TDC Day 26: Day 26 Introduction Video (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. If your niche keyword wasn’t converting, you can still make some money from it.
2. Don’t see the past three weeks as wasted time if one set of keywords doesn’t work - you’ve learnt valuable lessons and next time round it will only be a few hours.

TDC Day 26a: Getting Money From Your Blog (TDC, Video, PDF)

1. GuruBob gives us a number of ways we can monetise our blogs even if we didn’t get that golden sale in 200 visits.
2. The main technique is ADSENSE. Get your blog ranked first and some backlinks before putting Adsense on it (because the presence of Adsense will lower your initial rankings).
3. Sign up for Adsense, you can use a Google account (eg for Gmail) if you have one or make one now.
4. You will need to have an active website to fill out the form, use your blog, you can add more later.
5. You will also need to be over 18, have a real mailing address and a telephone. If you are under 18, get your parent or guardian to sign up on behalf of you.
6. It may take a few days for your Adsense account to be approved - Google likes to get a human to check your website that it is not spam central and has content on it - if you’ve followed the 30DC process, you should be okay.
7. Once approved, you need to set up Adsense on your blog. Go to the “Adsense Set-up” tab and then select the “Adsense for Content” option. If you don’t have WordPress Direct then choose an ad type that will fit with your blog and follow Google’s instructions for setting it up on your blog.
8. If you do have WordPress Direct, make a note of your Adsense publisher’s ID (it’s in the top right hand corner of Adsense) and follow the instructions in the 30DC PDF. You may need to change the theme and then re-enable it again to get the ads to show. You should also choose a theme that is Adsense ready. You also can use the Banner Ad option on WordPress Direct (but you will need to set up an ad banner in Adsense first) - see the PDF instructions.
9. Make sure you don’t click on your own ads - this is called click fraud and will get you (not just your website) banned forever.
10. You can also PROMOTE OTHER PRODUCTS.
11. You can use other ad networks like Yahoo - for a list see the Ad and CPA Networks List PDF.
12. You can try a banner for a product that has a lower commission but wider appeal.
13. Try an Ebay product.
14. Later you might consider a CPA ( Cost per Action) product or a CPL (Cost per Lead). Basically you get paid (maybe $0.10 - $2.00) if one of your visitors does something like fill out a form on another site or buys a ringtone. It can take some time for a CPA Network to approve an application (weeks to months) and they don’t like brand new sites so wait until you have good rankings and traffic. See thePDF list.
15. You are unlikely to make huge amounts this way, but you could well make a dollar a day which is $30/month or $365/year - if you can do this with a few hours work then this is a good return.
16. The last thing to consider is that if your blog gets traffic and rankings for keywords, even if it doesn’t make sales, it still has value - you could consider selling it. Sitepoint Marketplace is a popular place to buy and sell websites.
17. Look through the websites that are being sold. GuruBob found one blog that less than 6 weeks old, was getting less than 50 visits per day, optimised for one keyword and was earning a monthly revenue of $4 - it sold fro $70. Others were priced from $50-$300.
18. To sum up, you can get value from a “failure” - consider setting up AdSense right away. When it’s a few months old, try a CPA network or look for general products relevant to your niche. Also promote other products in Amazon/eBay along with Adsense. Look at other ad networks. Consider selling the website.
19. If on the other hand your site is getting traffic and sales and you want to continue with your niche - look at tomorrow’s lesson.

TDC Day 26b: Ad and CPA Networks List (TDC, PDF)

Because our Summary was over 25,000 words and was taking forever to load - we’ve split it up and posted them according to the date they were originally allocated to - ie over August 2008 - it’s easiest to access all of them from the Thirty Day Challenge 2008 Summary page.

Note the quick links to the originating Thirty Day Challenge page (TDC), the relevant YouTube video (Video) and the transcript (PDF) for your convenience to help you access the study materials.