If I had a dollar for every time I get asked how much money I make I would have… even more money! Regular readers have learned by now that I don’t play by the A-List rules and more or less contradict their whole methodology when it comes to making money online. I use free blogs (Blogger), I like my sites good and Ugly and of course I don’t sell crap to my readers – I prefer making money with Adsense. My method is really very simple; I target keywords. I rank on top of Google’s serp’s and bring in traffic. Visitors see my inept, amateurish and oh so ugly blogs and they run like hell. Fortunately 10 -12% of them leave by clicking on my Adsense ads. That is my system (not totally as I do have other forms of monetized blogs) and it works.
How well it works is relative – I don’t pull in $30,000 a month from a single site as that illiterate food monger claims 
out in Vancouver but then again I don’t have to post crap every day either. I also don’t have to deal with people be it advertisers, affiliates, staff or anyone else for that matter. I do get a ton of emails and a ton of comments on a couple of sites but that is my own choosing. I don’t mind helping others out and truth be told I quite enjoy it.
I should also point out that when it comes to the make money online niche I outrank all the A-listers and drive more search traffic than the whole works combined. There is only one fellow in this niche that I happily admit has me topped – Alan Liew and his moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com. If you aren’t familiar with him it’s not surprising as he doesn’t chase social traffic either. He does top the charts for the term “Make Money Online” and ranks in the top 3 for dozens of other related terms. He also uses free blogspot blogs…
A benefit of not selling anything to my readers has meant zero hate mail and I have developed a ton of good will over the last couple of years from the folks who do me the honor of reading my blogs. Oh and aside from a few expenditures (links) I have no overhead. I make money without spending much – almost nothing in fact and what I do spend in a month is recouped in less than a day.
All in all my system is perfectly suited to a guy living in the middle of nowhere running a full time business in the real world. My system is also perfectly suited to beginners. This is part time work with full time income and I have been telling people how I do it for a few years now. No strings attached. Your success will not hurt mine and the best thing is I have made a lot of online friends – friends who have helped get this blog up the MMO charts in record time. I have always lived by the motto that you help yourself when you help others.
So where is this going…
Oh yes… the money.
Well another year is coming to a close so I thought I would give you a peak at how the year has gone – or at least how my public network has fared. This basically means my earnings from the Make Money for Beginners blog and associated sites that I have used when demonstrating my techniques. The site was built as an Adsense blog and strangely enough has morphed into a social/affiliate/adsense blog due to the fact that some people just had to read it instead of running away like they were supposed to. I love my readers but they have lousy taste in blogs – apparently they didn’t get the memo regarding how worthless a Blogspot blog is. Good thing though – it is far from worthless but don’t tell the “experts” as the prevailing myth that bloggers using free platforms can’t know much has been working in my favor (and Alan’s) for years now.
Due to Google TOS I can’t show you all the stats but I’ll give you what I can. I have been open about what I do so I may as well be open about what I earn.
Most of the money is made from the Beginners blog and at present there are only two sites running Adsense on that account. I have had maybe a dozen sites using the same account over the past two years but only two have been Adsense winners and the rest have been transformed into affiliate sites or farm blogs. One is now making headway as a lead generation site and this blog is being groomed to make a killing by scamming all my readers once I develop the perfect scam – still working on that.
Overall I have 4 networks but only one has been made public – meaning you can track most of the sites on it if you do a little digging. You will never find my other networks by way of this one. I see the queries in my stats all the time though – people trying to track my adsense publisher number, my name, IP etc. (You are wasting your time. I am 4 completely different people online and never will the four meet.)
Making Money Online with Adsense
Contrary to popular myth it can be done. You hear stories and complaints all the time from people making $1 a month. The reason is simple – they don’t know what they are doing. I like Adsense for one simple reason. It allows a complete computer illiterate like me to make money online. No skills required other than a half functioning brain and a determination to succeed. Well okay – it helps if you understand SEO and you should if you have been reading my blog. That is what I do and that is the secret to making money online. SEO is what drives traffic and traffic is all that is important. All modesty aside – I am really good at getting traffic and it has nothing to do with my good looks or computer savvy. It has everything to do with – write this down – Getting Backlinks. A little on-site tweaking and a lot of backlink building equals traffic.
I wanted to add the ever popular screenshots to this post but they are so small as to be unreadable so I will list my earnings using text as well. If any of my computer savvy friends feel the urge to tell me how to make a screenshot larger by clicking on it (like blogger does) please fill me in as I haven’t the patience to figure this out. (I told you I was mentally challenged when it comes to computers)
Monthly Adsense Revenue = Currently averaging $3000-$3500 on beginners blog (Best month = $5200). The top 7 blogs across all my networks bring in roughly 20K a month in Adsense. The shot below is for November and I added it to explain the slow start concept to you. Without getting into all the reasons (I’ll save it for the book) it is normal to see low earnings at the start and end of each month and higher earnings mid month. This month started out with a $60 day and is climbing back up to the $100 mark ($96 yesterday). It was at $23 bucks early this morning which tells me today will end around $110 or so. Mid month usually sees days of $150 – $200 per day and then trails off again at the end of the month.
The shot below shows my all time earnings with this account – just over $65k. This is for the past two years and includes about $8k from the other blogs. The main blog has earned roughly $46k this year and the remainder in year one. (Two of my other networks have earned more)
The Beginners blog has also earned just over 15K from affiliate sales this year – the largest source from Project Payday which sits quietly out of the way down at the bottom of the page – the least effective spot and I have wondered what it could do if I just put it where my posts are.
Overall the Beginners blog has earned a little more than 60K this year with total expenses (re: link building) about $1800. Not bad for a blog that averages 4 posts a month and costs me nothing to maintain.
Traffic
The blog averages 1500 – 2500 visitors on weekends and 3500 – 4500 weekdays. This is all search engine traffic. 90% from Google. On days I post I get an increase between 5000 and 6500 visitors – my Adsense earnings/affiliate sales don’t see an increase on those days and this is why I have stated that social traffic does not convert to sales. Traffic has increased steadily every month and is due to targeting new keywords. The site ranks on page 1 on G for over 70 related terms and I’m adding more every month.
That is my system – pick a keyword and get to the top of the serp’s with it. Then repeat with a new term. Over and over and over. It works and it gets easier to do as you build up authority for the site as a whole. Last week I showed just how easy I can claim top spot for just about any MMO related keyword I want. It took less than an hour for Google to rank me number 2 for “make money online in Canada” without quotes and number 1 with quotes. (12 million competing pages)
Now while this all comes across as bragging I’m not really that impressed with myself as I know that this can be done by anyone. And that’s the whole point of this post – if you are starting out online the chances are good that you are going to come across Problogger or John Chow or Shoemoney and then spend the next year trying to duplicate what they have done. You will fail – yes – you will. You just don’t know it yet.
The reason you will fail is because they don’t teach you how to make money online. You will copy them like Caroline Middlebrook has done or John Cow did – and then you will begin to wonder why you still aren’t making money even though you have 3000 RSS subscribers. Caroline still hasn’t figured it out (you don’t have the right traffic Caroline) or you will sell out like the Cow did when you realize how much work is involved in building a social site with no return on the investment. Most of you will never see 3000 subscribers to begin with so take a cue from them – they aren’t making money following the A-List and they are successful as far as social blogging goes. Closer to home two friends of mine Vic and Court are busy with new ventures in spite of 3000 and 5000 subscribers to their flagship blogs. Why? Because there is no money in just having readers – they are using the flagships to funnel traffic to where they can make money. All the people I just mentioned have talent and quickly grew a large audience – most of you won’t even get that far – far enough to realize that you are wasting your time chasing bloggers. I have readers as well and truly enjoy them but I don’t need them to make money.
And that is why my system succeeds while social blogging doesn’t.
If you are new here and made it this far then you have just experienced what I do – I write agonizingly long posts full of terms that Google is going to rank me for. When I finish I am going to go out and build backlinks for all those terms and the end result will be that G will send the same traffic to this blog as it does to my other one. This site will be making the same kind of money as the other MMO blog but in a quarter of the time. And then I will build another site and do it all over again.
There are 36 million pages telling you how to make money online in Google’s index – only one of them sits on top of the list and it doesn’t belong to an A List blog. Google it and then start reading.
Thanks for enduring this,
Cheers,
Griz
And this is why Griz rocks the house.
Somehow you can write a lengthy post that you probably meant to be fluff but it is chock full of value nonetheless. Your conversational tone in your writing is actually extremely good, but I did not realize this at first.
I have already read all of your material and I’m ready to devour more. Actually, you’ve already given all your secrets away but it is so inspiring to hear you retell how to do it, over and over again.
It’s all about firing off more synapses in your reader’s brains, and this is the kind of post that lights them up. And that is why you rock the house, Griz! Thanks again for the motivation.
Patrick,
Actually it was going to be a quickie – just post the screenshots to satisfy the nosy buggers who keep asking but then they looked like crap so I canned that idea and then Court started sending a flood of traffic over here with his latest post so I thought I would fill them in on what I do.
I don’t mean to bore the regulars but I get a steady stream of new people due to the serp’s and my mail box fills up with questions that I have answered a hundred times so I pretty much design these posts for the newcomers. I’ll have to work out a signal for the rest of you when I come up with something new! Lol. (My experiments are drawing to a close so it won’t be long…)
I love your ideas here, but I am new to the blogosphere. Do you have any good resources for beginners? Insight on how to build backlinks? Anything to get me off the ground would be AWESOME!!
Thanks!!
Again, I nice post that I had to read to the end.
Btw, how to make money online is not number one in Canada …yet.
Hey Steve,
Nope but it is in G.com and since I wrote the post I have suddenly seen my G.ca rankings improve across the board for my other terms.
Great post as usual and definitely inspiring to know what can be done.
When it comes to building backlinks, what methods do you recommend for someone who is new and doesn’t have the infrastructure or relationships built yet?
My first few adsense sites are just starting to make a couple dollars and any tips on building up those anchored links would be great.
Thanks,
Jimmy
Jimmy,
Start with the usual methods – articles, comments, forums, squidoo, hubpages and you can use the niche support page to contact other bloggers to exchange links and get to know them. I have also created a page with lots of other link resources listed as well as my Friendz of Griz page which is full of other bloggers who know how this game is played – try linking to them in some of your posts and you may find they like to link back – helping others always pays dividends.
Having one of those days Grizz if you know what I mean , then I heard that email bell that meant I had mail, from your site. It wasn’t a very productive evening so I zoomed on over and lo and behold got inspired. Flagship blogs are slave drivers, and you are right they don’t get you paid relative to the time and work they consume. Now that Im all inspired I’m off to get links
Don
Don,
I hear ya’ – I get those days all to often. Like when I have to get at least 1 post a month on this blog just to keep the bot dropping in.
WordPress is such a pain compared to the freebie site but my own fault – really need to sit down and get a handle on this. Unfortunately that is like work and that’s not why I started blogging! Lol. Hope your evening improves Don and thanks for dropping in.
Great post again Griz. I’m one of those social people that isn’t smart enough to run away from your MMO for beginners blog. Quite the opposite really. It sits with this site in my RSS reader so when ever you do post I can go back to banging my head on what you post and continue to try and make it work for me. Luckily, none of my sites are social in nature so they enjoy a decent CTR. One of them has days that are high enough (percentage wise) that I worry that Google will notice.
I’ve just started a couple sites recently and have forced myself to go back through all you tuts (even the beginner ones) and start from square one. Hell, I even took some of your template ideas from the beginner site. =)
This is probably enough rambling though. I just wanted to say thanks for all the fish.
Aaron
You’re welcome Aaron.
Do I detect a Douglass Adams fan? Great writer – shame we lost him so young.
The answer really is 42.
This is exactly why I have a love/hate relationship with Grizz, lol…
I love the guy for breaking things down for us noobs and making them simple and easily digestible.
I hate him for making me look like a total idiot for not being able to take this thing and run with it! LMAO
Thanks for the continued enlightened guidance
I’ll get it some day
Well don’t feel too bad – after all I do cheat like a bandit.
Wow.. I just happen to check if you responded to my email to see you put up a post.. Great..
“I see the queries in my stats all the time though – people trying to track my adsense publisher number, my name, IP etc. (You are wasting your time. I am 4 completely different people online and never will the four meet.)”
LMAO…Fine Griz.. I’ll stop trying to figure it out. always assumed you looked at your stats for such queries.However, I have learned quite a bit from looking at how you do stuff.
How long did it take you to figure out how to efficently get back links??
Thanks
Dennis
Dennis,
Ha… I kinda figured you were one of the Sherlocks prodding about in the bowels. To answer your email I’m using duplicate snippets on BS and LV just to see what the results are – so far they are all getting indexed which is what I suspected would happen. I’ve mentioned this before – G has a weak spot when it comes to duplicate content. And yes bookmark links don’t appear to have much juice.
Btw – nothing wrong with your spying – that’s how you really learn online – not what they say but what they do. Just thought I would save some aggravation for those looking in the wrong places.
You are the wind beneath my wings. Thank you!
You’re welcome Ms Midler
Four completely different people… Interesting. Is that something that just developed over time or did you plan it that way from the beginning?
By the way, your posts always uplift my spirits–especially this one!
Planned.
Not that this is allowed but if someone was to say (hypothetically of course) open 4 adsense accounts then they would want to be sure that they didn’t all lead back to the same person. The fact that G allows businesses to open Adsense accounts payable to the business name would make such a scenario possible.
I see, I see…hypothetically, of course.
I assume you would also want to use a hypothetical ISP as well, such as, say, a proxy for each of these personas? If that’s the case, would it always have to be the same proxy with the same identity or would it not matter as long as no two persons ever shared the same address, so to speak?
Confusin’, ain’t I?
Those questions I can’t answer as my hypothetical fellow uses 4 different ISP’s, 4 bank accounts, 4 different business addresses, 4 different business names, 4 different phone numbers and 4 different computers. He is a paranoid hypothetical user and in a legal sense is four different legal entities.
That’s completely understandable! Of course, I couldn’t expect you to be able to know what four completely unrelated strangers are up to. *cough, cough* Hypothetical strangers at that!
Another great post Griz and it’s good to find someone else who is more than one person online, even by IP, lol!
Strangely, I have never thought to track you, but then I guessed you would have that well covered.
And I still read Caroline Middlebrook and wish she would ‘get it’. All that talent going to waste is a shame really…
By the way, the simplest way to post a big picture is to upload the original to your domain on your hosting account, grab the link you get and then link to it from your smaller picture. I do it all the time on my adult blogs
Zania,
I kinda figured that was the process but of course that would have meant doing it! I prefer to just bitch about wordpress’s obvious inferiority to blogger!
I also like to shake my fist at my pc and tell it how stupid it is for not reading my mind and performing tasks at the speed of thought – without the tedious process of requiring me to use my fingers. My wife says I can be such a baby at times but I really don’t know where she gets that idea.
We have to chat btw – I have a seedy little blog that gets a few hundred visitors a day for a term that you probably have an affiliate product for. I have none of those type of products in my arsenal so I’m thinking I’ll provide the traffic if you provide the monetization – a little partnership of convenience if you are interested. Can you email me so I can email you back – don’t have your email (probably do but that would require looking for it Lol) – only if you’re interested.
Email sent
I sent it to your usual email address.
Just sent a quick note to you – talk soon.
Hi Griz,
Just wanted to pop in and say thanks.
As you know, because of your advice I’ve been generating pretty good traffic on a variety of Web properties for almost a year. Monetization was another matter, though, until two months ago when I found a system that works for the type of Web content I like to develop. As a result I’m finally making significant money! You would laugh if you saw the bass-ackwards way I’m doing it, because it goes against conventional wisdom on several fronts. But it works, so that’s all that matters.
Anyway, thanks again for all your help.
Hi Carla,
I am all about unconventional methods – whatever works is my motto. I’m glad to hear things are coming together for you. And yes – I am plodding away on “the book” – now that the lake is freezing and the snow is falling I’m running short of excuses for procrastinating. Damn.
Griz,
I just made a long question/post in the Traffic is Supreme section of the Acedemy.
Thanks and sorry.
Hmmm… that sounds ominous! I’ll work my way over there as soon as I get through the comments.
Thanks for the great post. I had seen a refernce to you a few weeks ago in Caroline’s blog but didn’t know how to find you. I found the link in Court’s blog and here I am blown away. I really appreciate the down to earth way you blog. I am really learning a lot from you guys and hopefully I can play it forward later on.
Thanks again
Nice to meet you Andy and welcome to our little corner of the net. I hope we can be of some use to you so don’t be shy if you have questions.
Let’s see if Mr. Akisment still hates me. LOL.
Looks like Adsense is still the best way to go huh? For all my effort to rank for the term, I only manage to sell 6 copies of the 7 dollar script last month, but it’s a term with minimum searches monthly, so what the heck. LOL.
Still searching for that elusive killer keyword so I can stick some related products into my blog. In the meantime, I think I’ll have my daughter apply for an Adsense account from her office computer. I got no luck so far, trying to get back in.
Great stuff as usual mate. Turned me into “The Hulk”. All green with envy.
I hate to tell you Costa but your comments are still being dumped by akismet. It would be worth the effort to get a new adsense account if you can. You’re on your own as far as keywords go though – they are the holy grail of internet marketing.
On the screen shot thing, if you’re using WordPress 2.6.x you should be able to select the option to show a medium size thumbnail and it will add the link for you. Or, you can do what I do, type in the HTML directly.
I’ve asked this before but I think it would add to the discussion. You said that your top 7 blogs make $20K a month on Adsense. That’s out of how many total monetized blogs? I think it’s important for people to know that it is a numbers game.
Another funny thing about search traffic is how consistent it is. My VB.NET programming blog hasn’t been updated in a year but the traffic is at the same level or slightly higher than when I stopped posting to it. It’s not a big money making niche, techies love to block ads, but it makes well over Vic’s proverbial $1 a day. My posting on OpTempo has been sporadic too but there will be at least 800-1000 people through there on a given day looking for all sorts of stuff. But, you hear the social bloggers say time after time that if you don’t post every day you won’t get traffic.
Thanks for the tip Frank. As you know I have hundreds of sites but only a few dozen have panned out with adsense. It is definitely a numbers game and trial and error is the only method of finding winners that I know of. Of the couple of dozen only 7 have hit the big money and all are like your OpTempo – they are conducive to multiple keywords which allows them to grow slowly with time.
The social bloggers have to post everyday because they don’t get search traffic and the only way to keep the readers coming back is to post. Readers are not buyers though. You know as well as I do why search traffic works – the people are looking for something – bloggers on the other hand are just looking to get known by other bloggers. A complete waste of time.
You’re right – It is amazing how consistent search traffic is – both in terms of numbers that show up everyday (new post or no new post) and in terms of how many ads get clicked. The fact is G doesn’t need you to post at all – static sites can hold their rank for years.
Busy at the Academy, long post’s…. I’m not complaining Griz i love the teaching..but are you seriously snowed in already?
Macnabclan
Dan.
Hi Dan, I wouldn’t say snowed in – but winter has started. The lake will freeze over in the next couple of weeks and there is a light snow hiding the grass as of this morning. Not a big deal as winter only lasts 7 – 8 months tops – spring is just around the corner. Lol.
Hello Griz,
I think this blog is really getting uglier by the day that I was hoping to click on some ads to escape. (LOL!) Too bad I am a regular reader and there is no ads to click even if I wanted to.
I remembered reading from your Blogger site that you have about 200+ sites but only 25 of them are adsense. I was wondering if you could share with us how you make money with the other sites.
Is the earning from non-adsense site coming any close to your adsense-site?
Phillip,
Most of the other sites are affiliate sites but I have been converting many into lead generation sites or simply leaving them non-monetized and use them as farm blogs for links. Affiliate marketing is by far the least consistent form of monetization – a good day can be followed by days or weeks of nothing and you need a lot of sites in a lot of niches just to make any semblance of a steady income. And products tend to have a shelf life so when the party is over the sales dry up and off you go looking for something else – in short it is work.
Lead generation is closer in consistency to adsense and why I prefer it to affiliate sales. People will always want credit cards and need lawyers and cheap hotels and holiday packages. The downside is that Lead Gen involves some of the most competitive niches online so you have to have the resources to be able to compete. While I have bursts of big sales campaigns that have out performed my adsense at any given time – adsense is still my main earner over the course of a year. It’s very hard to beat simply because it is so stable and rarely decreases – in fact it grows incrementally over time if you do things properly.
Griz, what has been your experience with waiting to monetize a new site? I’ve seen Court post before about waiting until you have AT LEAST 10 good kw rich posts and you start seeing some search engine traffic. Does this hold true in your opinion?
I don’t monetize until I have firm ranking for the keywords I’m targeting and traffic showing up using those keywords. I don’t have any firm numbers other than I can tell when a site is ready – this site is ranking for all the right keywords and is getting a steady stream of visitors from G but not enough yet to monetize it. It is my belief that I get better ranking (and faster) by not monetizing a site too early. I may be losing out on a few bucks by waiting but it is peanuts compared to what I’ll make once this site is firmly established on the page 1 serp’s for my keywords.
Another consideration with this site is smart pricing – until my search traffic far outnumbers my social traffic I am not going to add adsense lest the un-targeted social traffic starts clicking the ads and gets my whole account smart priced. At the moment I have far more social visitors than search visitors. When those numbers reverse then the site will be ready.
You have 200+ sites and I only have 2 working sites although I have 4 other domain names registered and 8 blogger name registered. I can’t seems to find the time to update all the sites. I update my sites like once a week as I have a full time office job. I get on average about $1 every two days from adsense for these two sites.
How often do you update the 200+ sites. I noticed you only update your MMO blogger sites and this site …like once or twice a month….I know because I subscribe to your RSS.
If you don’t update the other sites that often, on average how many posts for each sites do you have in order to maintain G to continue sending traffic to them.
Fred, as I mentioned in conversation with Frank above, the notion of having to post frequently or even at all is something concocted by social bloggers and is not necessary in order to rank well with Google. All that is needed is backlinks. I post simply to introduce new keywords into my blogs and that is about it. If my rankings slump I get more backlinks – I don’t post more. Some sites don’t get touched for months – others get updated because of a new campaign I embark on and my best sites I try and add a few posts a month in order to target more terms so that traffic will keep growing.
I have a number of tropical fish related sites that haven’t been touched in two years and they all remain on page 1 in the serp’s – or I assume they are as I haven’t checked in ages – I assume because funny enough they have all gained traffic and are still growing. I don’t even remember what they look like.
Speaking of how easy it is to use Blogger, compared to WordPress, it just depends on what you came across first. I’ve spent an unbelievable half an hour only to figure out how to insert an AdSense block above the post title on a blogger blog, thing which would have taken me a couple of minutes with WordPress.
After I did it the hard way, I remembered you might have written that on your blogs for beginners
Regarding posting frequency, I also have sites which I don’t touch for months, while then traffic and the earnings remain at the same level. Sometimes, I’m even afraid to post more, because I fear I might ruin my rankings if I add something.
haha – touche. Your point is well made vis a vis blogger/wp. And yes I did a post about adding that block above the post title – with nice big beautiful screenshots galore on my little blogger tip blog which would have had you up and running in minutes. Regardless of your logic and oblivious to the fact that you are correct I shall continue to call wp down just because its fun! Plus it gets you folks to explain things to me without having to look for answers on my own.
You may be on to something else too – don’t fix it if it isn’t broke. I have screwed up my adsense CPC by slapping up a poorly thought out title a few times (hard as that may be to believe) so I will agree that sometimes things are just best left alone.
Thanks for dropping in Simonne – always a pleasure!
Oh btw I found a scrapper stealing your last post (it had a link in it to me – thank you much) – I can try and find it if you haven’t seen it – let me know.
Actually the first blogs I’ve made were on Blogger. I switched to WP because I found it easier to change the code to make the sites look like I wanted, and because that was a good way of improving my programming and web design skills. I wanted to provide such services to clients. After the first client site, I decided that’s not for me. I’m again considering blogger, and your technical posts are a great help. I like it very much when you say you’re technically challenged, but I don’t believe a word of that
Maybe that’s only Grizz out of the four of you who has technical difficulties, but I bet the other three can lend him a helping hand any time.
I know about that scrapper, I’ve also noticed. Do you think there may be something wrong with that?
Speaking of don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, I was on the first page for a nice keyword, getting good traffic. Then I added a few more posts, thinking I’ll move towards the first position, when I’ve got the surprise to get moved on the 10th page or something like that.
Well thanks for assuming I know more than I let on but I’m afraid I am a code moron – no patience to learn. After hacking together a few websites in the early days I quickly learned to find others who can do a much better job. I can cut and paste when need be but find my time is more productive spent doing the off-site stuff. This is how I came to learn that all the on-site SEO had little to do with succeeding in the serp’s. My first website is a horror as far as coding goes and breaks all the supposed “rules” and yet I got it to the top of the serp’s and it still sits there. It started me down the ugly path and then Blogger came along and I was in heaven – a pre-made ugly site that any dunce could use. My blogs suck from an aesthetic point of view but they make money and that was the whole purpose in the first place. If G starts ranking sites based on looks my career is over!
Hey Grizz, Great post – your writing always inspires me to
1. get backlinks
2. live in Canada – getting snowed in sounds great fun.
BTW, I love digging through people’s sites and backlinks, etc – I learn a lopt more from seeing what people do than reading about what people do.
Me again.
How long would you saw (approx) you spend on your sites in total every month?
That’s a hard one to answer. When it comes to writing posts and on site stuff – very little time. A few hours maybe. I do spend whole days working on link building and related things but I lead a strange life. I spend 12-16 hours a day at the lodge and wander in and out of the office all day long mucking about with my blogs. I do spend more time answering comments (and emails) than anything else though.
… and Grizz strikes again! You are truly a PRO.
Ha… thanks Paul
WTF I hadn’t heard that earnings were lower at the start of the month: I had noticed that tail off at the end. But so far this month has been fantastic and before that last month was 50% increase off my baseline which Ive had a for a few months now. So this month is looking GOOD!
Seeing you seem to be in total exposure mode: how long did take you to start make more than say the minimum wage in this game? I know its not a contest but I am curious – I think a lot of people give up just before its about to work for them. I know I nearly did – I haven’t made my income goals yet, far from it, but I feel so excited to seeing the passive income figures keep on doubling and I know the maths behind the story about the old man just wanting 1 grain of rice of the first chest board square, 2 grains on the 2nd etc
Lissie
Hi Lissie,
When you start getting the top ads on your sites you will notice the dips in earnings more. The big ad campaigns tend to hit their monthly limit in adwords before the month ends and they stop advertising. You are then left with the poorer paying ads and this seems to cross over into the start of the next month – don’t know why but it seems they don’t fire up the campaigns again until a week into it. There is more to this though – if you write a post that loses the best paying ads (wrong post title – non-targeted subject matter etc) it seems to take a while before triggering the good ads once more. At the moment my best advertiser has been missing from my beginners blog for the past week or so – they may have pulled the ad or I may not have the right post up in order to trigger the ad. (I am in the midst of a long drawn out experiment on the site so there could be other factors as well – poorly targeted traffic could be playing a role.) My goal is to finally pinpoint all the factors necessary in running a profitable adsense site so that I can write a short – to the point, step by step guide regarding Adsense.
1st, congratulations on pushing your blog to number 1 on G for MMO. I must say I loosely threw down the gauntlet months ago about VIC getting to the top quickly using his linking methods, where as, it took you a year building it from scratch. You not only explained how he made it to the top you showed me/us with a new blog and how friends can help you. Thanks for proving your statement.
“And yes bookmark links don’t appear to have much juice.”
Your statement above..Is this in reference to PR, or legitimacy of the anchored links from these bookmarking sites? I ask because I just started really concentrating on links and wonder how long it typically takes for links to show up? For instance, I exchanged links from different blogs with some people here and verified the link was posted on their blog but it still has not shown up using SEO Elite. I also wanted to say thank you for answering my question about the link to your blog I was looking at. This gives me a good idea of what BS & LV offer when I get to a level where I may want to consider something like this.
Dennis, Must be in your data center – my rank hasn’t changed in mine. With reference to bookmark links I mean that they just don’t have a great deal of juice in regards to PR or passing authority on. They won’t hurt you any but their value is low compared to other forms of links. They can still aid in traffic though.
Oh Griz,
Okay let me take a long breath…wait a minute my mind is not working… will be back soon.
Holy cow – just how long can you hold your breath?
Well, I am still trying to grasp the idea of…….. no not 60K but…..$3500. I have my whole life to digest 60K.
I guess it is all relative – $3500 won’t make you rich in this part of the world. Neither would 60K sadly.
What you mean that people can look at your site and track backlinks?, lol Hey just so you know some of us that research your sites aren’t doing it to find your other networks. Being a network analyst I get off researching crap like that
Great post as always.
Gotafish
Lol… Nice to see you drop in Gotafish. Just to set the record straight – I encourage people to do a little spying – I do it all the time and that is where the real learning is done. I was referring to some of the pretty complex search strings that I see being run on G from time to time – they aren’t looking for my backlinks… In any event they are wasting their time but it is fun to watch them try. I hope all is well and thanks for the visit!
Another nice post Grizz.
Just feel like a fly on the wall. No questions. Just enjoying like the way I enjoyed my recent symphony.
Want to say hi.
You’re safe Roger – I put away my fly swatter for the winter.
I was one of those trying to figure out your blog network and find your other sites. Sorry.
I figured you’d be too smart to leave any trails connecting them, but I tried anyway.
Do I have to post handwritten stuff to my money blogs? I’d rather use blog content wizard. Right now I use it for farm blogs. My microphone jack went dead on my laptop so I can’t use Dragon Naturally Speaking anymore, and typing by hand takes so long!
So Bookmarking Demon would be a waste of money if bookmarks don’t pass much juice?
Does BS work again or should we stay away from those paid blog networks?
Hi Christine,
If you have a money site then invest the time to make it as unique and tweaked as possible – it pays the bills so don’t skimp on it.
As for bookmark links – they don’t have a lot of juice but they won’t harm you and add legitimacy to your site. (Everyone has them and they will bring in some traffic) Just don’t expect great ranking through the use of them alone.
In regards to backlink solutions – while the main networked got slapped by G they still provide links that are accepted by Yahoo and MSN and will get you ranked in those serp’s.
As of last month (Oct 08) BS added a second network (70 sites) that have PR and are indexed by G so they are back in business and so far so good. You have a choice of which network to use (or both) and I am happy with the results at the moment.
where can we get BS ?
Thai – I don’t want to post the link on this site but you can find it in the sidebar on my beginners blog.
Thank you kind sir!!!
To get the image magnification of blogspot:
1. Upload an image of the size you want
2. Set the width and heigh parameters in the img tag so the image fits in your theme.
3. Surround the image tag with an a tag with the image URL as the href.
This is not optimal, since users will still be downloading the bigger image when they pull up the page. If you are concerned about download speed, then you need two version of the image.
But the key points are:
1.That you can shrink the display size of an image by setting parameters in the img tag. If you just set the width, the height will scale proportionately.
2. A browser can display an image by itself with no surrounding html. The image itself can be the href.
Now, I am assuming you have sufficient manual control in WordPress to do these things. I don’t do WordPress, so I’m in the dark there.
Thanks Carl – My mind is slow so I will digest that over my second cup!
Perhaps some sample code will get the idea across. Here is a sample with the bras and kets escaped:
<a href=”https://makemoneyonlinegrizzly.com//wp-content/themes/wilderness/img/income/adsense_earnings.jpg”>
<img src=”https://makemoneyonlinegrizzly.com//wp-content/themes/wilderness/img/income/adsense_earnings.jpg” width=300>
</a>
Hopefully, wordpress will display this correctly…
I consider myself lucky and overwhelmed at the same time. Griz blessed us with not just one, but TWO posts in a single week! Plus, you were early. Hence my late comment. I hardly find the time to check on my feed reader lately, but Sundays I do – only to see today that I’m a few days late.
You know what that means Griz. You have utterly disrupted my daily routine. From now on, I will have to check my feed reader every other day.
Great post. You make some valid points about updating. One of my most successful blogs is updated about once every 6 to 8 weeks, and I have steadily been seeing an increase in search engine visitors vs. social traffic. I am working to still improve that ratio though; and I have yet to find the best post format for it – short features or long and rambling ones. The advantage of the latter is obvious; it’s what you practice after all. And we can see that it works
On another note, I’d like to add my two cents to getting backlinks. For me, I see two possible avenues; it is the combination of the two which varies for each niche. If it is a niche that has social potential, then the links will follow automatically by the people who feature you, who vote for you on social network and media sites, etc. The more social potential your niche has, and the more you make the post buzzworthy, the more natural backlinks will be thrown your way – not always optimized, but often enough, they link to you with the title as the anchor text.
It is a crux: write great posts and get backlinks automatically – takes more time to write the post, and less time building backlinks yourself. Write not so good posts and just focus on the keywords – you will need less time to write it but you will need to invest more time in getting backlinks.
I have yet to find the right balance.
Keep it up Griz, and sorry – my comment turned out longer than I had meant it to be
Hi Bob,
Your insights are correct when it comes to niches that are “social friendly” – unfortunately most social niches don’t attract the big advertising dollars in spite of attracting a lot of visitors. (The tech niche being an exception).
The high paying niches like credit cards don’t cater to social readers and your method of attracting links from others with buzz worthy posts is limited. (Actually non-existent lol)
You just don’t see a page of comments like this on an “Oil Filter” site. Lol.
I guess I am trying to say that most of the niches that pay well are not conducive to social readers so make sure you don’t just target social friendly niches. (They are fine if you want to create a useful flagship site though)
Hi Grizz,
Really, you can never feel guilty in the least for ‘subjecting’
all of us regulars to these kinds of refresher posts for the sake of any new readers you may have arriving here that might truly benefit from your words (I really believe that many newly arrived readers would not make the effort to search your archives for this info).
My condolences on your loss, BTW: the Bluebomers had a chance to beat the Eskimoes this past Saturday but just fell short. How about my Lions, eh? At least you still have the Jets – oh wait, never mind, sorry .
Speaking of your MMO blog archives, I was digging through them to find a brief discussion you had about the percentages /rates of pay for adsense on a publisher’s site vs the google search engine (ie the payout is less for an ad on your blog than an equally ranking ad on the google search engine’s right hand column).
My follow up to this: if I am ranking in the top three on yahoo for my keyword should I expect anywhere near the same payout for my adsense ads as I would for ranking in the top three on google for the same keyword?
I ask this because I have a blogger blog that is around seven months old and has been sandboxed for about the last six weeks;it was starting to really rank well for a few keywords (ie top half of page one)and making a few bucks a day before it got hit. Well, a few days ago I woke up to find that my blog now ranks solidly at number three on Yahoo for an even better keyword (better as in I never broke page 10 for it on google!)and is getting the traffic you would expect from it. However the adsense PPC is nowhere near what I would expect for it compared to what Google’s own keyword tool says it should be. I pulled adsense off my other site to see if it is just smart pricing but I am skeptical at this point.
Any insight you can offer on this would be greatly appreciated Grizzly.
Thanks,
Stephen
PS. GO LIONS!!!
Hi Stephen,
First – smartass – re: Bombers/Jets!
Second – it’s very hard to make an educated guess about CPC without knowing the keywords and doing a little research. In general if your page is targeted to the keyword and the visitors are finding you using the keyword then you should see the best results as far as CPC is concerned. (regardless of search engine) If the payout is low and you aren’t smart priced it usually means that the advertisers just aren’t bidding much for content ads for that keyword or niche. Remember a lot of advertisers may bid $1 a click for ads in the search listings and only 20 cents or less for content listings.
Grizz,
Thanks for the insight on advertiser adword bidding re. the content vs search listing: the difference just didn’t really come to mind – I always just kind of assumed a percentage formula kicked in giving content a set % amount of the search listing value.
I know that you are literally ‘deluged’ with email now, but I wanted to give you a couple of specifics about my site in question which for obvious reasons I couldn’t really do here.
If you can find the time, keep your eyes out for an email with “GO LIONS!! Adsense frustration.” in the subject. ( I had to make it stand out somehow, right?)
Thanks again Grizz.
Stephen
Hi Griz – this is awesome info. LMAO at the illiterate foodmonger.
Earlier on, I made the stupid mistake of not caring about search engine rankings, because the A listers were telling me titles mattered. But as you say – you don’t get readers who will click your ads by writing cool titles. So the last few months I’ve been focusing on getting more Google traffic.
Steve Pavlina recently mentioned content being more important than SEO. But the first few times I came across his blog was through doing Google searches.
Hi Cath – nice to hear from you.
I have seen Pavlina’s name in the serp’s but never read a word of his. Not sure then what his methods are but content is useful in targeting keywords but has little to do with rankings other than in very un-competitive niche’s. I wrote a post about ranking for Credit Cards (on Beginners blog) that should set the record straight regarding the whole content issue.
[...] of time. He, like all other Internet Marketers is obsessed with keywords and backlinks so he can make fast money online. The weird thing is, somehow, even writing most of the time with Search traffic in mind, he has [...]
Another terrific opportunity to get my regular dose of Griz, and another opportunity to get a crappy link by telling you what a fantastic post you’ve submitted. Hmmm, hope that wasn’t too obvious.
In all seriousness, this couldn’t come at a better time because a chunk of my sites have suddenly dipped significantly down the SERPs. A bit depressing, really with earnings dipping too. It’s a reminder to keep working on the backlinks, even when things seem to be travelling smoothly.
Damien
Sorry to hear about the dip Damien – if you got to page 1 once then you know how to get back there again. Backlinks, Backlinks, Backlinks…
You’re full of it, Griz. This is not only entertaining and informative, it is also PRETTY!!!
Dave Bean
Not to worry Dave – It will be good and ugly by the time I figure out WP!
I can set you up with one of my stripped down themes with Lucida Handwriting or Comic MS Sans as the font. You can’t get much more ugly than that.
Oh you are an evil man Frank! Lol.
Am I missing something? Where are your Google Adsense ads on this page?
It appears you missed reading the comments – I’ve explained why I haven’t added adsense to this site yet.
data entry services,
Grizz still hasn’t put the adsense in this blog yet.
Once he get more search traffic than the people like us LOL, which will avoid the smart pricing he is ready for that. He is already ranking for several of his money keywords.
Read not just the posts but also comments. The adsense snapshots are from another blog of his NOT this one.
you just got in before me Grizz.
Nice answer Roger
Hi Griz,
Do you follow the rule of writing lengthy posts even for your niche blogs. I am struggling to do it. When I am targeting not-so-competitive keywords, it is really difficult to write lengthy posts because of the limited material available.
Venkat.
Yes and no – It is hard to write long lengthy posts when it comes to niches like “oil filters” or “Cheap printer ink” and I tend to just focus on the main keywords using as many posts as it takes to cover each keyword separately. I start a lot of sites this way and then bombard them with anchored backlinks and wait for G to show me the way. If the sites get ranked well and start showing me traffic I then spend more time on them with longer posts and concentrate on the keywords the traffic is using. If they rank well and the traffic isn’t there then it’s a dud and it becomes part of the farm.
I guess I am trying to say that I don’t exert a lot of energy on anything until I know that the traffic is there.
Also – keep in mind my post about credit cards – some niches don’t require articles (like oil filters) – they may require other forms of content such as the credit card niche. Unfortunately one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to internet marketing.
OK, I just tried copying and pasting the above into Notepad and it did the right thing. The code above displays one of your images above, but shrunk down to a width of 300. If you click on the image, then you get the full size version by itself, same as blogger.
For your situation change 300 to whatever width you desire to fit in your template, and make the image it points to the size you need.
Thanks for all your help Carl – I shall give it a whirl next post – I’m sure I will bugger it all up but no one can say I didn’t try!
Thanks again – appreciate you taking the time to help.
Thanks for all the great info, Grizz. I’m slowly trying to shift over from the freelance writing, paid per assignment, model to what you’re teaching, and your lessons are invaluable. I’m up to $30 a month on a couple of blogs and some Hubpages, and it’s going up every month without much time to spend on it, so I must slowly be doing something right
Thanks for all the great advice, I was amazed at the difference a few good backlinks could make once I finally figured out what you were saying about anchor text. Many thanks 
You are welcome and yes a few anchored backlinks make a world of difference. Just keep building them and watch what happens.
Somebody told me investing is a good niche but I haven’t gotten any consistent frequently searched keywords that bring in any steady traffic. What free and pay keyword tools do you recommend? I think I could do a lot with stock in my title but I don’t know any keywords with around a mil competititors to target. If you had any suggestions on this or just what keyword program to use I’d be real grateful. thanks for the transparency to
Mark I pretty much just use Keyword Elite (not free and pricey) and the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool. You should be able to find a few other free tools by Googling it or perhaps some of my readers will step up with some they use.
Cheers Griz – I’ll check out that Credit Card post. You have a heap more useful info on here than any of the so called A listers have.
Thanks Cath – I hope it helps.
Thanks a bunch Griz! You made my night. I have been agonizing over why Blogger is so bad since all I read is that WordPress is the only blog system you should have if you want a professional site.
I like Blogger better because you can drag things around and I like the Dashboard better than WP. I had 2 of my sites on WP and I hated the fact that you couldn’t do CTRL + A to select the text or code you had in a Widget to delete or change. And you couldn’t easily move them around.
Yes, WP has some really great plug-ins you can’t get on Blogger and cool designs but maybe someone will start making those for blogger as well.
I am so thankful I found your site. I’ve been reading it for awhile. Oh, and I tested out what you wrote about concerning the American Idol blog you setup. It worked. I did that for a certain popular topic I wrote about and ranked under the “professional” site with my “crappy” blogger blog and it drove traffic to my main site for the duration of the trend. It was amazing to see.
Now I’ve got to go back and read how you are doing all of these backlinks. I figure it must be you linking from one site to another that you own but I will figure it out eventually.
Oh, just wondering, do they have stores in the Canadian wilderness that you can spend all of that money on
Computer Lady – couldn’t resist – check out my link -its a blogger blog with a cool design! Not mine if you follow the footer link you will find the designs author. I’d never use the layout for Adsense but I like if for a flagshipish type – whatever it is blog!
Lissie – careful or you will start to give Blogger a “good” name!
Looks great.
Not likely until they fix the bloody comments screen!
True – they teased us briefly a few weeks ago with a new comment widget but it disappeared just as quick as it came. Hopefully they are just ironing out some bugs and it will be back.
Lol. Not many stores but we spend a lot just flying stuff in – a gallon (4 litres) of milk is $14 – life ain’t cheap in the middle of nowhere.
I concur that Blogger does have a few advantages – it is fast and so easy to use even if limited in scope. For short term niches there is nothing better. I’m glad to hear you have had some success and wish you well. If you are looking for those elusive links you can check out the niche support page and start with the folks listed there.
Hi Griz,
Thanks for mentioning my blog.
Reading at your earning report and your screenshots, they are really impressive.
And the SEO technique you are using, it is outstanding. You were able to consistently build links to increase the keywords that your blog ranks for in search engines. That is really powerful technique you have used. Most people only think about getting a few popular keywords ranked in Google, then stop it when they achieved that.
And perhaps now it is time to make yourself popular.
Hi Alan – thanks for the kind words and it’s great to see you stop in. I hope you didn’t mind the plug but it would do my readers a lot of good to see how you have quietly taken over one of the most competitive niches online. It takes a lot to impress me and you have done it in spades. I should warn you that this bunch likes to ask a lot of questions so be prepared! Lol.
All the best and if I can lend a hand don’t hesitate to ask.
“This site will be making the same kind of money as the other MMO blog but in a quarter of the time. And then I will build another site and do it all over again.”
When you hit upon a niche that is bringing you in good money, do you replicate the whole process for your 3 other personas? I mean, if you’re going to have competitors, it might as well be yourself!
Hi April – nice to see you drop in.
You hit the nail on the head – if I can dominate a niche once then I can do it several times and why not – I know the money is there.
Hey Griz,
I’m looking to start making some money online. I would really like to know how to do this. I have read this site and one other, but still don’t know where to get started or how. It would be greatly appreciated if you could help me out with this. Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
Mike
Hi Mike – Well I can’t tell you much in a comment but suggest you start with the blogs listed in my “sites worth reading” – see sidebar. You will get a good education if you sit down and do some reading – and it will not cost you anything.
I just found this website and absolutely love it! The tips you list here could really be found in Ebooks worth hundreds of dollars. Keep up the great work!
Griz has his own method, I have mine and you will have yours too.
Since you mentioned ebooks, yesterday, I updated my own ebook to version 3.0. I only sell it $3(not hundreds, not greedy), giving free updates and give 100% commission on the resell. I used See Free Movies Legally (and make money too) for title. I’m sure Griz would sell a lot because he has his method to get backlinks.
Read Griz and you will learn.
Griz:
Now, if you could write your future famous ebook on Adsense …Here are titles for you:
“Take a Byte From Adsense”
“Your Paw In The Adsense Honey Pot”
No. It would probably be called “Make Money with Adsense.” The book title would capture the essence of Adsense blogs. But then you would dig into it and find out you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s title, because while it will tell you how to make money with adsense, it will also be riotously entertaining.
Hey Griz,
Just had to follow up. Hope you get this.
I wanted to let you know that I created a blog 3 days ago (11/10/08) and today (11/13/08) it came up #6 on Google and I started getting hits on it from Google.
That truly amazed me and it is all because of you and your advice. I have been piecing together what you have been saying and it finally clicked in my mind.
Now I’m off to reproduce it with more keywords
Oh, and I am already on your page to exchange links and have done so with many good “Griz people” who stop by here.
I am up for more link exchanges if anyone wants to work with me.
Just click on my website link above and you will find my email contact.
I have sites on cooking/recipes, technology, blogging, winning prizes, and free stuff/coupons. Most are PR2 or PR3.
Wendy
Well, I am ready to devote more time to be a success with Adsense, but somehow unable to come to terms with it, meaning, though I am trying hard to hit upon the right words, they dont generate traffic and as a result my earnings are quite low. I will try to follow your method and see if I succeed.