Blogging Series

So, last time, I had mentioned how I monetize my blog. Let me talk about various things which you can do. The list is exhaustive but I am going to talk only about things which actually appeal to me or I have a bit of experience with.

Yes, this is one of the simplest way to earn quick bucks. The company contacts you and asks you to write a post. You negotiate the price and deliver the post by the said date. It pays well if you have a good page rank and fan following for your blog. More the reach, more you can charge.

But, the method has some serious drawbacks. Not all readers are happy with sponsored posts. Such a post can end up looking very advertising without any benefit for the reader. Excess of such posts can cause a fall in the readership. And, worse of all, the brand approaching you might not be related to your niche which is a waste. And, the last is quality of the website you will link back to.

So, before you start negotiating, do a proper research on the company, its product and if possible, try it out before doing a post on it. But, maximum sponsored posts are on services or websites which you might not always be able to give a try. So, the best option there remains to weave a creative and useful post around the theme of the product so that you can provide one unobtrusive link in between somewhere.

sorry but this is not possible in virtual world 😀

Also, be sure that the company is gonna pay you for the services. It is always good to get the payment before the post goes live. Otherwise, they might never respond back. Some companies approach the big bloggers directly for sponsored posts but for regular bloggers, you can check out sponsoredreviews.com and payperpost.com which provides an interface between the brands and bloggers and takes a commission from the amount you earn.

Infolinks is not the only one which provides contextual links. There are small ad networks (generally closed) which when joined ask for the best ad space on your blog and pay you on the amount you fix (if they think it is worth it!) One which I know is blogher network which allows only women to join. But, I think googling would reveal a lot more.

Sometimes some companies may just approach you for adspace renting or would ask you to place some text links in some of your posts or insert some keywords with links.

You can rent out the ad spaces to them and charge them depending on the placement of the ad and the ad unit size. The only issue with such kind of collaborations is that you have to be extremely careful of the kind of websites you are linking to. 

These are the ones I can remember right away. I shall put up ones I recall in another post!! So, what are your monetizing methods? 

Sometimes when you are feeling low or are disappointed or are just thinking of giving it up due to sheer dejection, it is always good to reevaluate your thinking and reasons for blogging. So, this is to all bloggers – why do you blog? And, to all readers – what is the most important thing you look in a blog? So, coming back to the question for bloggers, I should start answering them. 

Ok, so why suddenly I got all emotional about blogging. Because, the pageviews have gradually fallen quite low lately and it has disappointed me a lot 🙁 Also, these days I am falling back on replying to comments and checking mails pretty frequently which makes me all the more sad.

Ok, so this my secret place no one in my real life knows about so I can write whatever I want and complain about whomsoever I want without being bothered by the thought that some one might make an association or take offense. Trust me, its a relief to have a secret life of your own.

Love the products…keep them coming! Yes, who does not love freebies, especially if you fall in love with them forever. Second, the money! I so love the fact that my passion helps my bank balance. 

First, I do try my level best to answer all the queries and help everyone who seeks advises from me. But, I have to say here that its not necessary that home remedies or products which suit me will suit everyone. Its more of a hit and trial. 

Second, since I have started blogging, I have recognized I actually like writing. And, it makes me more confident that even if I stop working, I will always be independent. That is something very important for a person like me!!

I like to keep things diversified and holistic because healthy living is all about everything. So, I want to spend more time and energy on one of the recently started series – Its Just Life. That was something which I have always wanted to do and of course I do have some projects which will come to fruition depending on other events in life so I am just waiting for that!!

So, if you follow me on the blog’s facebook page, you would have seen a particular status update. Actually what it was about was something on these lines.

Just day before yesterday, I was talking to my colleague. He was asking my opinion on a launcher or landing page he had created for his sister’s upcoming food blog. And, we got talking about blogging. Suddenly he asks me if I blog and without thinking I give him an affirmative answer. Well, if you are not already aware, no one in my close friend or family circle knows about my hidden hobbies. So, he was obviously interested in the domain name and what I blog about when my self-preservation instinct took over and I kept my lips sealed.

But, then the topic moved to hosting of the blogs and everything when I told him it is too expensive actually to host the blog instead of using blogspot where you get away by paying 10$ a year. Well, actually, let me say that this is not necessarily true but we will debate over this in some other post coz its highly technical. But, the whole point he said was the entire costing depends on how much traffic the blog gets. I was like yeah that’s true! And, then, he asked me about this blog’s traffic. I was like its 5k right now but generally its 8k a day. And, he was like wow! that’s awesome. It must have taken a lot of work and many years. I was like yup. It did. 3 years almost and then I realize its gonna be 4 this December. So, yup, we have definitely hit a good threshold and its all thanks to all my lovely readers who make me blog.

Now, coming back to today’s blogging topic, how to get traffic and what are the principles. Actually, the blog hit a major snag this Independence Day weekend. The traffic had a spike drop from 8 to 5k a day and its not raising up even though I am doing all what I have been doing. Well, we can always say that it might have been excess of spam visits in such a case but whatever it be, it is quite disheartening. So, to avoid such downward spikes in the blog, you can do your own bit.

This has to be the only principle of blogging if life was easy but unfortunately its not! But, still, its the 90% stakeholder. So, write and write and write and don’t copy or plagiarize or steal. Create! The content might deliver the same message but give it your own voice. Tweak it to your style. But, whatever you do, make it your own.

Blogging remains exciting in the starting but after a while it can become monotonous so try out some different ways or diversify your blog enough that you do not go out of your niche or specialization but it keeps you excited enough to keep writing. And, I have also mentioned some of the ways to overcome Blogger’s block sometime back. Keep a chunk of posts in the drafts which you can publish or schedule when you don’t feel like blogging.  

Most of the bloggers are part-time! So, I would say daily but twice a week or thrice a week. Whatever you do but you should time your posts properly so that your readers get what they expect and a proper posting schedule gets registered with the search engines as well.

Of course, posting daily does keep the blog updated so it ranks higher in the searches. That is why you would find multiple posts on professionally managed blogs or community blogs. But, for a personal blog, it can be a bit ambitious to achieve. So, set targets which you can plausibly reach.

Here I would like to add that howsoever much you might try, sometimes its just not possible to put up the posts on a timely basis so expect a traffic crunch at that time. Do not be disheartened and keep trying. Also, scheduling of the posts works really well in such cases.

Publicizing your blog is obviously important. Use social platforms like facebook, google+, twitter to give regular updates. More your content is exposed, more traffic it gets. Now, this is something I totally suck at. I have hardly tried to publicize my blog and whatever meager efforts I have put have definitely borne results.

I have recently started posting status messages on the blog’s facebook page. But, let me also say that posting on blog’s facebook page is more to interact with your readers than to publicize the blog but that has also worked in my case. If you are using twitter or facebook groups, it then becomes a way to promote the blog to other audiences who do not know about your blog.

One of the simplest way to reach out is to comment on other blogs. But, always remember to leave a meaningful comment. No one likes to read great blog or this is amazing, follow me back! Create a relationship with the blogger. And, yes, it does take a long time so don’t be impatient.

So, I would again say that content is the key and it does take a bit of time to get faithful readers to the blog. And, stop comparing your blog to other blogs because they might be doing something which you are not and reaping those benefits. But, at the end of day, every blogger works hard whether it looks like it or not. 

So, two days back I get a mail from Roshni asking me how did I go about monetizing the blog. Ohk, so a long story short, content is the king whenever it comes to anything with blogging!! Now, let me start with my story.

I had applied for adsense (January 2010) right when I had started blogging (December 2009). Yes, I was ignorant that the blog needed to be 6 months old and few other restrictions when it came to adsense approval of blogs from India. So, obviously, they refused.

Then, infolinks came my way and it was easy to get accepted so there it was. I had started earning money right from the start of blogging. But, don’t be buoyed, it was a measly 1$ per month or something like that and it took almost a year and half (June 2011 to be precise and I had integrated it in January 2010) to reach the threshold of 50$. But, fortunately, all time I did not falter and was very regular with blogging and slowly the traffic got better.

In the mean time, I had again tried for adsense after making sure that all the clauses were fulfilled. My blog was 6 months old and I had almost 400-500 posts up and had a decent traffic. Again I was rejected 🙁

So, I signed up with chitika. It wasn’t really a great earner so I removed it quite soon. 

And, suddenly in the start of January 2012, adsense accepted me just like that. The year had started on a good note. And, adsense is quite a good source for earning money according to me except the getting accepted business.

I have to mention that first year has been quite up and down in terms of money but it was decent.  

And, in this year, I have been contacted by private advertising networks which are also turning out profitable. In fact, they quite compliment the adsense income. I would not mention them because I am not really sure how their application and acceptance standards are.

After so much struggle, I have understood one thing. Ultimately, it is the content which drives traffic which drives advertisers which brings money. Also, another thing I have learned is more content you publish is directly proportional to money you earn. 

This post is just about how I tried to monetize my blog. I shall in some weeks write about how to monetize your blog, some of its basic principles and other networks and ways to monetize but one thing you already know – content is the king!! And, patience the key. 

So, I was just looking around in my draft for some unfinished post which I might be interested to get over with and of course some inspiration! And, I came across a set of notes in which I had set some goals for my blog.

Well, as you can imagine, I had very conveniently forgotten about it! But, when I just looked through some of the things I had set for myself, I quickly summarized that some of those goals have been realized long back which obviously is making me a lot happy and that is also why I am sitting in my office and typing away this post!

For any endeavor to succeed, you need to set realistic and just-beyond-the-reach goals. Aim for the moon by all means but the path to success is always defined by the smaller steps you take, right? So, same goes with blogging!

May be you would like to see some new set of people gracing your blog so set such goals. Check out what is the current readership and increase a 30-50% margin and keep it as a next milestone to be reached with in the next 3-6 months depending on how much time you spend on the blog.

For many, motivation for blogging can quickly change to the bucks they see. Well, that is perfectly fine as long as you are true to your readers and catering to them! So, you might decide that since you have been consistently earning X amount, the next milestone should be Y within a T amount of time!

These are the two areas where I can think I would like to set goals but if you have some others, by all means go ahead. Also, always remember that the first and probably the only priority should be readers and you. Money and all the fame would automatically follow! Yeah, there is one milestone which you can probably set!

Most of the bloggers are part-time and then one goes on vacations and sometimes life is just a roller-coaster ride because of which you hardly have time to tend to your blog. So, may be, leaving all exceptional circumstances, setting a minimum number of posts per week would be a great idea so that you at least have a set routine and your readers know what to expect when!

Also, a few other goals which you might like to set if you are too interested are to write a few guest posts or articles on hubpages or wikihow or ehow or any other such reliable forums and communities which might give visibility to your blog and improve your exposure.