From zero to 500$ a month
Take following steps, if you don’t want to spend any money:
- Create a blog on http://www.blogspot.com on the subject of your choice (preferably choose a subject which interests you).
- Use some neat and clean template and put your Google Adsense code on it to earn the dollars.
- Give one hour every day to your blog and try to write two GOOD posts (current events, news, reviews etc) on the topic.
- Submit each of your post to all the famous bookmarking sites like digg, netscape etc. (this will take extra 10 mins)
- Go everyday to http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65 and see the NEW DIRECTORY ANNOUNCEMENTS in the section. Submit your site to two new directories every day free of cost.
- Register with some forums in your niche and put your website URL in your signature. Use the forum everyday for half an hour and interact with people in the forum
- When you start getting some traffic from bookmarking sites or forum threads or search engines, you will be making some money out of it in Google Adsense.
- When you get your first $10, start hunting for cheap links for your blog. Remember to get ONLY related links. Please remember to put all your money back into the site (promoting it) for quite some long time. Then will only it will rise.
- Get more and more links when you get more and more money. That will give you more and more traffic. Which means more and more money.
So these are the steps I think I can tell you. Do let me know if you actually plan to follow them.
So the main points here were to get some free traffic first, which will make you some money, use that money to get some paid links, which will increase your traffic further.
Yesterday I was discussing with him like how is his project going. So he showed me his Google Adsense for the last month (6th month). In his 6th month he made around $502. But he has put in all the money he has earned back into his blogs promotion.
Today his 300+ post strong blog (niche: cars specs and news) gets around 1200 uniques per day and make him around $500/month. He says, he still does not need any money right now, so he will be using all his money back into his blog for next 6 months.:)
To continue this story, after suceeding with a blog, in means that you get more than 500 UV a day and actually having returning visitors the next natural thing would be to join an affiliate network, looking for products related to the blog topic, i.e. Shareasale or Azoogle are having good programs and various offers. They earn earn you some additional money to the PPC income and maybe you even create a downline of affiliates earning you more passively.
Well done.
Hi! My name's Luke. I make a living online. Mainly with affiliate marketing. That's the big share on top of the smaller adsense income earned by my blogs. It's big bucks for me and maybe 100x a normal salary here, as I'm travelling and living in Thailand since 2 months now. I mostly work the mornings in small internet shops, like hang out im the afternoons getting tanned and enjoy the nights partying and having fun with friends. I just love this lifestyle. Maybe you can join me soon? :-)
February 24th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
You’ve inspired me to make more effort with my travel blog. You are right of course and adding posts every day is a good idea as it builds up a great store of knowledge and content which people will love.
I saw an excellent example recently of one about growing tomatoes. It had hundreds of posts relating specifically to this one subject.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
This is an excellent step by step post. The only thing that I would add would be to monetize your site more than just with Adsense. Add other affiliate links within your posts. If you do a product review as a post you can link to the product with an affiliate link.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Very inspiring post! Good pointers.The key to making money with blogging is daily effort.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Luke, you have inspired me also. Nice post!
Stumbled.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Neat and simple instructions, I like that. I think I would add a little more emphasis on the forums instruction to actively participate in, not just “use” the forums, but otherwise the instructions are great.
Now if only the practice was as easy as the list. You can write unique and interesting posts from the start, but still wait over a month to see 1k+ visitors per day. Understanding that could help many fresh bloggers go beyond the initial dreamland (seeing dollar signs in their head) to actually making the plan work.
March 15th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Some good ideas in theory, but you’re proposing about 2 hours of work per day between the writing, forum posting, digging and other activities. At $500/month, you’re making about $8.33/hour.
$500/month is some nice extra change if you’re working full-time (or under twenty). If blogging is a hobby for you, then that’s well worth it — but if you’re just motivated by the money, there’s probably a quicker way to get it.
That said — there’s more money to make via blogging if you’re a good writer, a good marketer, and know your topic.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:20 am
When you say to look for cheap links, what exactly do you mean?
Thanks…
March 17th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Thats really great advice and I hope to turn my blog into a moneymaker with time.Thanks for the ideas.