Monthly archives: August 2006

Starting a blog (pt8)

Monetizing Your Site

In case you’ve missed the beginning on the series, feel free to check out parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7

Now that you’ve got the word out about your new blog, you’re ready to start making some money from it. Aren’t we all? Of course. Unfortunately, making any kind of decent money from a blog is next to impossible. Sorry, to burst your bubble. I know I haven’t made much of anything. Oh well, that’s not why I blog. So, needless to say I am not the best person to be writing a tutorial about monetizing your site. Nonetheless, I will do my best to provide you with a few resources to hopefully make some money.

The most obvious is to run some kind of ads on your site. Google Adsense and Yahoo’s Publisher program are popular choices. Other alternatives with slightly different twist are text link ads and adbrite. The success of these really depends on the amount of traffic you have on your site and your ability to display the ads in a way that will attract clicks…neither of which I’m good at. :(

Other money making choices include writing reviews for money and affiliate ads. Writing reviews for money has some ethical issues…if you are paid to write a review, how can you truly be unbiased. So, my recommendation, if you do decide to do this, is to disclose that you are getting paid. This disclosure is not a law as far as I know, but please do the Internet community a service by letting us know that you’re getting paid and also be honest about what you review. If you can’t wouldn’t consider buying what ever it is you are reviewing, then don’t write a review about it. Therefore, your positive reviews won’t be a lie even if you are getting paid for it. Continue reading

It’s me again…the other one

Okay…so by now I have got to be one of the worst bloggers ever. It has been about a month since my last posting and that’s just sad. To be honest though, the only interesting thing that has happened to me lately is the purchase of my MacBook computer and iPod. Matt’s been away on business trips lately so we really haven’t gone anywhere. The lady that works in the office with me had surgery so she’s been out for about 3 weeks and, for three weeks, I’ve been doing the work of two people. By the time I get home at night I’m too worn out to move (other than doing laundry and such)…much less think. My MacBook comes in today, though, so hopefully I will have something interesting to talk about for the next little while. I’m sure Matt will have his comments regarding the MacBook and its performance as well.