My friend Michael makes an average of $370 per day on his blog. That’s an annualized income of $133,200 from blogging. I’ll leave out his last name so that I don’t violate his Adsense ‘Terms of Service’. ( For those who don’t know, it is against Google policy to directly discuss one’s Adsense earnings for a particular site ). The other day I sat down for lunch with Michael and asked him for his story: In a little more than 18 months, he went from earning less than $1/day to quitting his day job, and building a successful site.
His advice was priceless…
First, a little background
Before I get into specifics, let me say that Michael is no kind of technical guru, nor is he a Nobel prize winning author (although he writes very well). He’s a blogger, in every sense of the word: self-taught, smart and hard working. This is a story about hard work, consistent effort, a little luck, and a lot of smarts. His blog started as a basic Wordpress blog and a free template.
After about one year, he hired a designer/coder to make some custom modifications. (He’s still ‘unsure’ exactly how much of a difference his custom modifications have made in his traffic and revenue growth, but both have risen dramatically over the same time period).
(This was quite a long interview, so some of Michael’s answers have been paraphrased in order to make this a quicker read).
Rule #1 - Persistence, and keeping the blog fresh
Michael gets almost a little zen-like when he talks about “Rule #1″, but to him it is the most important rule of all: Decide that you want to create a successful site, and agree with yourself to make it happen.
Michael: “Most blogs fail because bloggers fail to blog. The single most important thing is building a base of readers. There is simply no way that can happen if you’re a “once every two-weeks” blogger. You have to decide to blog, and keep blogging. It has to be a mandatory part of your routine — like walking your dog. You must blog. You must post. Even if you’re posting a paragraph at a time: You must post.”
Michael admits that he will frequently write three or four posts on a Sunday, and use “timestamping” to release those posts over the course of the next few days. This practice keeps a blog fresh over time, even if inspiration strikes ‘all at once’. He also says he doesn’t feel like he works quite “full time”, but there are certainly nights when he “works until the wee hours”.
Rule #2 - Don’t get discouraged, but be willing to tweak your concept
Michael’s revenue started about less than $1 per day — and after six months was only a few dollars per day. Some articles seemed to get many more visitors than others.
His advice was priceless…
First, a little background
Before I get into specifics, let me say that Michael is no kind of technical guru, nor is he a Nobel prize winning author (although he writes very well). He’s a blogger, in every sense of the word: self-taught, smart and hard working. This is a story about hard work, consistent effort, a little luck, and a lot of smarts. His blog started as a basic Wordpress blog and a free template.
After about one year, he hired a designer/coder to make some custom modifications. (He’s still ‘unsure’ exactly how much of a difference his custom modifications have made in his traffic and revenue growth, but both have risen dramatically over the same time period).
(This was quite a long interview, so some of Michael’s answers have been paraphrased in order to make this a quicker read).
Rule #1 - Persistence, and keeping the blog fresh
Michael gets almost a little zen-like when he talks about “Rule #1″, but to him it is the most important rule of all: Decide that you want to create a successful site, and agree with yourself to make it happen.
Michael: “Most blogs fail because bloggers fail to blog. The single most important thing is building a base of readers. There is simply no way that can happen if you’re a “once every two-weeks” blogger. You have to decide to blog, and keep blogging. It has to be a mandatory part of your routine — like walking your dog. You must blog. You must post. Even if you’re posting a paragraph at a time: You must post.”
Michael admits that he will frequently write three or four posts on a Sunday, and use “timestamping” to release those posts over the course of the next few days. This practice keeps a blog fresh over time, even if inspiration strikes ‘all at once’. He also says he doesn’t feel like he works quite “full time”, but there are certainly nights when he “works until the wee hours”.
Rule #2 - Don’t get discouraged, but be willing to tweak your concept
Michael’s revenue started about less than $1 per day — and after six months was only a few dollars per day. Some articles seemed to get many more visitors than others.
Michael: “There’s a difference between persistence, and being bull-headed. I noticed that one particular subject really brought in the visits — so I made the business decision to focus 90% of my time on similar articles. That was a pretty huge moment for the site…. From that day on — which was about six months in — my traffic went up pretty steadily every month. … The thing is, I never would have discovered the niche that I’m in now if I hadn’t blogged every day for six months making basically no money. So in a sense, you have to go through that really awful part to get to the phase where you actually feel like you’re growing. I don’t know if that’s a hard and fast rule for everyone, but for me there was a lot of trial and error.”
Rule #3 - How commercial are you going to be? Decide before you start
Michael’s blog relates to a very specific industry. It is designed at every level to cater to a particular type of advertising. Michael is the first to admit that he’d rather be writing random posts about his favorite films, his vacation, his kids, and his favorite football team.
Michael: “People think that writing a commercial blog means taking your personal blog and sticking a bunch of Adsense ads on it. I’d be amazed if you could make $1 per day doing that. Very few people want to read it, and I can’t imagine many advertisers wanting a piece of it. For [blog name] I decided in advance that this was a commercial writing project, and that I was going to pursue a very specific market which was rich in advertising dollars. I knew in advance that I was going to put plenty of ads on the page, and I accepted that this would make for somewhat cluttered pages….This wasn’t going to be an entry for a web design contest — it was a business. I wanted to make money online — I wanted to blog for a living”
Michael says he typed in hundreds of keywords into an Adwords account to see where the maximum advertising dollars could be yielded. At every level — the site was planned as a commercial venture.
Rule #4 - Read every day
There are an enormous number of web technologies to keep up with. Michael estimates that he reads the web for at least an hour (and often much more) per day. He surfs competing websites and he reads informational sites full of content relating to the business of blogging (yes, webrevenue.org!) and new technologies, advertising platforms, affiliate offers, etc.
Michael: “You can’t live in a vacuum. I’ve gone through about 30 different affiliate deals — most of which didn’t work out. I’ve added and removed dozens of plugins. I’ve changed servers twice. And at the end of all that I’ve got a winning formula. But it takes time to study, learn, discuss on bulletin boards and just keep up with what’s going on. I also read the blogs of my two main competitors every day. To be a blogger you can’t just be a writer, you have to be a pretty avid reader too. And you have to be willing to change your platforms, your topics and your technologies at any moment.”
Rule #5 - Understand SEO — but don’t waste too much time on it
Search engine optimization strategies can be incredibly complicated, and an enormous amount of work to implement. What works one month may not work next month because the big search engines are constantly tweaking their algorithms. Writing is probably a more effective way to spend one’s time. “Content is king”, says Michael:
Michael: “When I first started I spent hours tweaking my site for maximum search engine optimization. I counted keywords and I checked things like “keyword density”. Finally it occured to me that in the same amount of time I spent doing all that stuff, I could have just written a whole new post — or even a couple of new posts. And since I wasn’t even sure which topics were the most successful topics when I was starting out — I eventually realized that wasting time on SEO was silly compared to writing, exploring and trying different types of post. Worry about building your site and writing your content first”
[That having been said — Michael’s site looks very well optimized to me… -ed]
Rule #6 - Use Social News Sites
Michael has had his site featured on the front page of Slashdot.org three times last year. Digg.com has also been very good to him. ( See our incredibly popular webrevenue.org article “How to get on Digg’s Front Page - Secrets of the Power Diggers” ). Michael spends at least one half-hour per day promoting his site elsewhere on the Internet.
Michael: “Digg is awesome. Slashdot is awesome. Del.icio.us is awesome too.
There’s no guarantee that they’re going to work out for you, and I still have
just as much, or as little chance as I had on day one. But the effect of getting
on Slashdot’s front page that first time was incredible. First my server crashed
— but fortunately my hosting company was pretty fantastic and we worked out some
additional bandwidth very quickly. I was also lucky to catch the problem early,
so that the traffic wasn’t wasted. My earnings for that day were my highest ever
at that point. That was really my first taste of what was possible in terms of
making money online. I think I wrote another ten posts the next day I was so
fired up. After going for months making basically nothing per day — it was a
pretty huge moment. It wasn’t a ton of money or anything, really — but it showed
that what I was doing could work. And the effect lasted for months. My traffic
was permanently higher afterwards.”
Rule #7 - Don’t count on AdSense alone
Michael uses a combination of the following revenue generators:
- Google Adsense
- Chitika eMiniMalls
- Commission Junction affiliate marketing deals
- LinkShare affiliate marketing deals
- Amazon store sales
- The (very rare) Pay-per-Post if its something ‘he would have blogged anyway’.
Michael: “Adsense is hit or miss. Actually everything’s hit or miss and that’s
why you need a lot of revenue streams — or ‘potential’ revenue streams I should
say. I’ll have days where my AdSense earnings are fantastic, and then I’ll have
days where I wonder why none of my thousands of visitors decided to click any
ads. I still don’t claim to have any real understanding of what makes a ‘good
day’ or a ‘bad day’. But I do know that with a broad combination of potential
revenue streams, I rarely have a real ‘down day’. You have to use all your
options. Although at first — when your site doesn’t have much content or
visitors, AdSense is fine. Lots of affiliates won’t even want to do business
with you until your site comes together.”
Rule #8 - Pay attention to your stats
Using a statistics package like AWstats, Google Analytics or Quantcast.com can really tell you an enormous amount about your site and your visitors. By using this information you can maximize those things that are working for you, and spend less time on things that aren’t working for you anyway. ( By the way, if you’re using AWstats as your statistics package, make sure you read our webrevenue.org article which compares AWstats to Google Analytics.)
Michael: “I’m a little embarrassed to say, but when I first started blogging I
did lots of stupid stuff like spamming bulletin boards and comments-sections
hoping to get traffic. I actually used to spend hours doing it. Then one day I
took a look at my “traffic sources” in Google Analytics and realized that all
that work amounted to 1 or 2 visits over the course of the week. Again, I could
have just written a whole other post in that amount of time. The bottom line is
that those cheesy ways of getting traffic, don’t actually build your site. Some
things do work, like learning how to effectively build support on Digg — but
posting in every little corner of the web pretty much does nothing. The point
is, I would probably never have reached that understanding without looking at my
stats. I’ve also learned which posts are the most popular. And which ones get
the most permanent external links. Once you understand that kind of thing, you
learn how to modify your blogging behavior to maximize traffic in the future.
Lots of times I’ll think something is working and the stats will basically tell
me, ‘no that thing you’re spending so much time on isn’t working at all’”
