I occasionally get the comment that I shouldn’t publish all my better content on sites I don’t own or control. The comment came up again on HubPages where I was told again that I was basically wasting my time publishing there. Well its true at one level: the actual direct income I make from Adsense/Kontera/eBay/Amazon revenue sharing pays for my hosting: but that’s about it!. No the effect of Hubpages is more subtle than that. I have readers who actually read what I post there. That said my best ever hub in terms of views by hubpages readers is this one high-lighting some sexy pictures of Nicole Kidman. I have a theory on this. As an exclusively English language site HubPages has a quite a number of Indian authors. India still has tight censorship laws which probably block most of the X-rated sites which are prevelent across the internet. HubPages bans “adult” hubs but their interpretation is the same as Adsense’s that is the odd American view of sex which bans (female) nipples but wet transparent clothing is fine. I don’t know for sure but I know that I have had over 200 views a day for weeks at a [...] Read more »
RevResponse – A different Type fo Affiliate
I have a confession – I am not very good as an affiliate marketer. For one I won’t promote anything I don’t actually use myself – and for two most of the stuff I use is free – so no commission – like Q10 Retro Text Editor. So its taken me a while to check out RevResponse – and I only really have because I saw a write up from people like Terry’s – Make MoneyOnline and Grizz’s Make Money Blogging In fact when I clicked through I realised that I recognised the site – I had used it before as a consumer so it must be good! So what’s RevResponse and why do I like it? Well is different, its useful – and its FREE! How good is that? Here’s how it works – RevResponse has a wide range of business and professional magazines on offer – for FREE – yes no catch. You do have to fill in all the contact information and for some offers you have to reside in the right country, but if you are eligible you receive the magazines free. For you greenies: no trees dies – these are e-magazines – so they are [...] Read more »
Google Smart Pricing
One of the things that is worth knowing about Adsense is smart pricing. When I first got an Adsense account I slapped Google ads on every site I had and got excited when someone clicked and gave me a few cents! What bloggers forget though is that unlike say an affiliate program such as eBay: google_logo Originally uploaded by keso where the advertiser only pays the blogger if they actually get a a sale: Adsense you get paid even if someone clicks and then clicks away: your readers random clicks on ads can actually cost the advertiser real money and they won’t be happy unless they are seeing a business return! So Google will “smart price” your ads if your customers aren’t buying from the advertisers they click. Google will smart price all of your websites/hubpages/blogs that you use Adsense on too: not just the site that has the problem. How to Avoid Smart Pricing Don’t add Adsense to your personal blog: its too general to bring either well-paying ads or targeted traffic to your advertisers; Read up about ensuring that your Adsense ads are picking up the right keywords from you titles and other SEO tricks: Check out Grizz’s [...] Read more »
Statistics, more Statistics and Depression
Getting Indexed in Google Are you are a compulsive statistics checker? Do you Google your domain url 15 times a day to see if you are indexed yet? Do you check Adsense on the hour every hour to see if you have made another 6c ? Do you worry if your visitor numbers to your hub or lens drops from 9 to 8? Yes you are obsessed with your statistics. You are not alone: I get out of bed and flick through my domains checking to see if they are in Google’s index yet (Hint: just enter mydomain.com in Google’s search bar will do it). Yes statistics can be very useful: if you can’t measure something you don’t know whether you are getting better or worse. However until you have got first indexed in Google and second had a reasonable amount of time (that’s months not hours people!) to collect statistics you are seeing nothing but meaningless variations. Unfortunately those meaningless variations cause lots of people to give up before they get started. OK your site isn’t making anything after 3 months: you delete it. Unfortunately maybe the next day Google was finally going to index your site and throw [...] Read more »
Keyword Selection for Idiots Like Me.
Hubpages.com has a great scheme where you can write a “flagship hub” and be paid $25 for it plus another $10 as a traffic bonus. The amongst the requirements for the hub is that it must be 1500 words and have a number of links to authority sites. Hubpages also tells you the topic they want to you write about. I assume that those topics are significant in that they believe that we (HubPages and the author) will make money. So writing content rich websites will get me pad – nope – although HubPages paid me the agree $25 for writing the hub getting significant on-going income has been disappointing. I believe the hub’s themselves aren’t the problem – they have lots of good information: unfortunately if someone types into Google : “India Travel Tips” they find my wonderfully informative hub on Indian Travel:they don’t need to follow the advertisements or the EBay or Amazon offerings: I’ve solved the problem for them! So no in my experience content does not pay well! BANS a Different Way to Make Money B o o k s Originally uploaded by katmere Vic over at Bloggerunleashed basically talks about making money in almost the [...] Read more »
So Why this Blog?
One of the common methods of assessment at university is to get students to keep a “learning journal” – I hated the dammed things – used to write the thing at the end of semester after the fact. It was good idea used inappropriately. I find as I try to learn this bizarre world of Internet marketing that I need to keep a learning journal. Unlike the well structured university environment who tells you at the start of term what you are going to learn and then proceeds to teach you item by item until you have been fed all the learning outcomes, I am not sure where my learning on Internet Marketing is going. I know where I want it to go: I want an online income that will approximate my professional off-line income: say US$4500 /month. How am I going to do it? I don’t know to be honest. I have some ideas, more ideas than I ever had about how to build this business but I don’t have a step by step plan. No one has given me the leaning plan on this one! I do know that I need a plan though otherwise I risk running [...] Read more »