Rabu, 14 Maret 2012

How to Make Money From Your Blog

StevePavlina.com was launched on Oct 1st, 2004.  By April 2005 it was averaging $4.12/day in income.  Now it brings in over $200/day $1000/day (updated as of 10/29/06).  I didn’t spend a dime on marketing or promotion.  In fact, I started this site with just $9 to register the domain name, and everything was bootstrapped from there.  Would you like to know how I did it?
This article is seriously long (over 7300 words), but you’re sure to get your money’s worth (hehehe).  I’ll even share some specifics.  If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.
Do you actually want to monetize your blog?
Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs.  If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.
If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first.  If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine.  If you think it’s evil, fine.  But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path.  If you want to succeed, you must be congruent.  Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time.  It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed.  If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it.  If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful:  How Selfish Are You?  It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.
If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it.  If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads.  Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere.  If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations.  Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best.  If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them.  Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy.  If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it.  Don’t take a half-assed approach.  Either be full-assed or no-assed.
You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it.  I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005.  There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal.  Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback.  Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive.  Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month.  If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year.  Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source.  More on that later…
Can you make a decent income online?
Yes, absolutely.  At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home.  I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler.  If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it.  I’ve always done it full-time.
Can most people do it?
No, they can’t.  I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word.  But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail.  The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.”  And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet.  So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can.  How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart?  Here’s a good rule of thumb:  If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.
If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will.  OK, actually I do.
This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though.  You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry.  What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves?  It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it.  Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence.  But that just gets you in the door.  You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent.  And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are:  web savvy.
If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some.  But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice:  Don’t quit your day job.
Web savvy
What do I mean by web savvy?  You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies.  What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization.  But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:
  • blog publishing software
  • HTML/CSS
  • blog comments (and comment spam)
  • RSS/syndication
  • feed aggregators
  • pings
  • trackbacks
  • full vs. partial feeds
  • blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
  • search engines
  • search engine optimization (SEO)
  • page rank
  • social bookmarking
  • tagging
  • contextual advertising
  • affiliate programs
  • traffic statistics
  • email
Optional:  podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.
I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness.  If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet.  Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.
If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list.  Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies.  Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into.  You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.
A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation.  For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well.  But you can’t consider each technology in isolation.  You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them.  Monetizing a blog is a balancing act.  You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others.  Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant.  In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration.  I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking.  And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors.  I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs.  Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones.  It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month.  Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic.  And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.
This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%.  Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts.  It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds.  You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.
Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it.  To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades.  Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.”  That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them.  It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic.  Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else.  Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work.  I don’t really care.  I can still use them to generate results.  In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.
Thriving on change
Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you.  Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities.  You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset.  Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains.  It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst.  Blogging is cheap.  Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal.  Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily.  You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities.  I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.
The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity.  It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear.  If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out.  Many opportunities are temporary.  And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned.  And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.
I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies.  It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry.  And the rate of change is accelerating.  Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road.  Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself.  But I learned to love this insane pace.  If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too.  And people who only do this part-time will be very confused.  If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up.  So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high.  Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur.  This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea.  Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game.  Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous.  Let it inspire you instead.
What’s your overall income-generation strategy?
I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs.  They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money.  While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim.  Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.
Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site.  If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income.  You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is.  An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month.  It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances.  I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005).  And since then it’s continued to increase nicely.  Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain.  It’s a lot more secure than a regular job.  No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones.  We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…
Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else?  Maybe you want a combination of these things.  However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing.  I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy.  I only update it about once a year and review it once a month.  This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed.  It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.
Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site.  Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that.  Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site?  Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches.  Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.
When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat.  Don’t re-invent the wheel.  Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too.  Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money.  I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income.  Later I added donations as well.  This is an effective combo.
Traffic, traffic, traffic
Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.
Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views.  That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.
Why is traffic so important?  Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic.  If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent).  You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail.  With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).
When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge.  All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic.  If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed.  So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months.  I just focused on traffic building.  Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan.  For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK.  Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.
Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation.  More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you.  And it also means you’re helping more and more people.
With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer.  High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites.  On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews.  Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers.  Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about.  These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out.  Popular sites have a serious advantage.  The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.
If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site.  And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.
How to build traffic
Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?
I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there:  How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog).  If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.  That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors.  No games or gimmicks.
There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.
Blog Carnivals.  Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know).  Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche.  Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free.  Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form.  Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.
In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month.  You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog.  Free marketing is precisely the kind of opportunity you don’t want to miss.  Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff.  I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore.  Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic.  But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start.  Plus it’s very easy.
If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong?  Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right.  Again, making mistakes is not the issue.  Missing opportunities is.
Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?
Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:
Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic.  The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.
Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE.  It’s just not true.  Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site.  Nothing.  Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links.  Nothing.  I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever.  Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site.  In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout.  I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this.  It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.
Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work.  I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development.  To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it.  This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing.  I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work.  If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything.  What could be more fair than that?  The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it.  For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site.  I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far.  The podcasts are all ad-free.  I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead.  More income = better service.
At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy.  Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it:  “You know, Steve.  Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.”  Of course I’m aware of it.  I’m the one who put the ads there.  There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads.  They’re effective!  People keep clicking on them.  If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.
I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen).  Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.
I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads.  First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free.  I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.
If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart.  I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then.  For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa.  You can select different Range options to go further back in time.
Multiple streams of income
You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket.  Think multiple streams of income.  On this site I actually have six different streams of income.  Can you count them all?  Here’s a list:
  1. Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
  2. Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
  3. Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
  4. Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
  5. Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
  6. Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)
Note:  If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change.  I frequently experiment with different streams.
Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too.  Every stream generates more than $100/month.
My second biggest income stream is actually donations.  My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too.  It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal.  So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish.  It’s win-win.  I’m very grateful for the visitor support.  It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.
These aren’t my only streams of income though.  I’ve been earning income online since 1995.  With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles).  And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous:  advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot.  Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks.  Some of them are small, but they add up.  It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones.  I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.
Text Link AdsAutomated income
With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated.  I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.
I love automated income.  With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers.  And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.
Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you?  Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping.  It’s a really nice situation to be in.
Blogging software and hardware
I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it.  Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface.  And you can’t beat its price — free.
The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL.  I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself.  I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site.  Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.
I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog.  You don’t get enough control.  If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset.  You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s.  Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes.  If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk.  It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.
Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from.  I recommend Pair.com for a starter hosting account.  They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support.  I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.
As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS).  This web site is hosted by ServInt.  I’ve hosted this site with them since day one, and they’ve been a truly awesome host.  What I like most about them is that they have a smooth upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing.  I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless.  The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle.  I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.
Comments or no comments
When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled.  As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting.  Some days there were more than 100 comments.  I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort.  It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell.  The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion.  Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate.  With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane.  Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.
But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors).  That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off.  In retrospect that was one of my best decisions.  I wish I had done it sooner.
If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously:  Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.
Do you need comments to build traffic?  Obviously not.  Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments.  In fact, I think it actually helped me.  Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks.  If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link.  So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site.  The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily keep up with it.  I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.
I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building.  Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog.  Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it.  The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments.  Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments.  Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that.  In fact, I think it’s just the opposite.  Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog.  As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results.  After doing that my conclusion is this:  No comment.  :)
Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it.  Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.
Build a complete web site, not just a blog
Don’t limit your web site to just a blog.  Feel free to build it out.  Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it.  For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article section, audio content, etc.  A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.
Testing and optimization
In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you.  So try everything that’s reasonable for you.  If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself.  Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.
A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads.  It took about 20 minutes.  They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account.  This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month.  And it’s totally passive.  If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.
For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site.  I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc.  I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout.  It works very well for me.  Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par.  They started out in the gutter though.  You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one.  This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month.  Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact.  Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing.  If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.
It’s cheap to experiment.  Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up.  Often I can add a new income stream in less than an hour and then wait a month to see how it does.  If it flops then at least I learned something.  If it does well, wonderful.  As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams.  If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities.  Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you.  Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.
Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small
Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic.  My wife runs a popular vegan web site.  She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche.  On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal.  Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more.  It’s all relevant to personal development.
Pick a niche that you’re passionate about.  I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started.  I’m not feeling burnt out at all.  I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject.  I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.
Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money.  I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure.  Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience.  Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors.  It’s all about what you can give.
A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners.  If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling.  But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers.  And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.
Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about.  Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents.  In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on.  I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.
Posting frequency and length
Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency.  Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more.  I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite.  I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now).  That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles.  I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic.  It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value.  I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions.  If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.
Expenses
Blogging is dirt cheap.
I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil.  Essentially my content is my marketing.  If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.
My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year).  Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit.  This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax.  But the actual business expenses are minimal.
The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic.  If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account.  A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic levels.  The same goes for online forums.  As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.
Perks
Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows.  Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site).  Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books.  I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products.  It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can.  When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors.  I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive.  I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff.  As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.
My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound.  If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program.  I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck.  Making money is not my main motivation for running this site.  My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.
Your blog can also gain you access to certain events.  A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are.  In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass.  The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person.  I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week.  I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it.  Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.
I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about.  This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed.  Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well.  It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.
Motivation
I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging.  You have to be driven by something much deeper.  Money is just frosting.  It’s the cake underneath that matters.  My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings.  That’s my passion.  Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.
What’s your passion?  What would you blog about if you were already set for life?
Blogging lifestyle
Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings.  I work from home and set my own hours.  I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often).  Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same.  There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.
Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet.  But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.
On the other hand, I can offer you a good alternative to recommend if you don’t have the technical skills to build a high-traffic, income-generating blog. Check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.

How Bloggers Can Make Money Offering a Service

Most bloggers complain about not making any money after investing a few months of efforts into their blogging. They blog for months and months without significant income as proof of what they are doing, it turns to years before they know what is happening and they later decide to give up and then conclude that blogging just doesn’t work.
The question is why is it always like this? Why can’t bloggers get substantial results after putting in a lot of effort? You’ll be surprised by the answer; you might even be doing it! The reason is why many new bloggers, the reason is…

The “Make Money Blogging Cycle”

This particular cycle is the problem and it is what most new bloggers who want to “make money blogging” go through.
The cycle goes like this:
Blogger starts a blog > He comments on a few blogs to gain little momentum > He displays a few ads > He makes a few cents > He tweaks the ads to increase income etc.
This cycle is just so flawed it’s the reason behind the failure of many new bloggers. Of course, it might work for big blogs with hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors but you can be rest assured it won’t work for your blog. After all, how much is an ad really worth on a blog with only a few thousand visitors? The reality is, no matter the niche, it probably isn’t worth so much.

The NEW Way to Make Money Blogging, Quick
Okay, to be honest, this “way” isn’t entirely new. It has been in existence before I knew what blogging was but my reason for classifying it as new is because a lot of bloggers are unaware of its existence and they keep on struggling with making money from ads.
This “way” is to start offering your services to your audience.
One thing we bloggers do is writing. We write a lot of content every day and gradually we’re able to understand our audience and what they want. The problem is that we don’t know how to get our audience to pay.
Instead of struggling to display a few ads your readers won’t bother to click why not turn your blog into a real business and start making money the old way? Why not start offering your services and use your blog as a lead generator?
This was what I did 8 months after blogging. I was only a blogger at first but I soon began to offer my services as a freelancer using my blog as a lead engine. Just 8 months after blogging I had my first $1,000+ month and my income from offering my services has increased ever since.
You will notice from the above paragraph that I started making four-figures 8 months after starting my blog and I’ll be using this article to explain how you, too, can start making money by offering your services.

1. What Makes Your Blog Different?
The first thing we’ll be examining is the question of what makes your blog different from every other blog that talk about the same thing as you. Is it really different or it is just like every other blog online? If it is different, what makes it so?
The number one mistake most bloggers who plan to offer their services as a freelancer make is that of not differentiating themselves. They just keep giving generic tips and wonder why no one is patronizing them.
This step is crucial and something you must look into. What makes your blog different? What is your USP? Once you’ve come up with a list of what makes your blog different the next step is to create your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and then look for a way to build it into your brand. With the right USP, once anyone comes across your blog they will be able to see right away that it is different and they will spend a few more minutes to find out what you talk about.
In case you don’t see the importance in this, a USP is very important because people will only hire experts to work for them. No one will hire a jack of all trades to help them get things done. When you need to service your car you don’t go to the electrician that knows a few things about car, you go to the car mechanic who specializes in fixing cars. Your main aim should be to position yourself as someone who can help your audience “fix” their problems.
If you still don’t have an idea of how a USP works, or if you want a better idea, you might want to read these two articles over at ThinkTraffic.
2. What Service do You Have to Offer?
 
And no, it isn’t blogging because way too much people can offer the same service. What service can you offer that relates to your USP? For example, if your blog and USP is on helping people get quality design on low budget why not start offering people a custom-made design without them having to go into debt? If you help students learn to improve their writing, why not start offering your services as a freelance writer?
You need a unique service that can be tied to your blog and USP before taking any other step. You don’t have to rush into this and your service mustn’t just be because you want to make money, you need to have something unique you want to contribute to those who make use of your services. You should know that this is your brand and online identity so you should put enough time and effort into it.

3. Look for a Few Top Experts You Can Offer Your Services to for Free, or at a Discount
If you’re a freelance writer this means you should be ready to offer a free guest post to top blogs in your niche as a way to build your portfolio and direct potential clients to your site. If you’re a designer this means you should be ready to create your best work for a bigger website/blog for free or at a huge discount so as to be able to drive their audience to your blog and make them use their service.
Now, I know that this isn’t convenient but that’s why everyone isn’t doing it. Success, online and offline, takes real hardwork and sacrifice and you shouldn’t be ready to go anywhere without putting in any effort.
You need to be able to showcase your service, and not just on a dormant website but on an active top blog in your niche. This way you’re building your brand and portfolio, you’re being everywhere and you’re creating potential for future success for your blog.

4. Use Your Blog and Every Other Opportunity to Market Your Services
Now, in every article you write make sure you mention your services. Mind you, I’m not suggesting you turn your articles into a blatant sales-pitch. Instead, give people quality information that will make them want to return to your blog over and over again; let your articles show your readers a difficult problem and then show them the solution. Now, mention your services and anyone who needs your help and wants to save time will hire you. Of course, you can’t expect to have everyone as your client but this approach is guaranteed to bring you more success than just pitching your services to your audience every time.
You should also work on marketing your services outside your blog; this also includes inside your guest posts on other blogs, in your interviews with other bloggers and on your various social media sites. Give your services as much exposure and you increase your chances of earning more.
It’s as Simple as that…
Not complicated.
While the above actually requires a few more effort from you it is probably something you would have done if you were blogging, and you will be able to create a new stream of income for yourself while at the same time having enough to take care of your blog.
What do you think about the above tips? Would you like to learn to make money by offering your services as a freelance writer? I have good news for you. My ebook, The Writer’s Handbook: How to Write for Traffic and Money, is on the way and you can download it by visiting YoungPrePro.com. You should also check out my writing resources page.

How To Set Up Your Blog Business Structure

If you have ever attended one of my seminars, webinars, or keynote speeches, then you know one piece of advice that I always recommend to new bloggers is to treat your blog like a real business. Well, part of treating the blog like a real business means making it into a real business.
Too many bloggers just try to wing it. They don’t separate personal expense from business/blogging expense, nor do they do monthly/quarterly financial reviews. The biggest mistake of all: they forget about taxes and don’t set anything aside for it. One thing you can count on is tax man will catch up to you. It’s just a matter of time. Make no mistakes about it. If you make money by blogging, you will owe taxes on it. Therefore, it’s to your advantage to set things up to pay as little income tax as possible.

When starting a new business, you must decide what form of business entity to establish. Your form of business determines which income tax return form you have to file. The most common forms of business are the sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, and S corporation. A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a relatively new business structure allowed by state statute. Legal and tax considerations enter into selecting a business structure.
While I can give you the advantage and disadvantage of each, I recommend you consult a professional to help you decide which is best for you. I run my blog as a corporation because it’s the best way for me. However, it may not be the best method for you. Here’s a rundown on the different business structures you ca use.
Sole Proprietorship
A sole proprietor is someone who owns an unincorporated business by himself or herself. However, if you are the sole member of a domestic limited liability company (LLC), you are not a sole proprietor if you elect to treat the LLC as a corporation. A sole proprietor is the most common business structure because it’s the less expensive to set up. The main disadvantage is it exposes you to unlimited liabilities.
Partnership
A partnership is the relationship existing between two or more persons who join to carry on a trade or business. Each person contributes money, property, labor or skill, and expects to share in the profits and losses of the business.
A partnership must file an annual information return to report the income, deductions, gains, losses, etc., from its operations, but it does not pay income tax. Instead, it “passes through” any profits or losses to its partners. Each partner includes his or her share of the partnership’s income or loss on his or her tax return.
Corporation
In forming a corporation, prospective shareholders exchange money, property, or both, for the corporation’s capital stock. A corporation generally takes the same deductions as a sole proprietorship to figure its taxable income.
A corporation can also take special deductions. For federal income tax purposes, a C corporation is recognized as a separate taxpaying entity. A corporation conducts business, realizes net income or loss, pays taxes and distributes profits to shareholders.
The profit of a corporation is taxed to the corporation when earned, and then is taxed to the shareholders when distributed as dividends. This creates a double tax. The corporation does not get a tax deduction when it distributes dividends to shareholders. Shareholders cannot deduct any loss of the corporation.
S Corporation
S corporations are corporations that elect to pass corporate income, losses, deductions and credit through to their shareholders for federal tax purposes. Shareholders of S corporations report the flow-through of income and losses on their personal tax returns and are assessed tax at their individual income tax rates.
This allows S corporations to avoid double taxation on the corporate income. S corporations are responsible for tax on certain built-in gains and passive income.
To qualify for S corporation status, the corporation must meet the following requirements:
  • Be a domestic corporation
  • Have only allowable shareholders
    • Including individuals, certain trust, and estates and
    • May not include partnerships, corporations or non-resident alien shareholders
  • Have no more than 100 shareholders
  • Have one class of stock
  • Not be an ineligible corporation i.e. certain financial institutions, insurance companies, and domestic international sales corporations.
Limited Liability Company (LLC)
A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a business structure allowed by state statute. LLCs are popular because, similar to a corporation, owners have limited personal liability for the debts and actions of the LLC. Other features of LLCs are more like a partnership, providing management flexibility and the benefit of pass-through taxation.
Owners of an LLC are called members. Since most states do not restrict ownership, members may include individuals, corporations, other LLCs and foreign entities. There is no maximum number of members. Most states also permit “single member” LLCs, those having only one owner.
Like I said previously, you need to consult your accountant or lawyer to help you decide which business structure is best for your blogging business. Most bloggers start off as a sole proprietorship and then convert to one of the other structures as they grow from a hobby to real business.

How to Raise a Million Dollars for your Blog

 Do you know that you can raise a million dollars for your blog today? Does your blog have what it takes to raise a million dollars? If I provide you a step by step action plan for raising a million dollars, will you be willing to implement it? If your answer is yes; then read on.
Most people are now used to hearing the news of blogs that sold out for thousands and millions of dollars; but most people never hear of blogs that raised millions without selling out. Yes, you can raise money for your blog without selling out or giving up control of your blog. Do you want to know how? Then keep reading.
Few months ago, the media was filled with the news of how Arianna Huffington was in the process of raising millions of dollars for her blog; Huffington Post. The deal attracted so much attention that even Jeremy Shoemaker said he has been inspired to consider doing the same for his own blogs. Now regardless of whether you need to raise funds or not, you definitely need to read this article because even if you don’t need cash today; you might need it tomorrow for expansion or whatsoever.
As at the time of writing this, I am in the process of raising capital for one of my blogs. Though I am under legal obligations not to reveal the details of the deal, I will do my best to share with you the process it took me to get to where I am today.

Why do you want to Raise Money for your Blog?
The first step to raising capital is to ask yourself why you need the money. Are you raising money just to cash out from your blog? Or you are raising money to pursue an expansion plan? Or are you raising capital for the sake of striking strategic partnership? Regardless of your reason, you need to answer this question because investors would want to know what you intend to do with the money?

Does your blog have what it takes to raise the needed capital?
Is your blog a business or a job? If you are a sole blogger; then you are not going to get much attention from investors. But if your blog can run without your input or presence, then you can get as much money as you want. Take Problogger.net for instance, it now runs without the direct supervision of Darren Rowse. It’s now being operated by a team of web developers, writers, guest writers and editors. Before trying to raise capital for your blog, you should make sure your blog daily operation is off your neck.
Another thing to take into consideration is your blog profitability. How profitable is your blog? What’s your blog monetization strategy? Is your revenue stable? Does your blog serve a broad or narrow niche? Is your blog an authority blog or an underdog? Is your niche a growing trend or a declining one? These are some of the questions you need to answer before starting the process of raising money for your blog.

Do you have what it takes to raise a million dollars for your blog?
Have you seen good blog business models that failed to make money? Have you seen blogs with high traffic and subscribers, yet; the blog is unprofitable? Well, I bet your answer is yes. The problem of most blogs is not the blog; and it’s not all about the tools. It is all about the person behind the blog or business. If a dullard is at the helm of affairs of a profitable business model; that business is bound to crumble. Sometimes, investors invest in personality; not the business. So how do you boost your chances of cashing out from your blog? How do you increase your chances of raising the needed capital?
Credibility
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and only five minutes to ruin it. If you think about this, you will do things differently.” – Warren Buffett
The first and probably the most important criteria to raising or money for your blog is your credibility. Call it your track record and you won’t be wrong. Who are you? Who are your partners? How credible are you? Who have you successfully done business with in the past? How much have you raised or borrowed in the past? What’s your credit rating? How many successful blogs have you built in the past? These are the type of questions investors go all out to find answers to. The more positive your records are, the more likely you will get the cash you need.

Competence
Investors buying a stake in your blog are doing so with the expectation of receiving cash flow or a return on their investment. Therefore, they are going to be interested in knowing who is at the helm of affairs. Competence is the next key to successfully raising funds for your blog. Are you an authority in your niche? How consistent has your blog growth been? How do you handle challenges? Can you maintain your cool in the face of problems? These are the type of questions that tends to evaluate your level of competence. Aside the usual business plan and financial statement; investors want to see confidence and competence on the part of the fund seeker.

How to Position your blog to attract investors

Build a strong management team
Money follows good management. This statement is the truth in its entirety. Business is a team sport; so also is investing. Show me a blog that raises millions of dollars like Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and Weblogs and I will show a blog ran by a team that know their onions. The primary reason most bloggers will never raise money for their blog is because they are trying to do it alone. Who is on your team? Who runs the daily operations of your blog? This is the most important question investors want an answer to because a strong management team inspires confidence.
“Individuals don’t win in business; teams do.” – Sam Walton
Keep a financial statement
“Accounting is the language of business.” – Warren Buffett
“Cash flow is the life blood of business.” – Robert Kiyosaki
If these two statements are anything to go by, then a financial statement is a vital requisite; not just for building a successful blog but all businesses in general. Once again I repeat, keep a financial statement for your blog; it’s going to be the foundation of your fund raising adventure.
Have a fast growth plan
How fast is your growth plan? How long will it take your potential investors to get back their money? The lesser the time your business plan promises to payback investors; the more likely you will get the funds you need.

Build a brand, not a blog
“If you are not a brand, you are a commodity.” – Robert Kiyosaki
How long will it take blogs like Problogger, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, ShoutMeLoud and Copyblogger to raise any amount of money they need? It will cost these blogs minimal time and effort to raise any amount they want. Why? The reason is because they are recognized brands in their niches, with good management and worldwide readership. So if you want to increase your chances of raising capital now or in the future, then build a strong brand for your blog.

How to Raise Capital for your Blog

Ask a broker to value your blog
One of the first important steps you must take before starting the process of seeking funds for your blog is to evaluate the value of your blog? How much is your blog worth? There are several tools and parameters on which you can estimate the value of your blog but if you want to get the best result; I will advice you employ the services of a broker/website consultant. Why? The reason you need a website broker to evaluate your blog is to get the job done professionally.
A good broker will evaluate your blog for you, tabulate your blog parameters, write a contract sheet or term sheet, identify some weaknesses in your blog, help you identify some potentials in your blog which you can use as a selling point and most importantly; help you through the entire process of the fund raising campaign.
How much stake you are willing to give?
After estimating the value of your blog, the next step is to sit back and think of how much stake you are willing to let go off. Are you going to sell 20%, 45%, 50% or 70% of your blog? Do you want to raise money for your blog while still retaining control? Or you want to give up control while still holding a stake in your blog? All these questions must be carefully answered before you even write your contract note or term sheet.

How much money do you want to raise?
How much do you intend raising? This is another crucial question you must find an answer to. Do you want to raise $5,000 or $10,000 or $100,000 or a million dollars? Before deciding on how much you want to raise; it’s important you bear in mind that the amount you want to raise is proportional to the estimated value of your blog and the quantity of stake you are selling. What this means in essence is that the higher the value of your blog, the more money you will get and the more number of stake you are willing to sell; the more money you will get. It’s as simple as that.

Write a prospectus for your blog
An important but often ignored tool for getting a higher price for your blog is a prospectus. Now a prospectus is not the business plan of your blog; but it may contain some vital information from your plan. A prospectus is a piece of document or brochure containing information that tends to increase your chances of selling your blog. In other words, the job of a prospectus is to arouse the interest of a potential investor/buyer and make such a person want to buy your blog immediately.
Now what makes a good prospectus? A well written prospectus should contain a brief overview of what your blog stands for. It should also contain details about your blog’s financial position, its current traffic level and its potential targeted traffic level. Your prospectus should also contain details of your blog’s competitive advantage and its aggressive revenue growth plan. Most importantly, your prospectus should contain a potential plan that will help your investor recoup his investment in less time than stated in your blog’s plan or term sheet. Once this is done, then you have dramatically increased your chance of getting the needed funds for your blog.

Approach potential investors
Do you know anyone that has the potential to invest in your blog? Is there any company with a track record of buying up or investing in websites? If you know of any, then now is the right time to approach them. And if you ever get a chance to pitch an investor, make sure you are polite. Never exaggerate, inflate or hype your blog statistics. Just stick to your plan and keep your presentation brief; except when the investor asks for more in-depth explanation or details.
As a final note, I want you to know that raising capital is not only a game of skill; it’s a people’s game. And if you are ever going to sell or raise money for your blog; don’t wait till that time before you start the process. Start now! After all, it wasn’t raining when Noah started building the ark. Good luck.

Rich way of the Internet


Much we can do to get rich from the internet. Rich is not a figment of the internet but it is not also a practical which can be obtained without labor. Everything remains to be business and enterprise. One way to get rich from the internet business is by following the adsense program. In this paper I focus on the Beru you hear this.

My experience in the field of internet marketing especially in adsense is proof that this business can actually make money and also not an easy business at the same time not too difficult. So basically if you live happily Insha Allah bad.

 I play my Adsense begins inspired after seeing a friend of mine who only cafe operator, but his salary adsense reached $ 700 per month. Since then I take my time and a half hours a day to update my blog who speak English. I was initially confused by the content / contents of which I will put in the blog. Until I finally found one at a time and eventually became thousands of ebooks that I am ready to make the content on the blog. For those of you who still lay on the Adsense ebook package also exists in the Indonesian language to learn about Andsense or you can also get it in my second book.

After nearly a year to pioneer the blog, the result is now very good. English blog is apparently much-loved and most visitors are from USA and Europe. Here is a proof of my Adsense Report in just 1 day.
I deliberately put that evidence on the link above because the package contains tersebutlah all to my adsense web berasal4 How Rich Quick on the Internet

4 Ways to Money on the Internet




Oh I’m so gonna get so much traffic from Google. Berikut ini akan saya beberkan cara-cara menjadi kaya di internet. Perhatikan baik-baik, ini bukan cara-cara yang biasa Anda temui sebelumnya. Cukup masukkan e-mail Anda di bawah ini dan saya akan segera mengirimkan e-book cara-cara menjadi kaya di internet ke inbox Anda.

Cara 1. Membuat konten.

Content is the King. Presentation is the Queen. Konten adalah sumber dari perhatian. Perhatian mewakili keberadaan pengguna. Pengguna berarti duit. Buat konten sebanyak-banyaknya. Semakin banyak dan beragam konten yang Anda buat, semakin banyak pula pengguna yang terjaring.
Buat konten seperti artikel ini. Tulis 5 cara cepat kaya, dan pastikan 5 langkah pamungkas lainnya dijadikan konten premium yang berbayar.

Cara 2. Kumpulkan konten.

Membuat konten sendiri terkadang susah. Nge-blog saja yang kabarnya cuma ujung dari curhat tak jelas kadang bisa buntu di tengah jalan. Bahkan ironisnya untuk membuat konten 140 karakter saja orang tak mampu — akhirnya malah ReTweet terus-menerus.
Kumpulkan konten dari internet. Konten adalah sumber dari perhatian. Perhatian mewakili keberadaan pengguna. Pengguna berarti duit. TweetMeme, Digg, Reddit adalah contoh tempat-tempat perbudakan 2.0 di mana Anda bekerja tanpa dibayar dan mereka mendapatkan keuntungan dari keringat Anda. Oh, Google bahkan lebih parah.

Cara 3. Buat Platform.

Nah, ini impian banyak orang. Bagi yang tidak berbakat membuat konten, atau bahkan tak punya kemampuan RT, ada alternatif bagi Anda untuk membuat platform. Membuat platform berarti menyediakan sarana bagi orang lain untuk bermain di atas “halaman” Anda.
Serunya, pemain ini tidak hanya menyediakan alat untuk memperbudak pengunjung lewat konsep “user generated content”. Pemain ini juga akan menjadi daya tarik bagi pengguna yang ingin mendapatkan manfaat tertentu yang tidak disediakan oleh pemain di luar halaman Anda.
Dengan keuntungan berlipat ganda lewat UGC dan penarikan pengguna ke platform kita, orang sering salah kaprah bahwa metode ini memerlukan modal besar dan tidak dapat dimasukkan dalam skema cepat kaya lewat internet. Pemikiran ini salah! Cara ini tak memerlukan banyak modal. Satu-satunya modal yang diperlukan adalah “salah langkah”. Niatkan membuat situs buku tahunan bagi sekolah Anda lalu sadarilah beberapa waktu kemudian bahwa Anda salah langkah dan ternyata situs Anda sudah berubah menjadi social network site.

Cara 4. Bermain di atas platform.

Bagi yang pengecut dan tak berani membuat platform, jangan berkecil hati. Menjadi pemain di atas platform orang lain juga bisa membuat Anda cepat kaya di internet. Kalau kata @dreampipe, bermain di platform orang lain itu enak karena kita secara tak langsung sudah diglobalisasi. Tak perlu memasarkan aplikasi sampai ke Timbuktu karena secara otomatis, orang-orang Timbuktu akan mendapatkan update bahwa ada aplikasi yang bisa mereka pakai.
Tapi Anda harus hati-hati memilih platform. Beberapa platform mungkin akan menuntut Anda untuk membayar tiket masuk. Beberapa akan paranoid untuk memastikan bahwa Anda tidak akan membuat aplikasi “amoral”. Pancing pengguna dengan aplikasi gratis yang membuat ingin tahu namun menyebalkan. Menyebalkan karena menghabis waktu berharga Anda hanya untuk menunggu (dan cara mempercepat berarti membuka dompet).