My First Year Trying to Make Money Blogging

It has been close to a year now that I started trying to make money online blogging. Since then, I have been a negligent father to all my websites and have left most in a state of disrepair. i now own over twenty-five domains and I can only say that there are only a couple that I am satisfied with right now. I have not made any serious money doing this, but I have to say the fault is my own and not in the methods that are taught by people like Griz or Court. Had I stuck with it all year, I am sure I would have had a decent head start in earning a living make money through blogging and Google Adsense.

So far, I have earned around 300 dollars through Google Adsense, affiliates, and other source of monetization like Adbrite and Infolinks. I will be writing a review on these two sites, so just follow this link to learn more.

Now, 300 bucks doesn’t seem like a lot, but that is all passive income; I mean really passive income because I have largely ignored my sites over the year. In fact, some of my sites have no Google Adsense on them at all because i chose to either remove the ads due to lack of quality in the site or that Google chose to ban the site from ads. (Like this site!!)

But overall, i feel that in 2010, I can take the valuable experiences from the last year and help make my sites grow bigger and more profitable.

Some Advice on Blogging and The Mistakes I Learned From

The first thing I got to say about trying to make money blogging is that you can’t be afraid to fail. You can’t spend all your time searching for answers to your questions and reading every blog possible before you try something. You just have to jump in and prepare to fall on your feet. Look, I have made dozens of mistakes over the last year from simple editing errors with WordPress to having subpoenas served on me for copyright infringement, so i can say I am an expert on errors. i have had sites that Google has removed their ads from and I have had some articles pulled off of sites because they violate rules of content. I have posted duplicate content, scraped websites for information and just plain put together crappy sites. But in all this, I learned to make nice sites that can make money while at the same time offering exclusive well-written and SEO styled writing.

Here is a couple of pointers about making money blogging:

1. Learn to maximize your time

Over the course of blogging, you are going to write and rewrite hundreds of articles unless you are lucky and have the money to outsource your work. I am one of those unlucky bastards who has to make all my own content for not only my Adsense blog sites but for my link sites and other places i have to submit content. I used to write all my blogs in Word and then transfer them into WordPress, but have since stopped this habit.

Mozilla Firefox has a built-in spellchecker which works perfectly well with the spellchecker that is built-in to WordPress. With these two features, there is no need to write your work in Word, then transfer to WordPress. In fact, almost all of your blogging can be done in the formats that most blog sites come with. Ezine, HubPages, and Squidoo allow you to just type way right into the editing tools to design your blogs.

You have to understand that you are a blogger now, not a writer. The difference is that you must learn to just push out the content with lightning fast speed and shave off time by constantly transferring and storing files in different areas. You should write your blog as a draft and go back later to edit it, but you should not be spending an extreme amount of time trying to get it perfect.

Also, you must limit the amount of time you spend reading blogs. yes, it is good to read some blogs to get information and tips on how to make money online through blogging, on the latest on Google Adsense, and tips on how to get the best SEO for your site. These things need to be done in moderation and should only take up about 5% of the time you use to develop your blogs.

2. Have a Game Plan

Before you decide to make money through blogging, make sure you have an idea of what your expectations are. You are not going to get rich overnight. You need to put in the legwork, lots of legwork if you plan on making a living through Google Adsense blogging or any other from of affiliate programs. You need to decide how much time each day you are going to assign to this project, how many sites are you going to start with, and what keywords do you feel are the right ones to build your blogs behind.

You got to make sure you do not get to far ahead of yourself and make sure your sites are supporting your costs.

This should be your first goal. All your sites should be making back the costs you spend on maintaining them. If you only spend ten dollars a year on the domain and ten dollars a month for hosting, then your Adsense blogs must recoup this cost or you need to rework them. if you are outsourcing your work, then this expense must also be added into the projections for your site. If your blog is not making money after a year, then you must either rework the site or move on.

My game plan this year is that each site must make double its cost in 2010. We will see how that goes.

3. Don’t Get Ahead of Yourself

This was my biggest mistake. Before I had successfully developed my first Adsense blog, I was already buying up other domains. Before I knew it, I had already own over twenty domains and did not have the time or energy to work on any of them. The good news is that these sites now have a little age on them and they shouldn’t be too hard to monetize. The bad news is it gave me an overwhelming feeling of burn out when it came to working on them.

When you first start, I would suggest that you do not buy more than five domains for Adsense blogging and wait and build these sites for six months before getting more. Just keep your research in keywords and use this knowledge to expand your base. If anything, write blogs on these keywords for sites like HubPages or Squidoo and use these links later to build your new sites.

4. Understand Your Limitations

i think most of all, you got to understand exactly what you are capable of doing. if you have very little experience writing or working with webpages, then you should start off small and simple. Find one nice keyword that you feel will make money with Google Adsense while at the same time not completely bore you to death and build a simple Wordpress around this keyword. Work with HubPages, play around with Squidoo, submit to Ezine, and just build your links while at the same time doing some reading of SEO tips and read up on the themepages for other WordPress themes to get an idea of what is capable.

Building blogs for making money with Google Adsense is not just about passive income but it is also passive education. The more you work with the blogs, the more you learn, the more you know, and pretty soon, you will find yourself giving advice in the same way you were seeking it in the beginning.

My Plans for Adsense Blogging in 2010

Nothing gets your blood boiling and your fingers tapping away at the keys then when your websites come up for renewal. I may have been slow (almost turtle slow) from putting in the work on my blogs for the second half of 2009, but when I got a noticed that it was time to pay the piper to keep my blogsites I realized it was time to reevaluate my Adsense blogging.

I had to look at the disaster I created for myself and then decide what to do with all these sites I own.

You see, over the last year, I bought close to thirty domains, all with the intention of monetizing them to make money through Google Adsense and other sources of income. While my vision and plans were high, I didn’t consider two factors.

One, that life happens.

Two, that burn out happens.

Life Goes On While You Try to Make Money Blogging

Of anyone deciding to start blogging and blogging for the sake of making money online, then you must understand this saying. In fact, develop it as a mantra and mumble it day in and day out, especially when you decide it is time to research some new keywords and put more time into blogging.

No matter what your goal is or plans are for your websites, life just sometimes takes over. I have a newborn who is now one year old, I have gone back to college, so has my girlfriend, and our house that we live in had hung on the edge of foreclosure. These things have taking priority over putting in time to develop my Adsense blogsites. I have had very little time, or effort to put in the maintenance, the linkbuilding, and just the overall work to develop these sites into primo Googl;e Adsense real estate.

Over the last year, i have left a trail of destruction across the web of unfinished blogsites, quickly thrown up hack jobs, and URLs parked with nothing but Apache listings showing up when clicked on. Most of my main blogs have gone into the Internet Wastelnads, My HubPages have not reached my goal of 100, and my Squidoo lenses are cracked.

In general, I have created a mess of my plans to make money online and have just let my online real estate grow weeds.

Burned Out on Blogging

When I first started blogging to make money with Google Adsense, I was enthusiastic. It was a new, exciting frontier and I was putting in close to eighteen hours a day doing research on keywords, deciphering Wordpress themes, and just writing tons and tons of content for my blogs and link sites. I quickly saw the cents begin to trickle in on my Adsense ads and I felt I was going in the right direction. But soon, I became suffered from burn out because I now had more sites then I knew what to do with and could not afford to outsource my work.

So, I started avoiding my responsibilities to my blogs. Several, I just could not touch at all. Most have not received any new content in months and I have even bought more URls to compound the work I was already avoiding. Eventually, I decided that i was through with blogging for awhile and pulled out my subscriptions to several sites and pulled my Google Adsense from most of my sites because I was afraid Google might sandbox these sites.

Time went on, my sites began to earn very little money but i was still get a few dollars a month through monetized sites that still had Google Adsense, Adbrite, and Infolinks. I went about pursuing other interests and would occasionally look over my blogs to see if there was hope,

Then, a few weeks ago, i started receiving E-mails that my websites were coming up for renewal. I was like, “Wow, a year has gone by already?” and now I had to decide what to do with these sites.

Should I keep them?

Should I let them go?

Getting Back On Track Making Money Online

So I had to make a decision. I really thought about just quitting, but then I thought about all the work I have done so far on my sites. It would be a waste to let that all go. I just needed to my a plan this time and stick to it. I had learned a lot over the last year about making blogs, learning SEO, and just a lot about the world of monetization, Google Adsense, and the Internet in general. I was now a veteran blogger with hundreds of hours dedicated to putting my words on the World Wide Web. It was time to get back on the horse.

So, now it is 2010 and I am back in the game. I have decided to give all my websites a new look since I have learned a lot about customizing Wordpress, to add fresh new content and links, to get back into blogging on a regular basis and to see what 2010 holds for me in the world of blogging.

Adsense Blog Reviews

So, i don’t know if you are like me, but I got a bad habit. I got to be constantly checking things. I got to check my Google Adsense, my Analytics, my HubPages ranks, my Squidoo lenses and my Statcounter. I try to tell myself to stop, to leave these things alone, but I always have to know.

The same hold true for my Google ranking for my sites.

That’s where PageRanker for Firefox comes in handy. You can get the download at tools.seobooks.com.

If you don’t use Firefox for some of your Adsense blog work, then I suggest downloading the search engine. Besides having a built-in spell checker and other features, you can download two of the most useful SEO tools like Rank Checker and SEO for Firefox.

Before I started using Rank Checker, I used to manually go through Google and look for my Adsense blog sites. If you own multiple sites, this can be a tiring and exhaustive search. With Rank Checker, it solves this problem by searching for targeted keywords related to your websites.

All you have to do is put in your URL and list a bunch of keywords you are tracking. Rank Checker can not only check Google and their other sites like Google UK, but it also tracks Yahoo and whatever other search engine you put in the options.

What is great is you can then save your search and try it again at anytime without having to reenter any information. You can also constantly add to your lists and track multiple websites.

Rank Checker can also be used to check the competitiveness of keywords on sites like HubPages and Squidoo by just typing in the URL of the site and the keywords you are targeting. Rank Checker will then list the highest available site in ranking for that keyword if one is ranking. This is a great way to see if any new keyword that you are trying to make a hub or lens for has any competition and if you are able to beat its ranking.

So, if you are like me and waste a lot of time worrying about your numbers, Rank Checker helps eliminate some of that waste, but in the end, only you can stop checking your numbers on your Adsense blogs to see if you are truly making money online.

The Adsense Blogging World

So, I am now a two-month veteran of the I Survived Two Months In The Adsense Blogging World community. I say I am a veteran and no longer a newbie, because it has been a hard fought battle to get to this point. I have learned a lot, made several mistakes, some huge, mostly small, but most of all I had to switch my perspective as a writer.

I started this by writing what I knew and what I was comfortable with. I now find myself writing about things I have absolutely no interest in, nor any previous knowledge about just to try to make money with Google adsense. I am writing huge 1000 word plus epics on the most mundane and boring things in the world.

Why?

Because these things are popular and these things have high Cost Per Click rates.

Adsense Blogging and the CPC Killer

In the world of making money online and especially writing blogs for Adsense, you are going to find that you are eventually going to battle with who you are and what you think you know against who you need to be.

Who did I think I was?

An amateur writer who has a damn opinion about everything and anything. I would scan the Internet and write about the stuff that I thought mattered like Michael Jackson’s funeral and my opinion on stuff I knew about like dogs.

Was this going to make me any real money?

I wasn’t sure. I was writing to appease a social audience and it my first two months I has over 20,000 page views, but they only translated into less than sixty dollars in money.

I also started writing for other people which made me around a hundred dollars in that same time period. The crap I wrote for other people ranged from how to get rid of ingrown toenails to how to choose the best wine refrigerator.

During this time of writing other people’s articles, i had an epiphany.

I am writing the wrong types of Adsense blogs. I needed to stop writing about what people are searching for because they might buy it, but what people are trying to find information about before they spend money.

I had finally understood the difference.

Hubpages and Adsense Blogs

So, over the last several months, I had written about 44 useless HubPage Adsense blogs that got very little traffic and made almost no money.

I was about to give up on HubPages completely when I noticed Court having a webinar that broke down exactly what he did.

So, with bated breath and a new outlook on what I was doing, I watched his webinar and decided to do it exactly as he suggested.

That is usually how I screw up. I see how people want me to do it and I kind of go off in my own direction.

And over the last two months, I have gone off in so many directions. I’ve spent time on hubs, bought close to twenty domains, fooled around with Squidoo and basically left a long trail of half-used toys dangling all over the Internet.

My Third Month in the Adsense Blog World

What’s going to happen in my third month?

It is time to tidy up all my little messes. It’s time to go back over my Adsense blogging websites and clean up all the crappy blogs. It’s time to polish up those lenses and to actually put some work on websites that are sitting there looking empty.

You see, I have finally developed a pattern to creating my Adsense blogs and I am going to use it for all my pages.

My goal is to finally make a hundred dollars in one month.

Wish me luck.

Two months?

Three months?

Six months?

Depending on how much time you put in to your Adsense blogs, it could take up to a year before you see any significant income coming in from your websites. Also, if you think that you are going to make a million dollars from one website, then you’ve been buying into the wrong philosophies of making money online.

You can go and try those other methods, but I guarantee that you will quit trying long before you even make a buck.

Why?

Because most of those other methods involve having money to invest in advertising, viral marketing, and website promotion, and most people who are trying to make an income online don’t have too much extra money in the first place.

To most people who start out making a blog for Adsense, it is usually a hobby on the side while they maintain a real job and a real life. They only have a few hours a day, maybe a week to spend on this endeavor, maybe only a few dollars to invest.

If you are one of these types, then learning to make Adsense ready blogs is the way to start because a year down the road, you could have a regular source of income coming in that requires very little maintenance.

Adsense Blog Basics

You don’t need to know a lot of coding or have a real great grasp of what exactly Adsense blogs are to start getting our first blog up and running.

The key is in knowing where to go and look for advice and help. The Google Adsense blog community is a very supportive bunch of people and there are plenty of forums out there that have knowledgeable people to help you along.

As I have stated, and will always state, the best place to start is with Court’s Crash Course and the Keyword Academy.

This is a grass roots, basic style of learning that appeals to anyone who has no idea where to begin. There are several schools of learning out there for making money with an Adsense blog, and Court and Mark’s teaching are the best because there are no convoluted confusing marketing theories, just a no nonsense brass tacks style of teaching. Plus, they have a proven record of what they teach, have been through the ups and downs, have made mistakes, and bring all this experience to their students.

If you are serious about learning about Adsense blogs, I would start with their websites and spend a week getting familiar with all that is involved in this concept.

Making Money With Google Adsense Blogs

The truth is there is money out there to be made making Adsense blogs, but 90% of those who try don’t make any money.

Why?

Because they either don’t spend the right amount of time on their blogs, or they do the wrong things.

It is real easy to want to find shortcuts or skip steps, but all this will do is hurt your chances of making money, and money is the reason you are making blogs for Adsense.

There is no easy way around it. Getting your sites up and running takes some work, especially if you are building multiple sites.

Plus, Google is always changing their algorithms to help weed out the garbage sites, so now, your Adsense blogs need to look better than they had in the past.

So, plan on devoting a good amount of time getting your sites up, but the key is once your sites are producing they need very little maintenance to keep earning money.

Adsense Blog Beginnings

After you have a grasp of what is going on, then it is a good idea to build yourself a business plan for your Adsense blogs. Also, it is necessary to start a timeline on your websites, because you don’t want to do things too quickly. These sites need to mature at a natural level or else Google will recognize your sites as useless attempts at making money with Adsense blogs.

You need to make sure that your sites are informative and have sense of identity and longevity. This might cost you some money in your Cost Per Click rate, but in the long run, your sites will be stand up as real legitimate sources of information.

I would advise having at least five hundred dollars at first to invest in making Adsense ready blogs. The model for this article series involves having that amount. You can start off with less, but you will have a lot more work to do. I started out with less and wish I now had done it differently.

You want to start with ten domains for Adsense blogs. Having ten domains is a good round number, and later on you want to have twenty, fifty, maybe a hundred, but for now we will focus on ten.

Some people suggest you buy them for two years, other suggest that one is fine. In this model, we are going for the one year option as this is an experiment in money making and you don’t want to spend too much if it doesn’t work for you.

Now, you should already have a few good choices in keywords chosen for your Google Adsense blogs.  If you can find a few profitable ones that a closely related, that will help you build your sites faster, so try to find at least five that are on the same subject or are loosely related. The other five can be on anything, or another group of related keywords.

Ideally, you want two or three groups of related keywords for your Adsense blog sites. This will come in handy when you buy multiple host servers that way you can give each sites some valid link juice from your won sites.

So, at this point you should buy two or three host servers. Make sure they are not on the same network as your domains in case there is ever an issue with your sites and you have to move them. It is easier to move if they do not share this relationship.

So, at this point you should have ten domains, three host servers, and lot of work to do.

Adsense Blogs – The First Month

During this period, you should be focusing on content and some nice solid links slowly. Do not rush your link building at this point. You want your sites to look clean and informative without looking like spammy blogs that are targeting Google Adsense.

Your first month should be concentrated in putting some significant content on these sites. Also, you should have a Gmail account. This will help in getting Adsense up and running on your site down the line. Google loves its relationships with people and the longer your account has been with them, the quicker it seems they will approve your Adsense blog.

When you have chosen your keywords and have your domains, place related ones on separate host servers. Like, I said, this will help with link building in the future.

Now, when you choose your Wordpress themes, try to stay away from the truly plain styles. Some in the Adsense blog industry say that how your site looks doesn’t matter, but Google has recently changed the way they look at these sites. You want your site to have color and multimedia. This does hurt your CPC, but will not hurt your longevity as a legitimate site.

Also, stick to the themes on Wordpress.org. These themes have to be approved and I find the ones on other sites might look cool; they have a lot of errors that can hurt your website in the long run. Pick a theme that looks good and also has a author page with instructions and a forum for help. Later on, when you become more confident with HTML and web building, you are going to want to change your blog around and it helps if the Wordpress theme has a built in support page.

The rest of your fist month will be concentrating on content. Some Adsense blog gurus say just put up the minimum five pages, but like I said, Google has tightened up on those who want to make blogs for Adsense. Your websites should now have at least ten blogs with pictures, video, and any other content that attracts readers.

I know this seems like a lot of writing to do, but at this point you should be outsourcing your work. A good place to get cheap original articles is at textbroker.com. Articles around 400 words cost below 5 bucks.

You should make at least two rewrites of most of your articles for submitting to Ezinearticles.com and HubPages.com.

These should also be the only sites that you are submitting your articles for links in your first month of site design.

So my first week went by quickly. I watched all the tutorials, bought several domains, and started posting content. So after spending some time with my girlfriend and my son, some time decompressing from spending sixteen hour days on the computer, it was time to get back into my Adsense blogs and to learn how to make money writing online.

Part of Court’s teachings is that you start to submit articles to Ezineartilces.com and eventually to HubPages.  Well, these two sites can be extremely helpful to building links, but each is completely different in the way they operate.

First, though, you want to make sure you are submitting original content to these sites.  I made a mistake of submitting duplicate content and it ended up costing me a big headache in the long run. For one, it affects your rating on HubPages and secondly, it slows down your articles from being posted at Ezine. Also, don’t use an article spinner. It is best to write new articles for these sites or you will just be wasting your time.

Now, with Ezine you will be getting some solid links with a decent amount of traffic to your Adsense blog. But if you want to post there and not buy premium membership and want to see your posts up by Friday, make sure you submit your articles earlier in the week. Ezine reviews every article before it is accepted, which can take a few days, not counting weekends. If you plan on using this website to help with your Adsense blogging, I would make sure you have the patience to deal with them

Now, over on HubPages, your articles go up immediately and you can earn money from their Google Adsense, but this site has a popularity style of posting and you have to keep your pages in the high ranks or they shut off your links. I have yet to earn a penny from them.

The other thing I am focusing on is exchanging links. This is a very important step in building up your Adsense blog sites. Now, most people seem to have trouble getting links, but I have had at least a 50% success rate in trying to get these contacts. Well, for one, I used Grizzly’s niche support and Keyword Academy instead of asking random people on the internet. I don’t see a point in sending out a bunch of emails to people that might not be in the same making money online business. Who knows if they are ever going to respond?

At least with niche support, even those that don’t want to help at least send me an email in acknowledgement. If you are trying to build links, then you should stick to your own kind.

So, I’m searching around for some information on Adsense blogs and found some videos that people might want to watch that have some sort of tutorials relating to making money online, Adsense blog turorials, or just basic information about using sites like Google Adsense.

I would always suggest going over to Court’s site and watch those videos and then joining the Keyword Academy. Mark and Court have got some great things brewing over at the Keyword Academy that I am not going to give away. With the techniques I have learned from them I have already seen some serious growth in my sites. One site I created last week is already in the top ten for both its keyword and my target keyword and both keywords pay over nine dollars for their CPC.

So, I hope you enjoy these. I will post more in the future.

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