SEO : Monetizing Your Blogsite

You might have heard or read somewhere or from someone that you can make money from your site and even from your own blog. I would say this is true to some extent. If you are just beginning and you see an article or blog that says that their site is reaping at least US$1000 it would make you think that it could actually pay your bills! But before you fall into this trap, I would have to remind you that it’s not as easy as they say or you might think. But if you would like to take a try, I might give you some tips to start with.

There are several ways to monetize your site. You have the ad programs, affiliate programs and of course, selling an ebook or something from your site. There may be some other means of cashing in on your site but we’d concentrate on ads and affiliate programs.

So what are the things we really need? Here they are:
1. A Site of Your Own
Naturally, those who own a site of their own, be it a personal website or a blog, has a better chance of making money. Those who posts their blogs through friendster.com or blogger.com or any other site that offers free blogs will have a quite limited chance. Why? Because those who own their site has the free hand on changing the outlook of the site, posting ads anywhere on their site and they are not dependent on the website that hosts their blog. Of course, you’ll have to shell out some money but that would be part of your investment.
PrivateShelter.com is offering WordPress Blog for free on a first-come,first-served basis. You better start emailing the webmaster before the slot is fully occupied.

2. Ad/Affiliate Programs
This will be your money generator and as I have said, there’s a lot of ad programs in the net. There’s google adsense, yahoo overture, kontera, search speed and a lot more. I’m currently using google adsense as it pays better than the others. For affiliate programs, there’s Link Connector and tons more. Obviously, I’m using Link Connector. I call these as Money Makers and some of them are posted on the right side of the screen.
Actually, making money is not just about having a good number of visitors but by driving your traffic to click on your ads or buy/join on your affiliate programs.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There’s a lot of online articles that tackles this matter. To make it easier for you, I’ll be posting a series of SEO tips and tricks that is targeting google, yahoo and all the search engines in general. Naturally, having your site at the first few pages of the google search results of your chosen keyword would be very handy in terms of driving traffic to your site. Naturally, the number of Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is proportional to the number of visitors of your site.

4. Some Knowledge on HTML
Basic knowledge on HTML would be very handy to effectively promote your site. For more advanced users, knowledge on PHP would be very helpful as most of the free codes available in the internet are written in PHP. You may not really need it but additional tweaking of your site needs some PHP coding. Again, that is for advanced users who have some knowledge on programming or are willing to have some programming background. THIS SHOULD NOT, IN ANY WAY, DISCOURAGE YOU FROM LAUNCHING YOUR OWN AD PROGRAM.

5. Articles to Read
To be able to drive traffic to your site, you should have some interesting articles for them to read. I would suggest that you focus on something you have a passion for. Of course, it could be anything including your personal life. The bottom line is, give your readers something to read on.

This site isn’t making money as of this time. Besides, that’s not the main purpose of my blog. I already told early on that I just want to share my experiences in my life. However, making some money out of something from your mind isn’t a bad thing.

Link Bait

Subnixus has created a very clever way of driving traffic to his site with their raffle for the Vegas Getaway promo as I posted earlier. The mechanics is surprisingly simple, all a person should do is to post a backlink to the Vegas Getaway post. It’s that simple and one may think, what could he get in return? Well actually, a lot IN THE FUTURE. The site is gaining popularity now. Together with other tried-and-tested formulas for SEO and Site Design, the number of visitors to his site is steadily growing.

But why did I say “IN THE FUTURE”? Well, because the author has take down all of his ads. If he did not remove them, he must have been generating bigger revenues from his affiliate and other ad programs. ‘The last days of nine to five’ must be starting to become a reality. But because of one of his posts that stirred some of the online forums he is visiting, he took all his ads down. As I view it, his post is another kind of Link Bait. And he did it well.

IntelliTXT and Kontera

I’ve tried to join two contextual advertising services by IntelliTXT and DynamiContext of Kontera. Unfortunately, this blogsite did not qualify. First with IntelliTXT, the site did not qualify to their number 1 criterion which states :

“Your website must receive a minimum of 500,000 content rich page views to qualify for IntelliTXT. “Content rich” is defined as a page containing more than 50 words.” Come on… half a million views per day is just too much for me. I don’t expect my blogsite to generate such volume so I didn’t bother continuing with the registration. I saw their services work with PlanetSourceCode.com and I find it nice and non-intrusive. For Kontera’s DynamiContext, they don’t have that kind of requirement and knowing that my friend is already a member, I thought this site will Well I guess I have to stick around with Link Connector and Google Adsense for the moment. I’ll just follow most of the tips in Subnixus to generate more page views once I announce to the world that I have this little blog I’m maintaining. I just find Subnixus tips realistic and really working. I’m crossing my finger that it won’t terminate adsense account.

Viva Las Vegas!!!

I just visited Subnixus today and I was surprised when I saw Eric’s Las Vegas Giveaway contest. Subnixus is offering a free trip to Vegas or a cash equivalent plus a 24-hour control of his blogsite.

So if you have your own blog. I would suggest that you visit his site and read about it. I’m not interested with the Las Vegas trip but I’m very much interested with the cash equivalent.

Link Connector

I’ve read one of the posts in Subnixus few days ago and Eric(the owner of the blog) said that he’ll be adding Picture Title for his blog entries using his brand new Nikon camera. Actually, there’s nothing so special there for me but when he said that he bought that camera using his link connector revenues, I felt excited.
I reviewed the terms and conditions of the affiliate program and immediately signed up. I think there’s more opportunity here than in Google Adsense.

So if you want to join, too. Just click this button.

Actually, I’m not expecting to get a lot of revenues from these money-making ad schemes like affiliate programs and adsense but as I have said, it is better than not making anything at all. A few dollar is a damn few dollars and even if I walk several kilometers, I’m sure I’ll never get a dollar for free.

If I’ll be able to receive small amount of money good enough to pay my hosting, I’ll be very much happy! Of course, I’ll be happier if I receive more.