When I started blogging with Blogger close to two years ago, I wasn’t exactly sure what my expectations for making money online were. Initially, I thought "build it and they will come", blinded by the thought that if I posted a short snippet of a previously published Triond article with a hyperlink to the entire article, would result in an increase of readers. At the time, this wasn’t working and I’ll tell you why.
Google is looking for unique content and what they feel will assist the reader in their search for information. To put it simply, if your content lacks value, it will not be visible to the person performing the search.
So what does this have to do with making money on blogger?
If you can’t place your posts in front of the public, you’ll never get traffic to your blog. If there’s no traffic, there’s no page views counted for adsense and no clicks towards earnings. It’s a circle and you must be able to figure out what direction it’s going in order for you to make money online blogging with Blogger, and not just reading about how.
Adsense
Yes, you may think you know how adsense works, but do you know how to make money with it on blogger? Traffic to your blog on blogger is the key to making money with Adsense. You will see earnings from clicks, however many people don’t realize that they will also receive earnings from unique impressions. In order to receive money from unique impressions, your blog must have a significant amount of unique traffic. If you are only seeing close to 90 impressions a day on your site, chances are you will not see earnings on impressions. In my case, if I receive 200 impressions on a blog, I will start seeing some change add up. The trick is to direct traffic using SEO methods which I will discuss shortly.
Pay Per Post
Payperpost is a review site for blogs that have been active for at least three months and have a minimum of 5-10 blog posts. You are in complete control and you choose the reviews you want to write. In some cases, you will receive $10.00 for 200 words or $3.00 for 100 words. It depends on your eligibility, the availability of the post, and your desire to write about that specific topic. Don’t limit yourself because you only tend to write poems or short stories. If you want to make money, you must think outside the box and write creatively about the review you have chosen.
Social Spark
SocialSpark is by far one of my favorite sites to write for. Using my page-rank of 4, I am able to receive better opportunities and better reviews, resulting in much higher payouts. Social Spark integrates affiliate programs, CPC opportunities, and sponsored posts allowing you to make much more money than its counterparts.
The reviews range anywhere from $6.00 to $1000.00 depending on your blog rank. There is some very simple code that gets integrated into the HTML of your website or blog which tracks the traffic to your site. I am able to make anywhere from $50.00 a month to $500, depending on the time I devote to the program. As you can see, the program is much more ideal for writers looking to earn a living, rather than counting on page impressions for articles that amount to pocket change.
Review Me and Blogsvertise
ReviewMe and Blogsvertise work in very much the same way, however you don’t have the ability to look for opportunities with these programs. Depending on the traffic and topic of your site, advertisers search for blogs that match their criteria. In most cases, if you have a lower page rank, you will see lower priced opportunities. The trick is, you can set the prices for your reviews, but just remember that if you price them to high, you won’t receive many opportunities. Keep it around the $4.00 to $10.00 range and you should see some action.
Sponsored Reviews
Sponsored Reviews is for seasoned bloggers that have successfully given their blogs a traffic face lift. This site allows the blogger to apply for opportunities ranging from $5.00 to $1000.00. The site does receive a cut from the proceeds of matching you with advertisers, therefore they allow the writers and bloggers to set their own prices. They’re pretty picky on this site, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t receive jobs right away.
Sponzai
Sponzai is one of the newest programs I have signed up for, however the company is owned by IZEA so I have full confidence that they will deliver all of their promises. You are matched up with advertisers that would like you to post an excerpt that describes a product or a site they want you to visit. You set your prices and then post the content that has been provided. It’s as easy as that!
Let’s Work on Your Traffic to Your Blog or Website
Now that you have some ways to make money on blogger, let’s drive some traffic your way. It’s easy and simple, so be afraid of the big bad word “SEO practices”. That’s just a bit of web mumbo-jumbo to frighten bloggers into thinking there’s some some secret recipe to drive traffic. Well, there kind of is, but it’s not so complicated as you may think.
Keywords
This may just be the most important aspect of blogging successfully. Using your keyword in your posts is highly important, however placement of these words is key. Always place your keyword in the first 100 words of your article or post. Google tends to scan only the first paragraph when looking for articles to index. Do not word stuff! There is no point to this, and furthermore, your article will appear to be an attempt at SEO, however you failed miserably and webmasters know it.
Search Engine Submissions
Stop! When using blogger, your posts are immediately indexed into Google, at least in my case they always are. Bloggers spend entirely to much time submitting to search engines that people don’t even use. Concentrate on the larger ones like Bing, Yahoo, Leapfish, and Google. Nowadays, with all of the translators on the larger search engines, there are more readers using them, therefore the less recognizable ones are left in the dust.
Backlinks
Build, build, build. The more blogs, articles, and websites that link to your site, the better your page-ranking will be. However, be careful when using those generated blog lists of followed sites, especially ones that have nothing to do with your blog. It’s nice to link to friends, but those links are leaking your pagerank and taking your traffic. Take time to build links to websites that focus on the same topic you do.
How do you build these links? You have to ask for them, and by asking for them, I mean establishing a presence on someones website by commenting and then asking to trade links. If you don’t comment, you’re not building relationships, and if you have no presence, you have no blog!
Unique Content
Re-posting Triond articles to blogs is in no way unique content. However, if you strategically place them in between unique content, or even link them to the new blog content, they will get much more attention. For example, I have a blog post called Serial Killer Jane Toppan which is directly linked to all of my murder articles on Triond. Now that I have build up my traffic on my blog Friends Revolution, anyone that reads that article will check out every Triond piece I have linked to it, and they have.
Just a quick tip about posting. If you haven’t built up your traffic to at least 200 hits a day, there really is no reason to post material everyday because no one is reading it. If you are spending more time on posting and no time on optimizing your site, you won’t see earnings or increased pageviews. Start thinking about the SEO practices and leave the unique content alone for a bit until traffic starts rolling in.
Do Not Delete Previously Published Posts
If you have a post that you would like to remove, just delete the content and place some simple text like “This post has been deleted”. Deleting posts is suicide for your blog. Google Webmaster indexes all of your blogger posts when published, and if you delete them, they will come up in Google as unfound URLs. Too many of these missing urls can result in the removal of your site from search engines and a drop in pageranking to 0.
Watch Out for Widgets
Widgets not only make your blog look messy, but they slow it down. The last thing any reader wants to see on a blog or website is a widget in their eye-line (eye level). It’s tacky and useless, and you will actually lose readers because of it. Now, some simple Google adsense above posts is fine, but keep those to a minimum as well.
i get the new
November 25th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I have plans to set up a couple of blogs in the new year, so any hints and tips are always good to know beforehand.
Nice one
November 25th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Very informative and well written. Thank you for sharing this information
November 25th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Hi Lauren,
As always, these helpful tips catch my attention as I try to build up the blog. When you say ask for a back link or are giving a backlink, do you just click on the backlink, take the code and add it to the bottom of one of your posts? Thanks for sharing your tips with us.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Chris
November 25th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
These are very useful tips. Thanks for your kindness to share them here.
November 25th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Thanks Lauren, Perfect advice. Bookmarked. j
November 25th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
very useful…
November 25th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
…really excellent!..well written and very informative article..thanks for sharing this great tips..don’t forget to submit your URL’s to Free Submit URL sites..thanks a lot..cheers
November 25th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Good tips…
November 26th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Very useful. I never knew before that deleting posts from blogs could result in you blogs being unrecognized by google. Thanks for sharing.
November 26th, 2009 at 4:18 am
Good advice for bloggers, thanks Lauren.
November 26th, 2009 at 4:19 am
superb and one of the best info ever,Thanks for sharing Lauren!
One thing,Google didn’t pay attention upon keywords so its not much important for Google,Really very good info mate,
Keep on sharing
November 26th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Very useful and precious information. Very well described and presented.
Thank you Lauren.
November 26th, 2009 at 7:16 am
Thanks for the great tips, I am still a guppy in this big pond so any advice really helps. Thanks again F J McCarthy
November 26th, 2009 at 8:46 am
This is by far the most interesting article I’ve ever read on this subject.Thank you, Lauren!
November 26th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Thanks for sharing such interesting post. I and many others will surely benefits from the info shared.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Thanks Lauren, for your helpful advice about blogging.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Very interesting and useful post.
November 26th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Useful info. I will use some of these for my blog. Thanks Lauren.
November 27th, 2009 at 12:34 am
@Chris
One way linking is great if they point towards your blog. If they’re the other way around, they are leaking your pagerank. You have to trade links with other pertinent blogs. If you grab someones button, make sure you let them to know to link back. Otherwise I would remove it.
November 27th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
This blog is on the money! I learned so many new things about blogging for cash. Here is something thats transformed my income online. You’ll be lucky to get a spot if you don’t hurry!
http://drmanhatan.comblue.hop.clickbank.net
November 27th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
@Aristotle
I’ve used clickbank before, and although I know it works for some depending on traffic and the content of one’s website, I really didn’t care for it.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Hi Lauren,
I just posted my first sponsored article on Social Spark. I am just waiting final approval. I am excited about the opportunity. Thanks for sharing.
November 28th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Hey, your post was really helpful, it really summarizes a lot of the pretentious SEO talk, and I’ve signed on to Social Spark too. If you have the time check out my new blog http://shmellyducky.blogspot.com/ for bite sized internet fun
Thanks for sharing!
November 28th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Wow, awesome, detailed information and great article. I had no idea about all those pay-per-post sites.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:04 am
wow this is very good. Thanks for the useful sites you mentioned.
December 4th, 2009 at 2:22 am
wonderful and detailed post….great…thanks for great advising…
December 5th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Great advice Lauren, would love to have a blog as successful as yours!
December 31st, 2009 at 2:16 am
I admire the way you write Lauren. It’s very professional and full of wisdom. I could see how you did the blogging thing systematically. I’m glad I dropped by and read your work.
Thanks for the great advice.
December 31st, 2009 at 2:57 am
Thanks so much for the comments everyone. I try to help when I can. If any of you have any questions about blogger, message me and I’ll do my best to answer whatever questions you have.
January 1st, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Great article, Lauren. I am disappointed that I am just discovering it.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:29 am
Really good stuff. I will check these for sure. Coming from you, at least I know they are not scams
Thanks Lauren
January 27th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
this is what i call a good post … awesome …. I never knew these sites …. informative…
January 27th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
This came at just the right time for me. I had been thinking about starting from scratch with my blog and creating a consistant theme, as I agree that simply linking back to triond articles is a dead end. Thanks for the advice Lauren, I’ll bookmark this for future reference.
January 27th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I can’t believe I missed this the first time around. Those are the sites you were talling me about a few days ago and I’ll be checking them out.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Wow, I thought I knew how to earn money blogging. Am I ever wrong. You have better info than the stuff I paid for. Thank you. There’s a place for you in heaven.