Making Money
Making Money With Your Blog
Jan 12th
I have begun utilizing a service called payperpost and have been quite happy with them. PPP is a great way to monetize your blog in addition to the typical adsense and kontera ads.
In case you haven’t noticed, there is now a link at the end of every post that will let you get paid to review Shaun Carter dot Com by joining up with PayPerPost. In order to join PPP you need to have a blog and abide by a simple list of rules regarding how and when you make sponsored posts.
The payouts for each sponsored post you make vary, but the ones available to me range from $5-10 each. The more popular your blog, the better the payout you are eligible for. Some of the top earning PPP bloggers have earned nearly $20,000.
Another great feature is PPP Direct. This is where you can set your own price for a review and the advertisers will come to you. Some popular blogs are earning hundreds of dollars per review to talk about an advertiser’s product or service and you have the ultimate right to choose which ones you want to write about or not.
Not only is PPP a great place to earn a little extra cash, there is a forum where you can network with many like-minded bloggers and get some great tips and feedback to help improve your own blogging and online earning potential.
UnblockYouTube.com – Work In Progress
Jan 2nd
I’ve been working on setting up my new VPS, Virtual Private Server, so I can begin building a proxy network. I’ve owned the domain UnblockYouTube.com for a while now and had dabbled in proxies before, but now I plan to take on the project seriously and look to make a respectable monthly income from it.
But the income part of the equation is the tricky one. I’ve spent hours and hours researching how to properly monetize a proxy and have come up with some interesting findings. Most proxy publishers depend on Adsense all over the homepage of the proxy and that is all the monetization they do. Well I tend to interpret the Google TOS regarding pages having content as excluding a proxy homepage because of a lack of real content so I don’t plan on placing Adsense on any proxy of mine – for now. Instead, I plan to monetize the proxy pages which some publishers report make even more than their homepages. By utilizing a combination of AdBrite banners and Adversal or Canep pop-unders many proxies earn $10-20 per day. The bottom line is that I’m not going to jeopardize my Adsense account with proxies and will find a way to make money anyway.
The site itself is just a PHProxy template with a little modification to accommodate the additional advertising and is very easily duplicated. I will be playing with the script for a few days before beginning to promote the site, although the domain already gets a steady stream of type in and Google traffic because of the excellent SEO value of the domain name. Right now the biggest trouble spot is modding the PHP script to stream YouTube videos – which is kind of important for a proxy with “YouTube” in the domain!
Technorati Tags: proxy, youtube, myspace, shaun carter, phproxy, php, adversal, adsense, google, canep, unblock youtube, vps
Bux.to – Paid To Click
Jan 1st
I have come across a PTC (paid to click) website recently called Bux.to. The premise of the program is quite sound… advertisers pay 1.9 cents for each visitor that Bux.to sends to them via the click page. But, the viability of the program comes into question when you do the math on the payouts.
Each user is paid 1 cent for clicking each ad and you also earn 1 cent for each click by your direct referrals. Well, right there you begin to see the problem… the company is only bringing in 1.9 cents per click, but is paying out 2 cents (a .1 cent per click deficit). However, the disparity grows for those who upgrade for $59/year. Those users earn 1.25 cents per personal click and 1.25 cents per referral click – a .6 cent shortfall each.
Another possible problem is that some of the links that are available to click are just links to Bux.to upgrade offers or to a pro-Bux.to forum entry that the company obviously was not paid the 1.9 cents for.
Why I may be wrong:
Of course not everyone is signed up by a referrer, so it is entirely possible that the company is not paying out anywhere close to a system wide average of 2 cents per click. But, now Bux.to is selling un-referred members for about $1 each. This move guarantees that the click cost will be at least 2 cents and the company will lose money on every click.
There are many people being paid, sometimes hundreds of dollars, by Bux.to. The payout queue has gotten quite long and is now running at about 30 days. Will Bux.to stick around or disappear into the Internet abyss sometime in the future? In the meantime I’ll click a few links everyday and request payout when I hit $10 and see what happens. After all, what have I got to lose? It’s free to join.
Technorati Tags: bux.to, ptc, paid to click, shaun carter, payout, advertise, mlm, scam, pyramid
December Earnings Terrible?
Dec 31st
I’m not sure if it is just effecting this blog or if earnings are down across the Internet during the month of December. I haven’t been noticing slow traffic, but CTR is down considerably and thus total earnings.
I am in the process of expanding my online earnings out of just this blog and my Credit Card comparison site. I will be launching a proxy network as well as a second blog that will be dedicated to the stock market and world economic topics.
I’ve learned a great deal about proxies on the Digital Point forums and was able to acquire a complimentary copy of a good Proxy eBook put together by a DP member. The earnings potential of proxies appears to be very high and does not necessarily depend solely on Adsense.
Good luck to everyone in 2008, I’m sure there will be many good things to come!
Technorati Tags: december, earnings, blogging, shaun carter, credit cards, 2008, new year, digital point, proxy, stock market, economics, ctr, google, adsense
Increase Your Adsense Earnings With AdsBlackList.com
Dec 21st
I have just begun utilizing AdsBlackList.com to help optimize Google Adsense by eliminating low paying ads from the ones that get displayed on my pages. ABL is a free and paid service that will list all of the Made For Adsense and Low Cost Per Click pages for your particular niche and allow you to input those address into the Competitive Ad Filter feature in your Adsense account.
Some sites struggle with generating more than a few cents per click from their Adsense ads and it may be because you are not properly blocking the junk ads from showing up. While I don’t have too much of a problem with low paying ads on this blog, it has caused me problems before on other websites I manage and using the competitive ad filter that Google provides can be very beneficial in not only increasing your earnings per click, but also your click through rate as better, more legitimate ads will begin displaying on your pages.
Technorati Tags: adsense, google, black list, filter, shaun carter, cpc, epc, ctr, blogging, make money online, optimize
Google Adsense Makes Life Easier For Publishers
Dec 17th
During the process of updating the blog I have redone the Google Adsense code and noticed a new feature that will make the lives of web publishers a whole lot easier. That feature is called “Manage Ads‘ and enables publishers to change the ad parameters on their website without altering a single line of code!
Once the Adsense code is placed, you can then manage the look of the ad from your Adsense setup page. This will make optimizing your ad units so much faster and easier. From the Manage Ads section of your Adsense control panel you can change the channel assignment, color palette, and ad format and have it updated on your website within 10 minutes.
I look forward to utilizing this new Adsense feature and further optimizing the ad units on my websites and I think this update will make it much easier for publishers to enhance their earnings through experimentation.
Technorati Tags: google, adsense, advertising, blogging, weblog, blog, shaun carter, optimization, manage ads
Passive Blogging Income
Dec 11th
I have touched previously on the topic of blogging income and whether it should be categorized as active or passive. I’ve done somewhat of a case study of this phenomenon over the past couple of weeks when I haven’t been posting any new content because I was quite ill.
Traffic has held quite steady at around 100 unique visits per day as it was prior to my posting hiatus, however I have seen my Adsense income fall dramatically while Kontera and YPN income stay the same.
Adsense clicks are down and in the last seven days it has generated under $1, which is about 10% of my typical seven day earnings. The YPN ads on the main page of Shaun Carter dot Com have seen steady click through rates during the posting hiatus and Kontera was the top earner, bringing in about 25+ cents per day.
My thoughts on the Adsense dip is that I only have Adsense in the single post pages of the site and during the period of no new posts many of the site’s visits were to the main page only and thus the opportunity for Adsense views and clicks was well diminished.
How long would an abandoned site be profitable? It’s hard to say, but it appears that some popular well-ranked posts within a blog can generate traffic and income indefinitely. Someone like John Chow, who is generating well over $20,000/mo. from his blog could probably stop posting today and still make several thousand each month but he would most likely have to change the way his advertising works and shift to utilizing an ad network like Adsense or YPN to eliminate the time involved in managing a constantly changing ad inventory.
Technorati Tags: google, adsense, yahoo, ypn, blogging income, shaun carter, john chow, blog traffic, kontera, passive income
Shaun Carter November 2007 Blog Earnings
Dec 1st
The month of November saw some great increases in traffic, due to my coverage of Black Friday 2007. Stats were up almost across the board and earnings more than doubled from October.
Stats:
Unique Visitors – 7,350
Total Pageviews – 10,537
Alexa Rank – 360,952
Technorati Rank – 194,358
Technorati Authority – 41
RSS Subscribers – 41 (Peak 50)
The website that referred the most visits to Shaun Carter dot Com was amwayorthehighway.blogspot.com, bringing in 271 uniques. Google brought in 3,305 unique visitors this month primarily for the following search terms:
- lexmark x3430
- emachines t3638
- dell i1501p-h003w
These search terms were related to my coverage of Black Friday sales at major retailers and that week generated the bulk of earnings for the month as well. The Wal-Mart Black Friday post was the most popular during November.
Earnings:
Adsense – $25.45
Kontera – $73.91
Total Income – $99.36
Technorati Tags: shaun carter, blog earnings, make money online, november 2007, adsense, google, kontera, feedburner, rss, subscribers, alexa, technorati, black friday, walmart
Kontera Great For Product Based Blogs?
Nov 24th
During the Black Friday madness and the increased traffic to this blog because of posts listing specific consumer product model information, I noticed a dramatic increase in earnings from Kontera. I am inclined to believe that the increased CTR and EPC is due to the Kontera links for the various holiday products that everyone is clamoring for this season.
Typically, Kontera earnings on this blog are minimal (less than a dollar per day). But during the past week, daily Kontera earnings have been between $13 and $23. Meanwhile, Adsense earnings only increased about 100%, compared to Kontera’s 2,000%.
I think I will begin experimenting with the application of Kontera links on a product based blog or website where earnings and CTR is much higher than Adsense.
Technorati Tags: adsense, kontera, google, earning, cpc, epc, ctr, shaun carter, blogs, products, black friday, holiday shopping, earnings, making money online
My Million Dollar Wiki Pages For Sale
Nov 4th
I have had three Million Dollar Wiki pages since the site was launched and haven’t done much with them. I just added some adsense to the pages and will watch and see what happens.
I own the Depression, United States, and Debt Consolidation pages and have listed them for sale on the MDW resale page.
The content on the pages currently was put on by the MDW staff as I haven’t done anything with them at all. I will most likely be changing the content to better suit it to monetization and also find ways to start promoting the pages as well. I don’t have the programming skills to spruce up the page well enough to get featured on the front page, although that would help with getting some traffic.
Technorati Tags: shaun carter, depression, united states, debt consolidation, million dollar wiki, resale
