Earning Money

A lot of people on the web have been selling off their ‘make money blogs’ and I have got to say, it is really phenomenal to see blogs going for as much as they are. This niche isn’t the most profitable niche and it is not something that can make thousands unless you’ve got yourself a really good following, and yet these blog sellers are making a considerable amount of money from it. I mean, Mark over at 45n5.com did some math and he found that the average was around $30.00 a RSS feed subscriber. That is amazing! But, it brings up a good question. Why are people selling?

I have to wonder if this market is beginning to become so saturated, people are realizing that there is not as much money to be made in it. I mean…Am I in the wrong market? You have to ask yourself if maybe this is a sign. And, at an amazing rate of $30.00 a RSS feed subscriber, there is definitely some money to be made from your blog. I have to wonder if people are just getting tired about writing on this topic, if people are just not really sure what to write anymore, or if they just want the money for something else and there are numerous simultaneous sales. Whatever it is, it is interesting.

Regardless of why they are selling, I use this as something that will only make things better for us that stick through it. Running a ‘make money online’ is not as easy as people think and I think that the new owners are thinking that the blogs might be making some money, so it’ll continue to make money. It’s not so easy and I think that some blogs might begin to deteriorate. And, while it is mean to think of the misfortunes of others for my own gain, that is how business is sometimes and in such a saturated market, a little less competition would be nice. Either way, it will be interesting to see if these new blog owners can handle the stresses of running a ‘make money online’ blog. We’ll have to wait and see.

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A while ago, I answered a reader’s question in which he asked which was better: a blog or a forum? I said a blog; however, I also had said (slightly) that both mixed together would be the best of both worlds. I wanted to stress upon that a bit today in a short post. When you blog, you are basically the sole provider of the content. And, blogs are known for getting indexed incredibly fast. And when you run a forum, you have lots of potential content providers and all that can get indexed. But, I’ve found that running a forum can be incredibly difficult without the proper foundation of members, so here was an idea that I had if you’re thinking of trying both.

Start both at the exact same time. For instance, if you were to own a forum about the NBA. Start a blog (connected to that domain) and post on it every day with news updates and just things like that. The news will get you indexed, people will talk about it, they may link to you, and then more people will see the forum. They will go from the blog to the forum and your membership will begin to increase. Blogs are incredible for getting links because you’re linking to a particular article. I get links all the time because people are so willing to do it.

Now, with a forum, what you can do is you can get a lot of content really started by having that foundation. Starting a blog by yourself is difficult. Getting five friends and starting a forum, that’s not quite so hard because you’re really working hard. If you start the forum and the blog simultaneously, if you’re posting on the blog once or twice a day, that’ll get indexed, but then you’ve got all your friends posting on the forum as well. That’s getting indexed and it’s making your site look that much better. There is nothing better than a forum’s ability to explode with content over the right issue. I should know, I run a debate forum.

Both a blog and a forum both have their strengths. Blogs get linked to so much easier and forums have the potential to have an explosion of content. Both can really get indexed well if provided with the right push and I honestly think that if you use them together and don’t put one over the other, you’ll find that growing the two is easier because you’re sending traffic back and forth. The longer you keep someone on your site, the better your chances of making money, so either way, having a forum and a blog mixed together really increases earning potential. I’ll be trying it soon for my debate forum. You should too.

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