Earning Money

There is no denying that if own a website that is on a topic about something you don’t like, it will be harder and harder to work on it. If you remember my post about blogging for fun and not for money, you’ll remember that I mentioned the need to enjoy what you write about. If you have an uncanny interest in the Renaissance and know a lot of information about it, my advice is to go with it and work with it. Expand on it, write about it and create a site that you know.

But, let’s say that you are a history guru. You love history and know so much about it, you could update your blog or site everyday with information. If you’re in the market to create content sites, you can take what you already know and create these sites. I have seen people write and write and write on topics they absolutely hate and they are so burnt out. If it wasn’t for the money they were making, I am sure that they would absolutely hate what they did. I can’t really say that I blame them. It sucks writing on a topic you have little passion for; trust me, I have.

So, let’s say you are like me and you love science. I am a science major (majoring in biology), so I know a lot about science and I learn more and more each and everyday from the brilliant minds at my college. So, let’s use me as an example. I love science. I could update a blog every single day about all different types of biology and it would be relatively easy. However, what if I could expand on that? What if I were to create a site all about DNA and a site all about cellular biology and another all about botany? Rather than having one massive site with all these different topics, I could a few smaller sites with one topic per site and then I could use different links to increase the page rank as well as make them get more traffic.

You might be asking how exactly you can do this and keep them up and running and make all these sites really work. I recommend making these static content sites. That means, rather than making it into a blog that you update every single day, make it so that it doesn’t need to be updated every day. Work on one site at a time, write the articles for that particular site and then let it grow. Expand on one site at a time rather than trying to write an article or two on this topic and then another three for this topic and then another two for this topic. You’ll get burnt out trying to get all the sites up simultaneously that the sites won’t be as good as they possibly could.

Everyone has particular interests that they are passionate about. For me, those topics are science and history. For other people, it may be art or religion or math or English or something along those lines. Whatever your particular interest is, work with it. Expand on your interest and you’ll find that creating a site is a lot easier. Loving what you write about is a lot easier once you have a general understanding that writing for fun is a lot easier to do than writing for money. Appreciate what you write about and I can guarantee that it will be much easier to get those sites up and running. Good luck.

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This blog post is part of three part series that will provide, in detail, the methods of making a content mini-site, promoting this mini-site, and profiting from this mini-site.

You’ve done good so far. Go ahead, pat yourself on the back. The hardest part about making a site is done and over with. You wrote the articles and created an attractive site. You have promoted the site and tried your best to get it listed in the search engines. You have done the hardest part of getting a mini-site made. Now that you have done this, the next thing that you’re going to want to do is get your site making you money. You have got the traffic and you have got the articles, but you now need to get money on your site. But, how are you going to earn the money?

The first thing you may want to try is adsense. As stated in the article, Adsense is a cost per click sort of ad network. That means that if someone clicks on one of the ads on your site, you make a profit. Without that click, there is no money to be made for you. However, if there are more clicks appearing on your site, you’ll start to make more. The key to this, though, is ensuring that the ads are blended in with the site. The key to adsense and any ads really are blending and tweaking. Try new things, try different placements. It’s difficult and time consuming, but that’s how the big time publishers are able to accumulate such great amounts of money. It’s all about the tweaking of the ads.

Another method you may want to try is called CPA. This is cost per action. That means that you will only make a profit if someone actually purchases something or something along those lines. Know those sites where it says “enter your e-mail to win a five hundred dollar gift card”? Well…Those are CPA and every time someone enters their e-mail address, the publisher gets paid. These naturally pay a lot more than CPC does, but the chances of getting money are slimmer. So, the volume of money making clicks is smaller, but the amount of money that you can make great increases. A few types of sites of CPA would be: Commission Junction, Clickbank, and Azoogle.

Another method of payment on your content site could be selling links. This could bring in a little extra money for you, especially if your SEO work paid off and you got a good page rank. If you want to devote some time to selling links, you could go try and find private advertisers. However, if you, like me, are too busy doing other things to try and sell the links yourself, you may want to sign up for text-link-ads. Basically, this company does the work for you. It finds you the necessary advertisers so that you can do other things rather than try and find people to advertise on your site. Sure, they take half of the total cost of the link, but it is still a very good deal. I highly recommend them.

However you intend on monetizing your site, the one thing to remember is never to put all of your eggs into one basket. This means don’t put all of your eggs into Google. You never know when that source of income could die. The best webmasters put multiple forms of advertising on their site. For me, right now, all I have is Adsense and AuctionAds. However, I am already looking to add another form onto the site. Try out different things and really do your best to try and increase your profit on one small mini-site. You’d be surprised what can happen!

Conclusion:

As you can see, creating a content site can be a profitable business. However, you need to remember a few things. The content needs to be unique. You should try and make the site look attractive. When promoting it, do whatever you can for traffic, but remember that if you can get search engine traffic, that would be very helpful for you. Finally, when monetizing it, don’t put all of your eggs into one basket. Really try different things and you’ll be surprised at the money you could make. Go on and try and make a couple of content sites. If you have success, come on back and let me know! Thanks a lot everyone and I hope you enjoyed my first ’series’ articles.

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