Some bloggers are making a full living using Google Adsense, but don’t get me wrong : They are just a few. Work, patience and passion are the three keys to blogging success, and in my opinion, the key to make money online is pretty simple : multiply income streams.
At this point, it can be easy to think that this 1 dollar a day blog is worthless. But it is not. Imagine that you have 99 others sites like this one. Each days, your 100 sites will provide you $100. And a hundred dollar per day isn’t bad at all!
Now, Imagine that in order to raise your income, you decide to implement another advertising network on your 100 sites. Let’s take Text Link Ads for example, with a price of $5/month per link. Each site can display up to 5 links.
Sure, you’ll not sell all available spots, because blogs who make only one dollar per day with Adsense don’t have lots of traffic. But you will sell at least some spots.
100 sites * 5 spots = 500 spots. Being a bit pessimistic, you’ll sell 50 spots per month. And 50 spots * $5 = a $250 raise to your monthly income. Definitely not bad at all!
More sites + More ads = More money in your pocket.
Why you should have multiple sites
When I talk with people online and offline, I really often hear “You have so much sites”, “How many blogs do you manage?” or even “Are you owning the whole Internet?”. In fact, owning multiple blogs and website is an essential aspect of being successful online because it allow you to multiply income sources.
Sure, you can succeed and make a lot of money if your blog is extremely popular. But on the millions of blogs created each month, only one or two will one day provide a decent income to their owner.
Managing multiple blogs isn’t as hard as it seems. If you haven’t read it yet, you may have a look to this article I wrote some weeks ago.
Don’t focus on a single way to make money
An extremely big mistake done by many people is definitely to focus to one (or two) ways to make money online. There’s a lot of different ways to ear money using the internet. For example, you could sell ebooks, use Google Adsense, use affiliate programs, and a lot more.
If you are using BSA on your site, that doesn’t mean that you should stop using Adsense. Sure, some ways to make money online will work better on your blog than some other, and for design/tech blogs, BSA generally brings more than Adsense. But that doesn’t mean Adsense is worthless.
Also, imagine that 90% of the money you earn online is provided by BSA. If one day, BSA goes out of business, you’ll lost 90% of your income which will probably lead your business to bankruptcy. If you took the habit of using lots of differents method to make money, if one cease its activity, you’ll still earn an efficient income that will allow you to save your business.
Don’t be a “free affiliate”
Lots of bloggers talks about products and service on their blogs. And most of them, when they link to the product website, don’t bother using an affiliate link. Instead, they use a “normal” link, which means that they are promoting a product or service for free.
Althought there’s nothing wrong in promoting something you like for free, what about taking a minute or two and check out the product site to see if an affiliate program is available?
Many of you will probably think “Ok, but I don’t talk about the product that much, it is just a link in one of my blog posts.”. If you think that, you are definitely wrong.
Let me explain : Sometimes a link is clicked only once per day. But at the end of the year, that link have been clicked 365 times. And maybe, one or two people that clicked the link bought the product. Which means comissions will be paid to you.
When talking about products (It can be books, plane tickets, web hosting, and a lot more) on your website or blog, you should always verify that the company you’re talking about have an affiliate program. And if they have, don’t be lazy, register and use an affiliate link instead of a normal link.
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I earn 1 cent per day, lol
It’s not that if you’re a blogger, money is nr. 1 on your priority list, but I think it’d be nice to profit of something you like to do.
Also, let’s say people see through the status bar that it’s an affiliate link, and think ‘heya, he’s trying to get me to buy something! fui *click away*’
@Everyone started by earning one cent per day, so don’t worry, blogging is like any job, it taked time and efforts to become an experienced blogger.
I hope this article will help you to turn your daily cent to a daily dollar, and your daily dollar to a daily $10, and so on…
Now that’s a very inspiring read! Thank you Jean, it really makes me want to be a profesionnal blogger!
Though I read from most bloggers encouraging promoting affiliates, my discomfort with it is that unlike adsense, until there is a purchase made…you’re not getting anything from it. While with adsense you always get something from a click, though it’s low in value but its something at the end of the day. I’ve observed a number of probloggers talking against adsense, while they also use it…quite amazing indeed.
@Pedro : Indeed you should blog. Go for it
@Muzi Mohale : I agree that affiliate marketing can seems to be useless sometimes because you’re only paid when you sold something. If you promote products in relation with your content and stuff that can really help your audience, it is sure that you’ll make money.
For example on this blog I shown how I make money using Ebay Affiliate stores using the BANS software. I sold something like 8 copies (and earnt approximatelly $350/$400 with it) because it is REALLY usefull to my audience. This is, in my opinion, the key of affiliate marketing success.
Lucky you Jean, my blog about travel is targeting tourism entrepreneurs…therefore selling them accommodation, car rentals and air-tickets which is what is available on affiliate programs, hasn’t yielded me positive results. I guess it was going to be a different story, if it was targeting the end consumers. So if you know of affiliate products targeting tourism entrepreneurs, I would really appreciate any pointer.
@Muzi Mohale : Sadly I don’t know any program that target tourism entrepreneurs. I’ll let you know if I find any.
Maybe you should launch a second blog to target potential visitors to South Africa?
For example I have a blog that give practical tips to French speaking tourists to New York City with posts like “How to go from the airport to the city center?” or “Ten hotels for less than 50 euro/night in NYC” and it have very nice results despite a very little promotion.
My personal formula of success ist : 3P
1) Be passionate!
2) Be personal!
3) Be patient!
Have a look at one of my (20+) sites, nadelspiel.com and let me outline, how I achieved 65,000 visitors monthly (according to Google Analytics) in German speaking countries. I will launch the English site under knitaholics.net in January 2010.
1) Be passionate!
My opinion (and experience): Do whatever you like to, but do it with passion. This way you will be unbeatable convincing and motivating people to follow you.
Don’t think about money, profit, revenue etc. They will run after you, if you ignore them
2) Be personal!
Your strongest weapon in competition is a flock of followers. Ask them explicitly for their opinion, communicate with them (answer every comment), involve them (give them little tasks, ask them for help/support), inform them (about your future plans, about the development of your site). Think of bonus content for registered users (in my case PDF tutorials as free downloads).
Your followers will ask you, if there is a way, how they could support your efforts.
3) Be patient!
It took little more than 1 year to build the nadelspiel community so far. Meantime more than 1 Mio people watched my video tutorials on YouTube. I recently got an offer from a big German book publishing company for co-operation. We negotiated, that they will sponsor my videos and pay 150 Euro each for 4 videos monthly. No exclusivity. They will produce my video tutorials on DVD and sell it on their platform.
Meantime some hundred visitors bought a 1-year-membership for the Club of Knitaholics for 25 Euro each.
In a few days I will open an online shop with yarn and knitting accessories, as I am asked over and over, when there would be the opportunity to buy the stuff I am writing about.
All this without any ads on my site (I hate ad-cluttered pages) and without doing anything with profit in mind. Actually I only started the whole thing wanting to find out, what’s all the hype about YouTube (I am a trainer on web design and production since 1995).
So, I think, there are various ways to monetize a site beyond selling ads.
Just my 2 Cents, Jean I love your sites and your well pointed articles!
eliZZZa from Vienna, Austria
@eliZZZa Thanks for this very valuable comment, really appreciate it!
eliZZZa, I’m speechless there is a lot to learn from your experience and thank you for sharing your road to success.
I’m not making any money at all from blogging on the Design Informer, but hope to have some affiliate signed up soon. Maybe you should sponsor me.
@Design Informer : In my opinion, BSA should be a great opportunity for your blog. What about giving a try?
Jean, @Design Informer is using BSA http://buysellads.com/buy/detail/15383
@Muzi Mohale : You’re right, didn’t saw it at first. Thanks for letting me know!
@Jean (1st reply) I hope so too^^
@Muzi Mohale(somewhere at the beginning of the conversation) How I can understand you! It’s not only that you have to promote stuff that is helpful to your audience as @Jean says, it’s also that the audience must be ready (and able) to buy something. I don’t know about tourism, but in my niche maximum what one could buy would be a figurine, and that for one of million visitors (and I get ~400 daily, orz).
Affiliate Program… I forgot about that one. Genius! haha.
Great tips, I’m going to register to BSA, thanks Jean.
@Tomas : BSA is very good for webdesign blogs, so go for it, you’ll not regret it
Thanks this are fantastic recommendations, about BSA how this works and what to do to put it to produce?
Regards Oscar
@Oscar Otero : To join BSA you have to go to buysellads.com and create your account. Once done, submit your site for publishing. It will take 2/3 days to be approved (or refused) by BSA. When you’re approved you’ll be able to start selling ads spots on your blog.
I just earned 1 cent per day in my new blog. However, i got a clear direction to go after reading yur article. Thanks!
This post is very encouraging. $1 from 1 sites definitely seems obtainable but managing 100 sites does not. I think my brain is too small.
@Kok Siong Chen : Every blogger started with that. I remember in early 2007, that was my daily earning. But now, 2,5 years later, I earn a lot more. Don’t give up, work a lot, be passionate, and you’ll make it, no doubt about it
@Josh Stauffer : Managing multiple blogs isn’t as hard as it seems. Have you read this post? I explain how I manage all my sites at the same time.
Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. I know you are suggesting different industries and topics. But this also includes relying 100% on adsense for income. It doesn’t take a lot to get banned from adsense and if this is your only income it will really really hurt you.
Affiliate schemes, sponsorship deals and product or service selling are all great additional ways to make money from a blog.