Monday, January 19, 2009

I need your help.


First, having some camera fun this morning. I just cant seem to get in the middle of the picture. Don't get excited, I am not doing MeMes still, I'm just throwing up a pic of my ugly mug to help others feel better about themselves.

Note the crow's feet, the 80's ear piercing that would never quite heal over, the unshaven rebellion signifying a day off, and the "I'm supposed to be cleaning the house" smirk that will soon be slapped off.



Here's today's topic of conversation:

How many of you are making money from your blog, and know a little something about doing it?

Do any of you make $10 per month?

$100 per month?

More?

Do you use Blogher? Adsense, other?

I joined Blogher (pay per impression) almost 2 months ago, and have made a whopping $12. And my traffic is pretty damn good. One of my fav bloggers jumps on Adsense this weekend, encourages her readers to click for her, and is up to $78 in 3 days.

So if you will, lets spend some time spitballing all of this, and figure out how all of us can make some money from our soul-sharing, if that is what interests you.

Tell me if you have had any success at this, and what has worked.


Also, just want to thank Young Momma, Jenners, and Tena for nice linky mentions of me recently, hop over and see what they are up to as well.


And finally, you know what tomorrow is...Tuesday's Tribute. We will be throwing up Mr. Linky tonight, we are excited to see who (or what!) you are honoring this week. Remember, you don't HAVE to Tribute President-Elect Obama. I mean, one or two might be nice, but if I find 40 tributes to the man, I'm gonna call for a recount in Pennsylvania.

Happy MLK Day.

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35 comments:

jo@blog-diggidy said...

i do a few paid posts now and then but i don't think i have found my niche yet, cause i can't seem to make much money!! i have a few sites i "work" for but none of them are making me rich, yet!! ;) thinking about adsense. but don't know if i cold get people to click enough to make it worth my time??

Ali said...

I've got BlogHer ads on my blog--have had 'em up since October BUT have yet to even receive a check! (Not sure why--I'm well past the 25 buck mark) So far, I'm happy with just the blogher ads.

Halftime Lessons said...

Yeah, the problem with Adsense is that if they catch you encouraging your readers to click, they will pull your account.

But maybe I have an idea about that...

Tony@ That One Paticular Harbor said...

I think I could make about a Hey penny with my post traffic. I guess as our economy resets to 1927 that would be worth something.

Threeundertwo said...

I don't make much with BlogHer, but I appreciate the community its trying to create, and I do spend time at the main site reading and sometimes commenting. Lots of great stuff there.

I'll join you tomorrow I think for a tribute. Such a great idea.

Clare said...

sorry jay, i know nothing about this, but any info is good! i don't get near as much traffic as you, but making money off of the blog sounds great:)

Jillene said...

I have NO idea. Honestly--I wouldn't even know where to begin. This should tell you that I have no idea about paid stuff. I suck!! SORRY!!

Kristina P. said...

I make $0 a month. I have no ads. I don't love the look of Blogher for my blog, and after reading what you went through to finally get approved, I have no interest.

ComfyMom~Stacey said...

I have blogher ads. When I was being very involved in the blogging community, chatting on forums & message boards & leaving tons of comments on other blogs, I made $10 a month.

When I am at my usual level of available online time (like now), only occasionally visiting forums and only commenting on my favorite people's blogs, I make about $2 a month.

jill jill bo bill said...

I am too lazy to do anything that makes me jump thru hoops. I am very unathletic like that. And I think your earhole is adorable in it's own special way.

Ash said...

Thanks for posting this. I have been debating whether to even pursue Blogher (they aren't accepting any new blogs the last time I checked - you got the last slot?) or not.

I'm sorry it's not panning out as well as you had hoped. Adsense sounds interesting, but I kind of like having editorial freedom. Not like I'm crazy with my topics, but you never know, I could bust out a tribute to being a swinger one day (OK, just typing that made me ill).

LOVE your glasses. See you tomorrow.

Evolving Mommy Catherine said...

I like of ads on a site (especially blogher and adsense) as a sort of tip jar...if I enjoy what I read I click. This doesn't seem to be the way other people think though...although I read an article from ProBlogger (I think) that encouraged tipping bloggers.

I have Adsense and some Amazon ads on my site. I haven't made much. I am still tweaking and trying to figure out how to make a little bit of money if I can...who doesn't like money.

Jenni said...

I have not really made any moves to make any money on my blog yet. I am not sure there is really any money to be made until you hit the point where you have thousands of readers!

Tenakim said...

I agree with most that I'm not sure that there is THAT kind of money to be made from this. I don't actively persue it for that reason- oh yeah, and I'm lazy.

I would hate to have to be careful what I blog about and I have to keep reminding myself why I do this- for MY outlet- money would be great- but that lazy thing gets in the way!

SweetPeaSurry said...

I think I'll head over to adsense and see what it's all about. Even an extra 12 bucks a month is better than nothing, right? Am I right?

Cajoh said...

Looks like a Follicle Holiday to me! Don't make any money, but will look forward to what "Lessons" are learned.

Annie said...

Jay,
I make $0 a month using no program. It is really easy! :)
L

Mariah said...

I blog for the fun, I haven't tried to make money, but people have been emailiing me to write about something specific and they'll pay me--sounds horribly boring to me.

Crafty Christina said...

I'm also on the make $0 with no program bandwagon. I wouldn't mind some dough though.

Ann Harrison said...

(I'm totally lurking today... reading everyone comments...I'm trying to figure out the whole "make money from your blog" plan. My head starts spinning!)

Young Momma said...

Thanks for the shot out Jay!! :) I'm so confused about the whole AdSense thing. After Mama Kat poster her whole thing - I tried it. You can even see the ads on my blog. I set it up, had the acct. Now it says I have no account, that it hasn't been set up yet. It also has this "E-mail Verification Has Been sent" at the top of my Dashboard. I'm so lost! lol Let me know what you figure out though, I'm very curious!

Sera said...

I think I've made a whopping 18 cents on adsense. Never got any clicks - just money from page impressions. I'm hoping that the recent post by a certain "Mama" who has tons of followers will encourage people to click on the ads now. Shoot, if I could make $10 a month that would be $10 of fun money I never had before. Blogher seems to complicated and intimidating for me. Will you be sharing this idea about getting away with encouraging readers to click??? See ya tomorrow for the Tribute.

Michelle said...

I haven't tried to earn any money with my blog so I'm no help what so ever.

Petunia said...

Ok, well, here's my two cents. I don't think that having a blog is really going to make money for most people and I find blogs with ads a little offensive. 90% of the blogs I read don't have ads. If someone made a post asking me to click so they could make a buck I would probably not return! Sorry! :)

Jen said...

I don't do the add thing. I know its everyones dream to make money doing something fun and that you love but I feel that having adds on your blog is kinda like selling out. Plus they are kinda annoying. But to each his own.
There that is my 2 cents.

Jen said...

Oh and about your photo, you are cute in a-unshaven-supposed-to-be-doing-a-to-do-list-but-are-blogging-instead kinda way. ;)

Beth said...

I haven't really thought out advertising on the blog yet. Currently, my husband bribes me with money to get off the computer.

Claremont First Ward said...

I'm no help here.......I've tried Ads but yanked them........I've written a few reviews, but for the most part, I'm not a fan.

My TT is ready to go though! :)

Mary@Holy Mackerel said...

I put adsense ads on, and have been blogging since mid-Octoberish and have made almost $12 so far. It's getting the ad clicks that is the key. Page impressions only get you a few cents a day at most...Any advice would be grreat!

Surfer Jay said...

All these dollar signs make me want to sign up for ads too. Now only if we can put some digits in there other than 0's...

Becky Sue said...

I'm open to making money, but no good at it (on the internet anyway)! WAIT ..anyone need a kitchen designer?! Call me :) www.designsbybsb.com
GOOD LUCK - wish I had time to figure out all the ad stuff!

The Frugal Angel-Guided Psychic said...

I'm with Evolving Mommy Catherine, I use ads like a "tip jar" in that if I like a blogger's post I click an ad for them. What does it hurt? If you learn, or like something your "should" say thank you... IMO. The whole energy=money thing.

On the other hand I don't like going to blogs with too many ads...I get distracted.... I'm like a bird that way.

Stacy Uncorked said...

I was having trouble with Adsense when I first started blogging, but it's apparently working now...but not making any money. I've had almost 10,000 'page impressions' since I got the code to work correctly a couple of months or more ago...there's a whole whopping $6.33 sitting in my Adsense account...whoopee! ;)

I signed up for some of those 'pay per post' things, but at the time my blog wasn't 'old enough', nor were the number of visitors high enough...so I got rejected... :) Now that my blog is 'old enough' and my visitor count is high enough, I've toyed with the idea of resubmitting my blog to be eligible for getting paid for posts...but I want to make sure I don't compromise my blog with annoying posts just to make money...

I don't hang around the blogs that every single post is an advertisement for something rather than a blog with 'real' content written from the heart - or written from the funny bone. I get inundated enough with annoying infomercials, why would I want to read a page of them during my leisure blog-hopping time? ;)

There are many bloggers that do those 'paid posts' but don't focus only on the paid ones, they sandwich them in between their 'real' posts. Those I don't mind - there's still 'real' content, so who cares about paid content every now and then... ;)

Jenners said...

Hi! Just back from vacation and getting caught up on your blog. I'm going to comment on a bunch of stuff but putting it all right here for some reason instead of the most recent one...hope you get your comments via e-mail.

Your letter to your mom just touched me. Lovely. Beautiful. And that photo! Gorgeous!

And your home decor is pretty much like ours. It looks OK but it has no warmth or funkiness. It is a gift and I don't have it either. I've tried to shamelessly rip off other people but found that it can't be faked.

And re: AdSense. I started it about a month ago and had 4 clicks and earned like $1.22. I think you could earn if people click on it but no one seems to. The best thing I've gotten out of AdSense is seeing what ads they put up there based on what I've written about. When I wrote a post about gross ice cream flavors, I got ads about ice cream, which totally cracked me up. Then I posted photos about bugs, and got ads for exterminators. Now I'm getting cruise ads. I find this highly amusing and that is mainly what it has been good for -- amusing me to find what Google feels matches my content. I'm certainly not going to retire based on any of this.

I suspect that most bloggers are immune to these ads because they have them on their own blogs anyway. Who knows? I think we are all so conditioned to just ignore ads...what we need is a bunch of naive Internet users who are amazed that you can shop online. I don't think these kind of people read blogs though.

Anonymous said...

I have adsense and have made $134 since September. I encourage the clicks but no one reallllly pays attention. Definately NOT a get rich quick thing. Or a 'job' thing. lol. But, I'll go look for your ads now and give alittle click-click for ya!

posthumous pointer
To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one's self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded. - Emerson