RSS Feed Competition on the Horizon

This past weekend I was challenged to an RSS Feed competition by Michael over at Michael Talk. Weighing my options it seems like participating in this can only be a good thing. Essentially we will set a start and finish time for the competition, in which we will try to get as many people as possible to subscribe to our respective feeds. Here's likely what will be involved:

• FeedBurner email subscriptions so I can track the number of new subscribers to the blog
• Randomly drawn prizes for my email subscribers
• Some sort of award going to either Michael Talk or my blog...could be free ad space? I don't really know.

When Shoe Money and John Chow did this, they chose to give the winner a one way link to their page. In terms of their two sites, thats a pretty big award seeing how they are often competing for viewership. I'd say that's hardly the case here. Any publicity either of us gives to the other is positive. That's why I look forward to doing this. I'm not sure if it will happen before the end of this year, as I will be on vacation for part of December. I can't afford to lose any promotion time. :p

P.S. Make Money Blogging Part III is coming!

make money online - make money blogging - earn money online (What the hell is wrong with my Google Adsense ads? These public service ads are murdering my clickthrough rate. What is that! Will fix it later...)

Make Money Blogging Part II

Another form of revenue through blogging can come through the sole activity of selling text links. Every blog out there contains plenty of text links, so the commercial route of this will fit your website design just fine without looking out of place.

Similar to blogs that are made for commercial posting, the text link blog can make you money with little traffic. Ideally, you want to have a higher PageRank in order give your site the appeal to link buyers. However, your PageRank should not be the reason you sell the links. To avoid damaging your own PageRank, you will need to do one of a few things. Firstly, the links should be relevant to your content in some way. Google is less likely to bother you if there is some value to the links you display. Secondly, you can divert the purpose of selling links from solely making money. For example, the My Top Spots widget allows for your readers to get a no-follow link back to their site in exchange for a tip; you set the price.

If you’re not worried about your PageRank, which is less the case for people with no marketing money, you can keep going with my text-link optimization suggestions. To make sure you keep a constantly rising profit for text links, you want to assure two things. First, set a price which suits the amount of traffic you get. Use this as a base price. Then, you can add an extra cost for ‘premium’ listing which may include a link at the end of a blog post, at the top of your blogroll, or in a special section for your ‘favorite websites’. Second, you want to limit the amount of time the link gets on your website. This obviously means that you aren’t committed to sites, but more importantly that if your traffic increases over that time, you can raise the price for next time around. As Google struggles to keep a tough foothold over text-link selling, you will see an overflow of pioneers trying to profit from the lost market space. My Tops Spots is only the beginning.

Another completely different way of profiting from the blogging world is to maintain and create another blog’s content. If you’re a proficient writer, you can forget about having a blog altogether and write for numerous blogs. This will then expose your abilities and possibly lead to more assignments. To do this, you will need to join a blog network. This is for those who don’t like operating a website and would prefer to just get paid for posting.

A newer, developing type of blogging is starting to be used more and more these days, but doesn’t apply to everyone. If you already have a business page, you can create a blog to give updates about your company, its products and the people who make it happen. If you think this is too informal for your company then you’re mistaken. Huge sites such as Google, Alexa and Facebook all run personal blogs. The blog can be used to promote the business and acts as another source of traffic.

Make Money Blogging Part I

There are several ways to make money by blogging. Luckily, many do not find writing a blog a chore. If you can make money doing what you like, the better hope you have at maintaining it, building up your readers and increasing your revenue. There are a number of approaches to making money with your blog.

If you plan on spending a lot of time on your blog, the rewards will be greater. Therefore, you need to pick a topic you know a lot about or have an interest in. If you have a number of topics which fit this description, then pick the one which you think is the most popular to others. In this type of blog, you will be providing useful information and your personal takes on your subject. High maintenance, but high reward.

Many also choose to blog on topics which give them pay automatically. Advertisers will fork out money to get you to promote their products or services in a blog post. The more traffic your blog gets, the more the advertiser will be willing to pay you. This technique can provide you with a substantial income, but the reality is that it will be tough to simply run a blog with sponsored posts. You must already have an established blog intact in order to make a success out of your sponsored posts campaign. Sponsored posts will also likely bring down the credibility of your website if it was once a personal blog. You need to limit the number of sponsored posts you make. I’ll leave that judgment up to you. Ultimately you should not try to make a living solely on sponsored posts, but they’re a good way to make a quick buck.

Another way to generate revenue from a blog is much easier but less rewarding. With multiple blogs you can generate income with little work and no maintenance. If you create a blog with 25 keyword-filled posts on a topic, and do that for a large number of blogs, each will earn you a few bucks a month. Once they’re set up, they won’t need much maintenance. To boost your success with these, you should write about something that doesn’t need updating regularly. In other words, don’t talk about things like celebrity gossip or sports results. Here is a list of websites that will pay you for reviewing products:

PayPerPost
Blogsvertise
Review Me
Smorty
SponsoredReviews
LoudLaunch
Blogitive
BloggerWave

Which ever route you take, make sure you’re writing about stuff that you actually understand yourself. If it becomes evident that you’re just blogging for a profit, it will not bode well for creating a loyal fan base. The world of blogging has lucrative potential, and it’s up to you to fulfill it.

Stay tuned for Make Money Blogging Part II.