How to Start Making Money Off Your Blog Right Away with Adsense
Well, now that we’ve all got our blogs up and running… it’s time to start thinking about… ah… MAKING MONEY.
The truth is, it can take YEARS to make money blogging. It takes time to start getting traffic. But, I’m of the opinion that you should start monetizing your blog right away. The reason why is, there is nothing quite like seeing your blog make money to motivate you to make it better and get more traffic — even if, at first, your profits probably won’t pay for a burger and fries.
The easiest, simpliest, quickest way to start “monetizing” your blog — geekspeak for “making money off of” — is to use Google Adsense.
For people knew to this, the search engine Google makes money two ways:
1. By SELLING ads through its Adwords Program; and
2. By BUYING ads (or, more properly, brokering ads) on people’s websites through Adsense.
Some people, like me, use both: I BUY advertising through Adwords and I SELL advertising through Adsense (although not on the same sites, a violation of Google’s dreaded Terms of Service).
It only takes a few minutes to get up and running with Adsense — and like everything else associated with blogging, putting Google ads on your blog comes down (once again!) to merely copying and pasting blocks of HTML code.
I have about a dozen blogs at the moment but only one or two are making me any real money through Adsense — but it’s starting to add up. A few months ago, I started making $10 a day through Adsense… then $20… now $30. My goal is to get up to $100 a day on a consistent basis or $3,000 per month.
One thing that REALLY make a big difference for me was using “Adsense optimized WordPress themes” for my blogs. My Adsense income literally TRIPLED almost overnight when I switched themes.
Here is a link to some cool “Adsense Optimized WordPress themes.” The one I like a lot is “BlueSense.” (However, I’m not sure if this is available through the free WordPress site.) I installed it on my hosted websites by FTPing the files to the server like I describe in this video here. Here’s a little blog on natural cures I started that uses BlueSense (although I modified it to more like “Greensense.” It really shows you you can change the colors to fit your blog and get maximum impact for your Adsense ads.
Once again, these Adsense-optimized WordPress themes are FREE! Just download the file to your computer and then follow my instructions for uploading it to your hosted site. Easy as pie.
Of course, you have to already have an Adsense account to make use of these themes. Perhaps I will do a video on that topic soon.
Lesson #9: How to Create and Use Web Signup Forms on Your Blog
I jumped a little out of order on this video lesson. One of my subscribers actually asked about this and so I decided to do this video right away. She wanted to know how you do one of those sign-up forms you see that pop into view and partially obscure the web page.
They’re called “hover boxes,” and, although some people hate them, they are two to three times more effective than most other types of sign-up forms.
Like almost everything else associated with blogging, they are also super-easy to set up and use. If you can copy and paste this sentence, you can set up a web sign-up form. That’s about all the computer skills you need.
Anyway, check out this new video lesson. I bought a new mic and you can actually hear me now.
How to Blog for Your Business
It’s almost a given now that if you have a website, you also have a blog. The question for small-business owners is: Is blogging, twittering, etc., really worth your time?
A lot of bigger companies have decided it is. Just check out this list of 50 companies and how they are using social media. In these examples, I think you can find what TO do and what NOT to do when it comes to promoting your business with social media.
THE BAD
Check out British Airways’ Twitter account. It looks like the subject lines of items in your junk mail folder. Why would anyone follow you to see that? Those who would are more likely to be annoyed than intrigued. What’s worse, there’s no touch of any kind of human voice to these entries. A machine is cranking these out, for all we know.
That’s fine for a big company like British Airways, but a small-business owner does not have the time to write and post things that nobody reads. If you treat your blog as an advertisement, no one will read it, because people don’t seek out advertising. They seek out interesting and thoughtful content. That comes from having a personal touch and displaying your expertise on your subject matter.
THE GOOD
Here’s the blog of Marriott Hotels CEO Bill Marriott.
Notice how it’s written in first person, like an actual blog that someone would seek out. Notice the use of pictures—again, content that people would seek out. Most importantly, it’s about subjects that are interesting and beyond the scope of the company, like John McCain and the Beijing Olympics. OK, so the post from September 8 resembles the adspeak that you do NOT want to do, but looking at the blog as a whole, I think it’s pretty good.
Instead of outright promoting your company on your blog, if you write about interesting subjects in your own voice, it will actually get read—and that’s what actually promotes your company and makes social media worth your time. Read the rest of this entry »
Medical Blogs Can Help Promote Practices, Health Businesses
Medical blogs are emerging as the public face of health care, but bloggers should be aware that patient confidentiality rules still apply, according to authors of the first US study to look at medical blogs and patient privacy.
With more doctors and nurses becoming medical bloggers, researchers have identified a need for universities and professional organisations to provide instruction and guidance on how to blog in a way that maintains professional and ethical standards.
In the new study, the research team headed by the University of Pennsylvania’s Dr Tara Lagu looked at the burgeoning area of medical blogs to see if patient privacy was being respected.
Previous research into medical blogs has tended to focus on the benefits of blogs providing health information. The new study, recently published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, examined medical blogs and looked at how often blog authors commented on patients, violated patient privacy or displayed a lack of professionalism by not revealing conflicts of interest.
The team defined weblogs, or blogs, as a journal-style website with entries posted over time. With an estimated 70 million blogs on different topics and a worldwide average of 120,000 new blogs created every day, identifying all blogs created by health professional was an impossible task. Read the rest of this entry »
Celebrity Blog Can Make Big Bucks as Starmuscle Shows
Starmuscle.com has been highly criticized for its childish humor and unique twist on tabloid news in the entertainment world.
The amateur blog boasts that it is the Mad Magazine of celebrity blogs and takes jabs at other blogs like Perez Hilton and TMZ.
Star Muscle has just hit its two year anniversary and claims to get over 4,000,000 page views monthly.
The daily updated website has celebrity news, fights, arrests, and other Hollywood inside information. Although it doesn’t have the staff that other corporate companies keep, the small operation has been considered a success in the eyes of the owner.
From the President of Starmuscle.com, James Bostick, “I saw that pink-haired overweight freak on TV, Perez Hilton and said to myself….James you are starting YOUR OWN celebrity blog; with funny pictures, real predictions. You are going to create a fun community where people can hang out and talk gossip. So that is what we did….too bad 50,000 other people had the same idea. Oh well.”
You can visit Star Muscle at http://www.starmuscle.com
Lesson #4: How to Create a Professional-Looking Banner Using Free Trial Software
Hey everyone: Sorry it’s taken me so long to finish the fourth lesson. It’s been hectic around here getting ready for school (five kids in four schools! Yikes!).
But I think you’re going to like this video. It’s all about one of the most dramatic things you can do to spice up your blog… which is to create your own banner. This video shows you how to use software available for free on the Internet (for a 15-day trial) to create banners that will make your site look as professional and polished as though they were designed by a pro. The great thing is, you can use FREE WordPress themes as the “base” and then, when you create your own banner, the whole product ends up looking almost custom-made.
One piece of bad news: My audio sucks! I’m having a difficult time getting my microphone to work when using my Internet video software. As a result, the initial part of the video is LOUD… and then when I switch to the demonstration part, you have to crank up the volume to hear me. Sorry about that. I’m still learning this stuff as I go.
As usual, though, I will answer any questions anyone might have. Just drop me an email.
Also, this video is only for people who have their own domain name and hosting account. That’s because you can’t upload a banner to the free WordPress.com blogs. You have to use the ones they give you.
Anyway, let me know what you think. — Bob H.
Why Blog in the First Place?
I had my first “live,” in-person blogging class Wednesday night – and it was a whopping success. The participants were friendly, eager-to-learn and asked lots of great questions.
But one question stood out: Why blog at all? Isn’t this just an indulgent waste of time? Who really cares what you think anyway? Is this “Myspace” for grownups?
I’d like to address that briefly from my perspective as a veteran copywriter.
1. Advertising Saturation. First off, we are living in a hyper-marketing world. New technologies have created a situation in which the average person is bombarded by between 500 and 5,000 sales messages every single day.
More and more, marketers are viewed as SCUM, unwanted guests who shove their way into our personal spaces and whom we want to avoid at all costs. We create strategies for filtering out sales messages – from TiVO screening commercials to spam filters for our computers.
2. Peer to Peer. What this means is that, increasingly, we are turning to peers or friends for our buying advice. If we’re thinking about buying a computer, we ask our friends which is better, not the sales guy at the computer store.
3. Making Friends. Businesses of all types are discovering, therefore, that they have go back to basics if they want to sell anything to people. They have to actually make friends with their prospects first… and only later sell them something. They have to serve their customers by providing them with quality information that they can trust.
4. Starting Conversations. And that is why blogging is increasingly a “must have” tool for all businesses – especially mom and pop operations but also big businesses as well. Blogs are designed to create two-way conversations. They allow readers to post comments on your posts – and you can interact with your prospects and customers.
5. Getting to Know Customers. Blogs allow people in a market niche to tell businesses what they REALLY want… as opposed to what businesses THINK they want. They allow businesses to GET TO KNOW THEIR CUSTOMERS, to make friends with their customers. They allow businesses to test out ideas and concepts in a low-cost way and see what their market thinks about them.
6. Peer to Peer Marketing. Blogs are easy-to-create, inexpensive and easy to modify. That allows small businesses to use technologies – including email newsletters, videos and mass marketing – until recently reserved only to big companies.
Bottomline: So, the bottomline is this. The reason why you should be blogging if you’re in business is that blogging allows you to identify, interact with and serve prospective customers in your market niche.
You can build an online business by dedicating yourself to SERVING a particular market niche – whether that niche is professional crocket players or knitters or Mixed Martial Arts enthusiasts.
You become a preeminent CUSTOMER of your own niche. You buy all the products that people want to sell to your prospects – and then you tell your prospects what are valuable and what are crap.
Do that… be a true and loyal friend to your market… and then, when it comes time to sell your market something, they will trust you and buy from you. You’ll have built up enough street “cred” so that your market will know you know what you’re talking about.
That’s why you should start blogging. Identify a market you want to be in. Step up and become a “servant leader” in your niche. And then start selling people what they really need and want.
P.S. If you haven’t started a blog yet, you can set up a free blog in under 2 minutes by viewing by free video here. If you’d like to get your own domain name and start a blog for business, you can start here.
Lesson #3 Now Posted: How to Modify WordPress Themes with Tiny Tweaks to the CSS
I keep coming back to the metaphor of lifting the hood of a car: You don’t have to understand how the entire engine works to replace a battery or add some oil. Getting into the “guts” of a WordPress blog, like lifting the engine of a car, means leaving 98% of it exactly as you find it. You just have to know how to find the one or two things you have to tweak a bit.
This video is about “tweaking” your WordPress template or “theme” just a tad to get it to look the way you’d like. Actuallyy, what I actually demonstrate is how to WIDEN the main content box from the default 534px (pixels) to 700 pixels. I do this because I like BIG photos in blogs. I think every post should have a great photo going along with it. Also, a 700px-wide content box means that, when you get around to posting videos — as I hope all of my students do — the wide format makes for much better video.
Anyway, check out this video. It’s free. It’s short. And I think it will teach you a thing or two.
Lesson #2 Now Posted: Exchanging the Boring Default WordPress Theme for an Exciting, Professionally-Designed One…
Well, after no less than three attempts, I finally recorded the second video lesson. It demonstrates how you log on to the WordPress Control Panel (very easy) and then, in the second part, shows you how to REPLACE the boring default “theme” (template) that WordPress provides with one of the thousands of professionally-designed, free themes you can find on the Internet.
This is probably the most difficult lesson of all for complete beginners… because it involves getting into the file structure of the blog through BlueHost and FTP-ing (file transfering) the themes you find elsewhere on the Internet. (In case you don’t know, I recommend BlueHost as a web hosting company because it throws in domain name registration for free but most of all because, once you’re a customer for one blog, every additional website/blog is only $10 a year, including domain registration. GoDaddy charges $6.95 a year just to “lock down” the domain name… so if you want to do a few blogs/websites for business, BlueHost is a better deal.)
But if you follow along with this video closely, you’ll see that swapping out the WordPress themes is actually very easy — and I guarantee that when you see how dramatically the design of your blog can change literally with the click of your mouse, I think you’ll be very excited.
So: check it out! Click on the video below to get started. The sound is a little iffy now and then but persevere. I think it will be worth it.
Create a Professional Looking Internet Blog in Under One Hour and Learn How to Promote It!
Are you interested in launching an Internet blog or website but don’t have a clue how to get started? Programs like Dreamweaver are notoriously complex – and free blogging sites, like Blogger, often look amateurish and are difficult to modify.
Join me (beginning blogger Robert Hutchinson) for an introductory, super-simple one-hour class on setting up a professional-looking blog and (just maybe!) launching your own Internet business. I started just six months ago and am only two steps ahead of being a complete beginner myself. But I can show you…
- How to open up a web hosting account for as little as $6.95 a month – and then add as many websites as you want for just $10 a year each!
- How to set up a WordPress blog – and then switch to FREE professionally-designed templates (themes)… provided with the class.
- How to go inside your blog to modify the CSS code (horror!) to get the blog to look the way you want it.
- A simple and inexpensive way to create professional-looking banners for your site using a $39.00 program…
- How to create unlimited email addresses for your site.
- How to get your blog listed on the major Internet directories and search engines.
- How to “ping” the web directories so Google will track your blog posts. And MORE!
This is an introductory “beta” class for complete beginners who only know how to access the Internet and use a web browser.
If want, you can bring your own laptop and a credit card to the class and set up a blog on the spot.
The LIVE class is limited to just 10 to 15 people. The cost is $20 for one hour.
Future one-hour classes will also cost $20 each and will cover: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics for ordinary people… how to add social networking upgrades to your blog (like Digg and del.icio.us and Stumble)… viral marketing techniques and refer-a-friend scripts… how to add Adsense and affiliate ads to your blog… Google Adwords strategies… and other stuff.
The class will be held at a hotel or restaurant meeting room the second week of August and September in or near San Clemente (if I can find one with wireless Internet access). If you’d like to attend, please fill out the interest sign-up form below or email me at: bob(at)blogclasses.com
