, you can find a freelancer to do it on the cheap, though you want to make sure they file it in the correct directory and not just "Blogs - General"
 
Blogging

Great Thread and tips from Andrew


I like to suggest that the following points to be taken into
consideration when blogging:-

1) Blog on a topic which you have passion about
For me, this is in the area of law of attraction

2) Find Affiliate Pdts
For newbiz, do not create your own pdts. Search around for
good affiliate pdts (maybe from clickbank, or expert in that area)
and mkt them

3) Content in your blog
Your blog should be updated with quality content to serve your target audience. People don't like if you just keep selling stuff. Remember givers get too

4) Visualize your success
Lastly, visualize your success of your blog. And money will come with your visualization and appropriate action

All the way!

 
Blog monetization:
From my experience, I generally dont like adsense, text links, or banner ads.

after putting in so much time into positioning your blog, you'd want to go for a nice juicy CPA offer, or an affiliate marketing offer.

the key is to match the profile of your traffic and finding an offer they're likely to take up.

If your visitors are in their teens, twenties, lifestyle type items like affiliate progs for oakleys, or ipods, or DVDs would convert well.

If you're focused on a speciality niche like scrapbooking or gardening, you can google for your keywords and "affiliate" to find appropriate programs.

I'd also google for feedback on the programs to ensure you're going to get paid at the end of the day.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom