Affiliate Marketing: Up's and Down's

Here's something I've learned about doing affiliate marketing with your blog:  you have to be patient. 

You may go days with low sales (or in my case, no sales), then suddenly have a big day that makes up for all the slow ones.  Sometimes I get a little restless after a few slow days and start thinking about starting a new advertising campaign, etc. 

But I've learned to let the process work.  I'll keep getting traffic if I keep writing good content.  As long as I'm consistent, the money will eventually come. 

Earning Money at Home

2010 has started off well for me--January was my most profitable month ever in terms of blogging.  We're not talking huge money here, but every little bit helps.  

It takes a lot of work to make a profitable blog, and I'm far from an expert on this.  I'll probably never be an expert because other aspects of my life are far more important to me.

But I will say this--the whole idea of making money through a blog is just super-cool to me.  Maybe I'm just easily amused.   

Passive Income: Myth or Reality?

I think a lot of people are drawn to blogging by the lure of "passive income"--making money while you sleep. 

There's some truth to this idea:  your blog will be visited even when you are away from the computer.
 
But it takes a lot of work to create a profitable blog with decent traffic.  Passive income is only possible after you've invested a great deal of time and effort. 

Making Money: The Multiple Website Approach

I've run across a few programs that are based on the idea of creating multiple websites.

Here's the basic concept: you do keyword research, build a small website around that one keyword (or key phrase), and you monetize it.  This seems to be what programs like Google Sniper and The Mini Site Formula are advocating.

Has anyone out there tried this strategy?  I'm assuming it could work if done correctly, but I'm not sure I'd personally enjoy it.

Three Reasons You're Not Making Money on Adsense

1. Low Traffic

Generally speaking, the more traffic you have, the more profitable your website will be—it’s a simple numbers game.  Only a small percentage of visitors will click ads, and you’re not going to make big money per click.  If you want to make more money through adsense, one of your primary goals should be to increase your traffic. 

2. Poorly placed ads

Obscure ad placements will also hurt your chances of making money through adsense.  Below is a graph from the adsense help page.  The darker the color, the better the ad placement:

I’ve also read that large rectangles tend to outperform other ad sizes. 

Let’s put this together: you should put a large rectangle ad directly over your content.  The next ad or two can be placed alongside or under the content.

By the way: blend the colors with your blog—making the ads too gaudy will just irritate your readers.

Here’s how this looks on my fitness blog (strongandfit.net):

The ad above my content always makes the most money.  Ads on the side also make some money (that "5 Tips To" is another adsense rectangle), but the top rectangle out-performs all other placements. 

3.  The topic/theme of your blog just isn’t conducive to making money on adsense.

This one is a little harder to explain, but I’ll try.   I’ll give to you a personal example.  My first blog (KuyaKevin.com) has now received over 400,000 hits (I’ve been writing post on it since 2006).   But it isn’t profitable, and probably never will be.  Adsense only helped slightly offset some of my advertising costs.   

Here are a couple reasons KuyaKevin.com isn’t great for adsense:

1. It tends to draw ads from religious websites, which don’t seem to pay that well.
2. The content tends to be a bit random since it is my personal blog.

I basically just gave up using adsense on KuyaKevin.com.  It was more trouble than it was worth (I found myself having to block all kinds of religious whacko websites). 

It doesn’t mean I stopped blogging—I just gave up on using adsense for my personal blog.

Here’s where I’m going with all of this: if you have a personal blog that just isn’t profitable (despite decent traffic and well-placed ads), you may want to consider starting up another, more focused blog.  Perhaps you have a hobby you could start blogging about.  The possibilities are endless, so feel free to experiment. 

I hope this article helps you with more profitable blogging.

Cash 4 Gold Scam

I found this posted on a couple of blogs like this one.

It is supposedly from a former Cash 4 Gold employee.

I am a former employee of Cash 4 Gold. I did not know much about the company before being hired. On my first day of being hired, I was taught the "Cash 4 Gold Scam" from beginning to end.

1. The "refiner's pack" that is used for you to put your jewelry is "insured for UP TO 100 dollars, " according to how much they determine from a description from you, the worth of your items to be, NOT an actual fully researched appraisal.

2. We receive your "Refiner's Pack" within 3-4 days, BUT we are instructed to tell you that it takes "7-10 business days, for us to receive your pack, ALTHOUGH many times, your package has already arrived.
(All cash4gold customers who have called customer service to track a package can vouch for this)

You can read the whole thing HERE.

If that link doesn't work, try this one.

Are all these allegations true?  I don't know.  One thing is for sure--I would not advise you to send your gold to them.