Monetization

Seth Godin had a great post the other day about what he calls the “T-Shirt Rule“. Seth says “It’s a simple test of whether you’ve created a remarkable experience: “Would I buy the t-shirt?” For most things… My answer would be “No”.

However… I got an email from the folks over at the Earners Forum the other day announcing that they would be giving everyone who had 500 pr more posts a free Earners Forum T-Shirt. Unfortunately, I usually just do a lot of lurking but not much posting so I didn’t qualify. The Earners Forum is certainly t-shirt worthy so I asked if they would be willing to trade for some chocolate covered Macadamia nuts, and they DID so I sent them some of Island Princess’ world-famous Mele Macs.

Lee Dodd and his crew liked the nuts so much, they sent me more than one shirt. (Bonus!)

I got several complements on it while walking around Waikiki from some big earners who were here on vacation. One guy who manages a large network of financial and investment blogs was particularly impressive.

Here is a picture my three year old boy took of me in front of Diamond Head with my new t-shirt. (You know you want one)

So… Since I have more than one shirt… I’ll be giving the other away! All you need to do is post a link to my blog and then post something in the comments for where I can find the link and it’s all yours. If more than one person links to me, I’ll pick someone at random.

Aloha,
Dave.

Friends ask me all the time about monetizing a blog. They either have a blog already or would like to start one with the goal of earning money. Graywolf probably has the best advice I’ve seen on the subject of monetization here at the very bottom of this post.

Graywolf’s advise is to not worry about monetizing the traffic at first and just focus on building traffic for the first six months or year. (People are much more likely to link to your blog if it does not have ads, and why bother setting up the ads if there is no audience to click on them anyway?) After it gets some links and regular traffic, then start placing ads on the site gradually.

There seems to be two main ways to go. You can focus all your attention on one blog that you hope will earn an impressive profit or lower the bar and create several, where the combined profit is impressive. The idea of only making a few bucks per day, but on many blogs sometimes never occurs to people. Both strategies work. It’s just a matter of personal preference.

Below are links on the subject that have been piling up in my Bookmarks so I thought that since it’s the end of the year, I would clean out that folder and post “The Best Blog Traffic & Monetization Posts of 2006″.

Enjoy!

Monetizing Blog Traffic

• First impressions count by The Google AdSence Blog
• Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets by Graywolf
• How to Design Your AdSense Ads by Problogger
• Affiliate Marketing Tools by Stuntdubl
• Other Advertising Networks Besides Google AdSense by John Chow
• It’s An Advertising Bonanza! by John Chow
• StumbleUpon Kicks Ass by Greg Hartnett
• Get Perpetual Traffic on Sumbleupon for Ten Bucks by First Page Fitness
• Monetizing with Feedvertising by Top Rank Blog
• How to: Make Money From Your Blog by BoydCreative
• Are you a great Webmaster or Online Marketer? By Hawaii SEO

Copywriting Tips for Blogs

• 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang by Copyblogger
• 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work by Copyblogger
• 7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work by Copyblogger
• 10 Web Tools to Help Generate Blog Content Ideas by SEOmoz
• How to Eliminate the Echo Chamber by Problogger
• Blogging in Bunches by Problogger
• Adding an “About” Page by Problogger
• How to Write Your “About Me” Page by Problogger
• Do’s and Do NOTs of Blogging from the Cre8asite Forrums
• How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic by Copyblogger
• The Smart Way to Create a Sense of Urgency by Copyblogger

Blog marketing Tips

• Blogging for Beginners by Problogger
• 7 Ways to Optimize Your Blog by Folksonomy
• What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content by Lorelle on Wordpress
• 5 ways to building a better blog by Pronet Advertising
• 25 tips for marketing your blog by The Online marketing Blog
• How a Best Posts Page Will Increase Your Blog Subscribers by Stuntdubl
• The 5 deadly sins of blogging by Pronet Advertising
• 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch

Blog marketing Tools

• Crazyegg
• The RSS button maker by The Online marketing Blog
• Links to Weblog Promotion Tools by Stuntdubl
• Adding Social Bookmarking Icons to News Feeds by SEO Egghead
• MyBlogLogging by Pronet Advertising

List of Blog Marketing Links

• A - Z of Professional Blogging by Problogger

Blog Directory Links

• Best of the Web Blog Directory
• Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites by Robin Good
• 223 Places to List Your Blog by Stephan Miller
• Directories with affiliate programs

WordPress Plugins
(Surprisingly… there is very little repetition between the lists)

• SEO Plugins for Wordpress by Graywolf
• Essential SEO-Related Plugins for WordPress by SEO Egghead
• My favourite 10 Wordpress plugins by SeoPedia
• Marketing Pilgrim’s Plugin List by Andy Beal
• Google News Sitemaps Generator for Wordpress by Search Engine Journal
• My WordPress Plugins by Jim Westergren
• 18 WordPress Plugins For Affiliate Marketers by SupperAff
• My Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins by John Chow

Can you produce a useful and pleasing website that generates traffic and sales? If the answer is a big YES!… Keep reading.

If you can build yourself a website and drive some traffic to it, you can place Google or other affiliate ads on your site or sell links or whatever and earn yourself a few bucks. It shouldn’t be too hard for you to create a website that will generate at least $5 per day.

$5 a day is not a huge number for a person who is good at driving web sales and traffic, etc. It shouldn’t take forever to reach that kind of cash flow either. Just pick a topic like weddings, flowers, travel, golf, pets, real estate or whatever you like.

If you can make $5 a day with one website that focuses on something like “Hawaii Widgets” you can probably create a second website on “California Widgets” and make another $5 a day.

Once you’ve made your first one, it shouldn’t take you forever to create the second one… or the third… or the fourth…

If you have 50 websites that average $5 a day… You are making $91,250. per year!

I have met several people with hundreds of websites like this. They whip one out about every two weeks or so.

If you are NOT a great Webmaster or Online Marketer… This is just one of many reasons why finding a qualified person to help you build, design and market your website, isn’t usually very cheap.

Aloha,
Dave.