I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy. My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I'd kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I'd ever had—and through Google's AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job. Eventually I shut down—not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health. I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn't one of them. (NewsWeek, Growing Rich by Blogging Is a High-Tech Fairy Tale, February 7, 2009.)
And here is my comment on the article:
Posted By: lyceum1776 @ 02/11/2009 10:32:18 AM
Interesting story. Did it not feel strange to blog as a "copy" of Steve Jobs? I think you could make money on advertising, affiliate marketing, sponsorship and in other ways. I am a "poor" capitalist at the moment, but I enjoy my blogging and it has lead to great things, in a material & spiritual way. With my experience and increased knowledge how social media is working, I could create workshops, engage in consulting projects and the spread the good word.
All the Best,
Martin Lindeskog - American in spirit.
Gothenburg, Sweden.
EGO blog - http://egoist.blogspot.com
I will test a mix of different advertising options and evaluate them during some time. My goal is to continue to build up the traffic to my EGO blog, publish interesting, enjoyable and valuable content and continue the conversation and exchange of ideas with my fellow bloggers, readers, and friends through this blog, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, LinkdedIn, etc.
I am especially interested in fostering my relation with BlogAds ("Blog advertising makes opinion.") and see if I could attract some new advertisers. I will place an ad on a blog sometime in the future. I will see if some of my future guests on my podcast show on SolidVox could be interested in advertising on EGO.
I am thinking of adding a "featured item" section on my blog, with books that I have discussed on my blog.
It will be interesting to see how it works out with the new premium ad feature by Chitika. Here are the latest "search engine visitors" coming to my blog:
- "morris cat" - Google Australia.
- "nikkala stott" - Google.
- "fox's licorice candy irish" - Google.
- "20010911" - Google Canada.
- "cutty sark after the fire" - Google Canada.
If you are interested in how to produce free leads, using Google Adwords, check out this video by Mike Dillard. If you want, you could buy a designated Chitika ad space, directly from me. At the moment, I have an Alexa ranking of 467,918.
I am not allowed to encourage my readers to click on the ads provided by Google. I let my visitors to decide when to click or not... Please note that I don't control how the contextual ads come about and I haven't installed any "filter" to my Google AdSense account at the moment, blocking advertisements from certain URLs. As an example, I wonder why ads by Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology is popping up now and then, but what the heck: "Let 'em pay!"
Here is an excerpt from Mike Rosen-Molina's post, Project Wonderful, Blogads, FM Go Beyond Click-Through Ads:
Click-through ads remain the most familiar form of Internet advertising to most websurfers. Most ad services, including Google's AdSense, still operate primarily on this model. Unfortunately, the click is plagued by the potential for fraud, as some site owners resort to multi-clicking their own ads or setting up bots to do so for them. (You can see Google has tried to address in its terms of service agreement, which, for example, admonishes site owners against directing readers to click on the ads.) ...
"There's an industrywide discussion about the value of the click -- both how we're recording clicks and how successful it is," said Matt DiPietro, Marketing Manager for FM Publishing, one of several ad services pioneering alternatives to the click. "It's essentially the way that marketers have been trained to think of the market online, but it's something that's evolving as we speak."
If advertisers want to attract customers and bloggers want to make some money, it would behoove both sides to look for something beyond the click-through. But what else is there? At least a few companies have come up with some ideas. (PBS MediaShift, November 21, 2008.)
You could support my blogging in an easy way, subscribe to free trade publications! For example, check out Website Magazine. [Editor's note: International readers could perhaps use a new version of a postal service like a forwarding service provider.]
Please participate in the new poll, Support EGO by:
- Checking out ads?
- Placing your ads?
- Sending donations?
- Sponsorship?
- Shopping @ EGO stores?
Scroll down the page and look at the bottom (right column). [Editor's note: Thanks for your participation and support! The poll will be up until my birthday, May 25.]
...and now a word from Donald Trump.
Hi Martin,
ReplyDeleteFake Steve Jobs' "epiphany" story is quiet interesting but I quiet didn't understand what were you trying to point out here. :(
Best Wishes!
-Luz
Luz,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment! I am sorry if I haven't been clear enough. I tried to "chew" how hard it could be to earn money on your blogging, if you only look at regular online advertising. But at the end of my post, I am pointing out some new alternatives popping up on the scene! :)
Ooh I see. Thank Martin for clearing it to me. :)
ReplyDelete-Luz
Blogging (in general) might not be a big money maker, but that doesn't mean you can't make enough money to cover your host fees. And with so many people using the various forms of ad programs, you are forced to focus more on content that pulls the viewers back to your site over and over while finding ways to incorporate the appropriate ads with your posts.
ReplyDeleteAdSense use to have a referral system where you could actually choose which ads you wanted to run on your site. Say, for example, you wanted to write an article about the XBox, and Microsoft had a XBox ad in the AdSense system. You could write an article about the XBox and embed the AdSense ad code into the text. People who were interested in reading about the XBox would be more than likely to click on the ad, and in turn, generate money for you.
However, today people need to work more at creating a unique aspect or service about their site to stand out from the crowd in order to generate any type of traffic that could be profitable. I think your idea about using the open thread to highlight books or other items might be a good niche to generate return visitors, and possibly a customer or two.
Keep up the good work, and good luck!
His post is indeed sobering. Thanks for highlighting it and getting folks thinking. I'm convinced that one must have a solid strategy that is honestly scrutinized and altered regularly if you want to make money blogging.
ReplyDelete