August earnings
August 29, 2005
August has suprisingly been a good month for me. I have earnt over $300 with one particular affiliate and there is still 2 more days to go for another sale. I am in line with my Adsense forecast - which I am happy about. Especially since I was on holidays for about 10 days. I will post the final earnings for the month on September 1st.
The only way to improve is to add more content, more sites, more good affiliate progams, more links to your site and most importantly - more traffic.
Content Content Content
August 27, 2005
One the best ways to get traffic to your site, retain visitors and earn money from programs like Adsense is - content. Most webmasters make a target of creating at least one page of content a day. Depending on how much you devote to your website, this can be an easy or difficult task. Just trying to update a blog everyday is a difficult enough task!
If you are forever busy how can you get free content for your website?
- Add a forum -
By adding a forum people’s questions and answers adds pages to your website. If you optimize the forum, Google will be able to index the pages.
- Hire writers -
If your site is popular, people will articles for free, just to get a link back to their website. I am currently dealing with someone who wants to write for my Tokyo site.
- Government and Industry Associations -
If your site deals with a particular product or cause, industry associations might be happy to provide you with material. On my Tokyo site the Tokyo tourist association has given me permission to use their maps on my site for free.
- Data feeds -
This is where you can place some scripts on your site which pulls in data from another website, like news headlines. Some sites are made totally from data feeds. Mambo has a very easy method to add news feeds.
- Quotes -
If you quote text from a site or publication and refer back to the original source you can get some extra words to your article. It also adds a feeling of authenticity to what you write.
Does anyone else have any other ideas?
Travel Agency
August 22, 2005
Sorry if it sounded like I was complaining, where I said that people were inundating me with questions by email as though I am a travel agency. The fact that people think that my site is like a travel agency is probably a good thing, as people with book their tours, hotels and flights through the site.
I have added a forum to the site now, which will probably help alleviate some of the mail. In a comment someone suggested I write an “About Me” section. It sounds like a good idea, but then again I would prefer that people didn’t know that I am running a one man show.
I have heard of people running websites where they create “fake” email addresses on the site to the give impression to people the company is bigger than it looks. Maybe I could do the same.
Blog Outsourcing to China?
August 19, 2005
I came across this site this morning, and had a good laugh.
To quote from the first post on the site, “The beginning of this blog marks the beginning of a business venture that lies on what I believe to be shaky moral ground…What Jeff and I are doing is simple but as far as I know we are the first. We are outsourcing blogs to China.”
Adding a forum
August 18, 2005
I have been getting a lot emails lately from my tokyoessentials.com website. I have decided to raise the priority of adding a forum to the site, so hopefully other people can help answer questions.
I am thinking of using phpbb. It is free and seems to be fairly well used by people, although it’s popularity does appear it to be a target to hackers.
Also, adding a forum should provide more content to the site for search engines to hit.
I don’t know why but people seem to think I a running a travel agency.
Bali Pictures
August 16, 2005
I have posted some pictures of my recent Bali trip to Flickr.
You can see them here.
Blogging for money
August 16, 2005
I had an email from someone asking about how to go about blogging for profit. I wish I knew the answer to this question! Firstly I would take a look at problogger.net and the different sites the author has created.
It’s not easy at all to make money from blogs. You need to find your own profitable niche.
I make very little money from my blog. I started with bigger expectations, but have found out how hard it is. I blog now just to keep track of what I am doing, and write away about my life to anyone who is interested in reading. I think my own family lost interest after my first couple of posts!
I use blogger. They offer free webhosting and it works fine. Moveable Type I have heard is also good if you are planning to get into it seriously.
I also recommend people reading *everything* on webmasterworld.com which has the best info on making money on the web. Don’t bother with any of those ebooks. If you spend enough time on that site you can learn everything there is to know. Books are out of date by the time they reach print.
Getting your site up is only part of the long haul. Building links and getting people to actually visit your site is the hardest part.
If anyone has put a new site recently, I would love to hear how you are doing.
Holiday in Bali
August 11, 2005
If anyone has been wondering why there haven’t been any new posts is that I am currently on holidays in Bali. It is soooo relaxing and enjoying every moment - beautiful weather, beach and food.
I am staying in a place now run by a fellow Australian. It has beautiful bungalows. I am real envious for the lifestyle he and his wife is living. I would love to be doing the same thing. The average wage for Indonesians is about AU$75! Great for getting hired help.
I will be posting my pictures in my flickr account when I am back in Tokyo next week. Happy holidays to everyone in the northern hemisphere!
Google Check
August 3, 2005
I got my Google cheque tonight for June. I was starting to get worried, but it reached my fine. They are always 1 month behind for each end of the month.
I am starting to think that this is more profitable than real estate. Although there is no guarantee as to how long this will go on for.
Yahoo have also announced the commencement of their program, similar to Adsense.
Google Earnings
August 2, 2005
I was thinking of posting my Google earnings each month.
For July I have earnt: $557. For June I earnt: $375
It is a nice increase. Of course I have been working on the site more, and studying the best positions for placing ads and so on.
The bulk of the earnings is from tokyoessentials. This site probably hasn’t reached $50. There has been a big drop in traffic this month for this blog. Definitely targeted information and lots of quality content is the way to go if you want to make money with Adsense.
I am going to set my goal for this month at $680.
