Tuesday
Try And Make Money from Day One
 Ed of the excellent The Pisstakers website raised an interesting subject about at what stage a blog should be monetized.Should you start trying to make money from day 1 or wait until the blog or website is established with a regular readership? Ed took the view that it's important to build traffic first and this is generally the view that the 'experts' take. But, as yc of Internet Marketing Mind has mentioned, "If you get only 10 visitors a day and only 1 of them generates revenue of some sort, that is still revenue." And that is very true. I have always been of the opinion that: Any profit is good profit. If I was asked for an opinion it would be that you might as well monetize as soon as the blog is set up as long as ... (1) You don't over do things and plaster the blog full of flashing banners so that it detracts from what you are writing - the content is the important bit of the blog. I can't see that putting something like, say, AdSense on your blog is going to do any harm. To me having a few ads gives a little substance to the blog. It doesn't appear so empty and uninviting when the visitors arrive. (2) And, of course you mustn't get disappointed when you don't get many clicks. They will come as the traffic increases - providing you do the proper things. When I got my first few cents shown on AdSense you would have thought I'd have made a million. It was a great feeling and when I hit a full dollar sheer ecstasy! Okay, perhaps a bit exaggerated but even a few cents show that you can make money and encourages you to keep going. What happens if you take the other viewpoint and build your traffic first and then nobody clicks on your banners, or whatever you are promoting? Disappointment? A feeling that it's all been a waste of time? Monetize straight away, be realistic with your expectations and remember that thing about oaks and acorns ... or perhaps you disagree. Whatever ... Good luck, Mike. Subscribe to Mike's Money Making Mission Subscribe to Mike's Money Making Mission by Email Labels: make money |
I agree with you. I had the same feeling when I made my first dollar. It also helps to start off from the beginning and use a process of elimination to find what progammes work for your sites.
"I discovered this for myself when I dabbled with Hit Exchanges last year. These got me lots of visitors but I found they were of little value and were mostly cosmetic. I wrote about this back in December 2006: Is Traffic From Hit Exchanges Worthwhile?." from the 'proper things' link in your post.
Would hit exchanges be more worthwhile now since you have CPM type ads like Voxant's Newsroom to capitalize from the many visitors you get? Or is that type of traffic still of no use?
Now that you've mentioned it, Mike, I think what could be stressed more is the patience and management of expectations. Many bloggers no doubt go into blogging to make money, but sometimes these goals are not well managed especially with all the hype around and also personal responsibility of your own efforts. When these lofty goals (which often happen to be the duplicated goals of other bloggers who have 'made it') are not reached, many give up and denounce it as deceit. I have very average traffic for a new blog and my monetisation results are certainly nothing to crow about, but while I have long term goals, I view every short term gain as a growing step.
Good post and thanks very much for the mention. :)
Thanks for the comments.
Sean: the elimination process isn't always accurate if the traffic is low, but it does give an indication.
mitch: I think with Voxant, to earn money, the video would have to be played. With the hit exchanges visits are often only for 20 seconds so there wouldn't be time for this to take place.
yc: Yes, with blogging there is a lot of hype and 'experts' are everywhere. The truth is though that blogs take a while to build. Even ProBlogger wasn't making money right from the start. It takes time.
Mike.
Good points, Mike, and I think that you are right to start as you mean to go on and monetize from day one. Yes, i am eating crow, not crowing!
The main concern is that although I have no intention of plastering Adsense everywhere, there may be a sense of Oh oh! when readers see the first evidence of monetization after a year or so of pure blog!
On the plus side, I guess that when I do monetize the site, the learning curve to find out what works and what doesnt will be less steep for me, because over the course of a year I have been mentally noting other people's monetizing techniques that seem to do well. Also, the money making terms and concepts make more sense to me now than they did with no blog experience.
I will emulate what is working well for your blog and see how quickly it takes me to earn $3000. Perhaps a springboard will give me accelerated potential and i willleave you in the dust! Who knows, till it comes into operation.
Ed: You could well leave me in the dust! At times I'm just not serious enough about my blogs.
I think it was ProBlogger, though I'm not 100% sure - might have been another A-lister, said that when he first monetized only a handful of people mentioned the fact and it made no difference to his traffic numbers.
I'm not sure that everyone analysis and observes all that you have done - you are a pro!
Mike.
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Sorry to have to delete the above comment. I don't do spam!
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