Please dont laugh at me

[jimewing2121]

I posted a day ago asking people just a couple of questions but I have one last one.

(please dont laugh at me)
How could I make money off a basic blog like the one I have? I know adsense but it that the only way? I dont want to turn it into a site that is always selling something either. Please help me out.




Back and Lost.. Help Please!!!

[TheBrainchildGroup]

Hello and thank you for the post! Don't worry, I would never laugh at you.

To make money on a blog I highly suggest focusing on a particular niche then approaching advertisers directly. Google AdSense works well, but having a set amount that's paid to you per month is much better. The many forums on the net use this method and it proves to be quite profitable.

I hope this information helps.

Sincerely,

Aaron

[Jillian Slack]

Have you used the "search" feature here on the forum to look up posts with the keywords that interest you?

There is a wealth of info already here on the forum and it just takes a little searching and a lot of reading. Consider it your education.

It takes a little more effort on your part to use the "search" feature vs. waiting for people to stop by this post and re-post the answers they've already posted in previous discussions.

Since those previous discussions would be VERY helpful to anyone hoping to learn more, get familiar with the "search" feature.

Not to be rude or anything (and I hope it didn't sound that way), but -- seriously -- this question has been answered here MANY times. Just need to dig it all up, read, absorb, and get busy.

Jill

[Ryan6]

I would always advise on relevant affiliate programs fella.

[Sheryl Polomka]

Is it the blog in your signature that you want to monetize?

You could look through some affiliate program sites like Commission Junction, Linkshare, ShareASale and see if they have anything related to crab fishing.

I would definately add some Adsense ads on there and maybe an affiliate product if you can find one that relates.

I think Clickbank have some Fishing affiliate products, not sure about crab fishing though but you could have a look and see.

I'm sure you will find something relating to crab fishing if you look through those affiliate programs.

If not - maybe that is your opportunity - do you know enough about it to write your own ebook on the topic??

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by jimewing2121

I know adsense but it that the only way?

For most people it pays very little, really.

Originally Posted by jimewing2121

I dont want to turn it into a site that is always selling something either.

How about a site that's sometimes indirectly selling something?

That's called "affiliate marketing".

Money tends to be made when goods/services are bought/sold, you know?

[debra]

Get ahold of some PLR material that pertains to fishing.

Compile the articles into a word doc and convert into PDF.

You now have your own product that you can sell using paypal.

Even a compilation of crab recipes in PDF form would work very nicely.

[Kevin Marshall]

I agree that affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to go. You probably know about that by now. I've seen you around the forums since I signed up last year. Have you setup an Amazon affiliate account yet? You could setup a few sites to promote different products through Amazon. Setup some pages through Hubpages.com and promote Amazon products. You have probably already tried Clickbank. I am having a lot of trouble with Clickbank now as my affiliate sites aren't resulting in sales even though I am still getting traffic to my landing pages. I would still try to make money through blogs and such, but you might want to think outside the box.

[Diane S]

jimewing, you put up a free wordpress blog, which last time I checked isn't allowing monetization. Go buy calicrabbing.com if it's available or californiacrabbingsecrets.com or something like that. Keep on building up your free wordpress blog with what you love doing, crabbing and telling others where to do it in Cali. Decide on your products and sell them over at your hosted dot com and throw links to your dot com from your wordpress blog. That's what I would do. Those who don't want to buy won't, but will probably still keep coming to your free blog, which is what you want, right?

[Leslie B]

If you want to monetize the blog in your signature, I don't think you could do that. If I'm correct, it's a free wordpress blog and if so you can't advertise on it. It's in their terms. If you want to use Wordpress for your blog you need to get a self-hosted wordpress blog.

Sorry to disappoint you.

Take care,

Leslie

[petevamp]

Since it is a blog you have so many ways available to you which will make you money. Find a particular niche as one stated above. If that was your blog in question in your sig file. I see that you are trying to target crab fishing as your niche. Now what you should do to make money aside from adsense. Go to click bank, click to sell, pay dot com and the other affiliate sites that offer products for you to sell. You then build a simple link to a product relating to your niche. Make a blog about it saying how good this particular product is basically like a simple review. Now anyone targeting that product if you rank high in that niche you will most likely make a sale or two.

Another way would be to offer a opt in form for a particular course on crab fishing. This is to get them to sign up to your newsletter. Then you will have the ability to target them later with any product you want to try to sell to them. You can also add click bank ads to your site that are similar to adsense ads.

Another way is pyrabang offers a similar option as adsense which will help a ton at building you money in the long run. Hope this helps.

Peter Bernaeyge

[AnneE]

I also am assuming you are talking about the blog in your signature. Your target audience is folks a lot like you (nice advantage), so what products might you want to purchase?

Do you use a GPS? (perhaps this is your turn to laugh, scoff at me) If so, an easy affiliate program would be Amazon's, which offers a lot of GPS models very cheaply.

Is there a crabbing/fishing online supplier that you think offers great prices? Google the name of them and 'affiliate' and see if they offer an affiliate program.

I understand not wanting your blog to come across as walking billboard, but if there are products or offers that you think your readers would want to know about, then you are doing the readers a favor by offering them a quick link to the product or website.

Hope this helps.

[Nightengale]

Welcome to the Warrior Forum! No one here would laugh at you. We all have to start somewhere and that's what the Warrior Forum is for.

I'm no expert on blogging by any means. But I have found that in whatever you want to do, find someone else who has done it successfully and model them. Modeling is probably THE fastest way to success in whatever you want to do. And with the information explosion, I've found that if you need certain information, it's out there. Somewhere, someone has the information you need on probably ANY topic (including illegal topics -- like how to make a bomb for example :P). It may take a little digging, but it's there.

A word to the wise: Pick a niche, a business model and a mentor and stick to it.

Entrepreneurs in general (and Internet marketers specifically) seem to be cursed with "Bright Shiny Object Syndrome", that is jumping from one business or method to the next instead of sticking to ONE business/plan until they succeed. Unfortunately, you waste a lot of time and money doing that AND get extremely frustrated in the process.

Believe me, I'm just as guilty as (probably MORE guilty than) everyone else!

Amy Bass is a Warrior Forum member and successfully paid off all of her debt solely through blogging. She has since created a membership site which teaches you how to make money through niche blogging. I'm not a member of her site, but from what I've seen of her and heard from her over the last several months, I'd recommend it. You can find her site here:

The Niche Blogger - Make Money Blogging

I believe she has a free or $1 trial membership to help you get started.

Good luck!

Michelle

[Sheryl Polomka]

Originally Posted by debra

Get ahold of some PLR material that pertains to fishing.

Compile the articles into a word doc and convert into PDF.

You now have your own product that you can sell using paypal.

Even a compilation of crab recipes in PDF form would work very nicely.

That is a great idea - the crab recipe ebook! Your own product and you can just set up a Paypal button to sell it, or even put it on PayDotCom to sell it.

jimewing, you put up a free wordpress blog, which last time I checked isn't allowing monetization. Go buy calicrabbing.com if it's available or californiacrabbingsecrets.com or something like that. Keep on building up your free wordpress blog with what you love doing, crabbing and telling others where to do it in Cali. Decide on your products and sell them over at your hosted dot com and throw links to your dot com from your wordpress blog. That's what I would do. Those who don't want to buy won't, but will probably still keep coming to your free blog, which is what you want, right?

Also a great idea, go and get yourself a paid domain and hosting and set up another Wordpress blog/site with your own ebook on it - or an affiliate one.

Keep updating your free blog linking to your new one that will build backlinks for your new one. Update your new one regularly too, with the 2 blogs you should do quite well and I'm sure there are affiliate products to promote if you aren't interested in creating your own one.

[WarriorNY]

You should concentrate on getting traffic first, then monitizing. Getting the traffic is the hard part.

[jimewing2121]

I want to thank everyone for the input. There were a whole bunch of great ideas.

Now I know that I have a free site right now but I just wanted to get it going and see how it was doing. I dont want to pay for a page if my ideas are crap. It is pretty much a trial site BUT after I read some of the people saying to use it as a main source to push traffic to a site that I have money products on. That is a great idea.

I also think writing an Ebook is a great idea. I could just find some good recipes and write about the best areas to catch crabs in so cal. It wouldn't be to hard and i think it would personally be interesting.

Also, I like the idea of maybe kind of plugging a product that I would like to have to my readers. This way it is useful and i dont feel like I am pushing something they dont need. And I make a little money.

But thank you all for the help. I will try to keep you all posted on how it is going.

[Takuya Hikichi]

Hey Jimmy,

Dude, welcome back. I like this blog so much better than the one you used to have that just sold SEO Elite (I remember you).

Believe it or not, there are lots of other folks interested in the same hobby as you are, and on your site, put a link to a short ebook selling information on how to start "crab fishing blog" just like yours. Basic stuff -- things like how to install WordPress and where to get graphics.

There are others like you in the same hobby dying to start a blog like yours. Tell them how and be their IM coach. Tell them how cool it is to keep a journal like this and publish it. Encourage them to network with you and other crab fishermen.

You can set yourself as the leader of the new group.

[jimewing2121]

Originally Posted by Takuya Hikichi

Hey Jimmy,

Dude, welcome back. I like this blog so much better than the one you used to have that just sold SEO Elite (I remember you).

Believe it or not, there are lots of other folks interested in the same hobby as you are, and on your site, put a link to a short ebook selling information on how to start "crab fishing blog" just like yours. Basic stuff -- things like how to install WordPress and where to get graphics.

There are others like you in the same hobby dying to start a blog like yours. Tell them how and be their IM coach. Tell them how cool it is to keep a journal like this and publish it. Encourage them to network with you and other crab fishermen.

You can set yourself as the leader of the new group.

Hahaha yeah that was me! I was so into making money that i got lost. I have changed my mind set 100%. Now I am just looking to have fun and then see if I could work in some way to make a little extra cash too.

But your idea is the best so far. But the only thing with that is that it will take a little time to get to make some friends and then i can get them going. But it is a great idea man. Thanks

You're better off using Blogger to test an idea because they allow monetization. Wordpress.com doesn't - if they find out they'll delete your blog without warning. Don't take that risk! It would be a shame if all your hard work were to get deleted. It's in their TOS - no monetizing.

[jimewing2121]

Originally Posted by kohuether

You're better off using Blogger to test an idea because they allow monetization. Wordpress.com doesn't - if they find out they'll delete your blog without warning. Don't take that risk! It would be a shame if all your hard work were to get deleted. It's in their TOS - no monetizing.

So you are saying on blogger i can make money?

[tomcam]

Obvious idea is to do an ebook called something like "Ninja Crabbing Secrets from the So Cal Master" or whatever. Point is that the blog draws people interested in crabbing, then you sell them a concise guide showing them all the best places to crab, best times at each location to go, what equipment to bring, whether they're safe to eat, how to run a crabbing party, etc.

[Bjarne Eldhuset]

I think you have great niche, there are loads of people who love fishing and love to buy anything that may possibly make them better at their hobby.

Quick tips: When you write about a particular fish type or crab type, also use the name of the species as a tag on the post. That way, when your blog has more content, if a reader is interested in seeing if you have other posts on the same topic, for example "stingray", they can click on the tag, and see the other posts on that topic.

Also, there are endless possibilities of making products for people who fish. It can be products they use preparing to fish, clothes to wear for fisherman and women, special fishing gear, ways to cook the fish, recipes, anything, just go to your local library to take a look at what people have written about fishing.

Or take a look here:
Amazon.com: fishing

That's some 100.000 products for you to get ideas from!

Finding fishing forums:
"fishing forum" | BoardReader

Fishing affiliate programs:
+fishing +"affiliate program" - Google Search=

And so on, and so on

Originally Posted by jimewing2121

So you are saying on blogger i can make money?

I'm saying that you can put Google Adsense, Affiliate programs, etc on Blogger without worrying about getting kicked off the site because they allow you to put ads and do affiliate marketing. In fact, Google owns them so Adsense is even encouraged.

[jimewing2121]

Originally Posted by kohuether

I'm saying that you can put Google Adsense, Affiliate programs, etc on Blogger without worrying about getting kicked off the site because they allow you to put ads and do affiliate marketing. In fact, Google owns them so Adsense is even encouraged.

Okay cool. i dont know if you might now but do you know how long you are kicked off of adsense if they terminate you? Is it life time? If it is I will just use my girlfirends name and everything but I was just wondering. I got terminated about 8 or 9 months ago. Just curious.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by jimewing2121

Is it life time? If it is I will just use my girlfirends name and everything

Now can we laugh at you?