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Made money from IM for the first time.. sort of

by 99ishvr4
15 replies
Hi, this post will serve as my introduction, but I'm also hoping for a little bit of a push in the right direction. The posts turned out longer than I thought so sorry for the long read.

I found this forum about a year ago, and so far have been just browsing it on and off every couple of months, I'm sure that's pretty common here. I am only now just signing up as I found out I made my first 2 sales for a total of $0.44.(sorry fellow new guys if you were hoping for an inspiring post).

What I did was start a blog, when I should have started a website. A blogger.com hosted blog at that.. meaning my blog url reads something like blogger.com/yourtocheaptopayforhosting.. I knew that this was not the best way to do it, but it was free, and that is one of my biggest problems is that I am scared to spend money(even very small amounts of money) on things that I am unsure of. Something I'm sure will need to change if I want to accomplish my goals.

Anyways, more back story on me. About 4 years ago, I accidentally stumbled on a way to make money without having to actually go to work. I quit my job 3 days later as I could make more in a day than I did in a week working there. The job basically involved sourcing items, mostly free and just selling them on craigslist. My high point was making $5,000/month doing this, but I am assuming due to people loosing their jobs, other people started doing it too and now my way of life is flooded with competition and I am actually pretty burnt out on it as well. Since I have been doing the craigslist thing for 4 years now, the idea of a 9-5 type job is miserable. I guess this is how I stumbled on this site, looking for ways to make money online, basically do what I do now, without actually psychically handling the things I sell. I first found cafepress and made a couple of shirts, I get about $25 a month from that, which is obviously nothing, but the very cool thing about it is, I did that work, its done, and now I get $25/month. If only I had the drive to make 1,000 shirt designs instead of just 10, that could be $2,500/month. Well, my creativity stopped at 10 shirts along with my willingness to learn how to use photoshop.

So I continued searching for ideas and saw the simple template of:
start website for random niche
post products related to niche on website from amazon affiliates
???
Profit.

Well like I said, I made a blog, instead of a website because I am cheap and it allowed me to post my information. The niche I decided to use was a guide to Powder coating, as it is something I learned how to do for my car restoration and I know quite a bit about the subject. So I made about 8 posts in my blog in the first week, posting random amazon affiliate links around. This is were I think the topic of powder coating may have been a mistake. For example, you don't need all that many supplies to powder coat, most of the supplies needed are not sold on amazon, and the other supplies are things you could just buy locally. After that first couple of weeks of constantly checking my traffic on my blog and my clicks on amazon, I lost all motivation. My blog was getting about 250 page views a week ( I was happy about that, my cafepress shop gets like 25/week) but I had 2 clicks on amazon links and no purchases. Well motivation plummeted and I forgot about the site for since January, but recently checked all my traffic and saw someone actually bought something from my amazon link, well 2 people and I had $.44 commission. I am now re-motivated to find something that works because my blog has 5,000 visitors/month(remember, I'm new at this, that amount of traffic made me excited).

So, before I do what I am about to do, I just want everyone to know, I am not doing this for clicks or advertising. I am about to post the link to my blog and hope some of you more seasoned members can check it out and tell me whether I am wasting my time with what I have or if I just need to optimize a few things x1000.. Again, not looking for advertising, to prove it, I am going to say this: Powder coating is not a popular hobby for just anyone, I would be surprised if 2 people in this forum have powder coated, therefore I would gain nothing by advertising my blog to you with the interest of making sales. With that being said, here is the link: Powder Coating- The Complete Guide

I also tried to sign up for google adsense, but was denied for lack of content.. guess I need to post more, but not too sure.

If anyone could give me a few pointers, or just tell me I am going about it all wrong, that would be great! I am sorry for the long post. Glad to be here and I am glad I finally made an account.

Thanks
#made #money #sort #time
  • Profile picture of the author Gambino
    Welcome to the forum. First and foremost, you never want to build your house on someone else's land. It doesn't matter if you have a multi-million dollar blog on Blogger, they could shut you down tomorrow if they wanted to. And I think you recognize that.

    But, the bright side is that you've made money online. That's something many people who try, never accomplish. The problem is, you've given upend/or settled you've reached your peak.

    You've said you make $25 per month off of a cafepress shop. And that you've given up after 10 shirt designs. This is something that has proven to be profitable for you. You could scale it up, as you said, and maximize your profits.

    Now, this is the part that intrigues me, personally. You were making $5,000 a month sourcing products and selling them on Craigslist. But you are looking for something similar, but without having to actually deal with the products. You said, and I quote:

    Originally Posted by 99ishvr4 View Post

    looking for ways to make money online, basically do what I do now, without actually psychically handling the things I sell.
    And my recommendation for you, would be to look into dropshipping. Basically, you're still selling tangible products but you're just buying cheaper, marking up prices, and selling to customers. Then you submit customers orders to the dropshipper who handles the shipping. I'd recommend you look into it.

    I'd also recommend that whichever way you decide to go (blog, dropship, tshirts, etc.) that you concentrate on it and put all of your effort into it. When you have it at a level you're comfortable with, rinse and repeat for another site. Also, you will HAVE to buy the essentials: hosting ($10 month), autoresponder ($15 month), etc. There is no way to avoid it, IMO.

    As for the blog, I will let those who blog tackle that.
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    • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
      Originally Posted by PayLaterPlace View Post

      Welcome to the forum. First and foremost, you never want to build your house on someone else's land. It doesn't matter if you have a multi-million dollar blog on Blogger, they could shut you down tomorrow if they wanted to. And I think you recognize that.

      But, the bright side is that you've made money online. That's something many people who try, never accomplish. The problem is, you've given upend/or settled you've reached your peak.

      You've said you make $25 per month off of a cafepress shop. And that you've given up after 10 shirt designs. This is something that has proven to be profitable for you. You could scale it up, as you said, and maximize your profits.

      Now, this is the part that intrigues me, personally. You were making $5,000 a month sourcing products and selling them on Craigslist. But you are looking for something similar, but without having to actually deal with the products. You said, and I quote:



      And my recommendation for you, would be to look into dropshipping. Basically, you're still selling tangible products but you're just buying cheaper, marking up prices, and selling to customers. Then you submit customers orders to the dropshipper who handles the shipping. I'd recommend you look into it.

      I'd also recommend that whichever way you decide to go (blog, dropship, tshirts, etc.) that you concentrate on it and put all of your effort into it. When you have it at a level you're comfortable with, rinse and repeat for another site. Also, you will HAVE to buy the essentials: hosting ($10 month), autoresponder ($15 month), etc. There is no way to avoid it, IMO.

      As for the blog, I will let those who blog tackle that.
      Thanks for the help, I only know the very basics of dropshipping, I have thought about it before but it just seems like there are so many of the same sites, selling the same thing. I just never thought it would be too competitive. I may be wrong, but it goes like this right:
      Open e-commerce site
      post products for sale that are available from your dropshipper
      when people buy, the dropshipper sends it to them...

      I am fairly involved with modifying cars in my life so that is the type of site I am most familiar with. There are like 10,000 sites selling the same exact car parts and I will see the same part range from $100 to $300 or something like that. I thought it would be awesome to be the $300 guy if he was actually making sales but I just figured no one would be dumb enough to buy from him. I figured all of the competition was in the 1,000 sites ranging from $100-$105 and all the rest just didn't make sales. I may be way off, but that is what I think of when I think of dropshippers. I assume you do dropshipping. Would you mind posting or pm'ing me a link to a site of yours so I can see a nice example?

      That would be greatly appreciated. As far as sticking to one thing, I would love to do that. Right now my drive goes back and forth between cafepress and the powder coating blog. I just don't see either one of them ever bringing in enough money to live off of so that is why I take long breaks from them.
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      • Profile picture of the author seonutshell
        Originally Posted by 99ishvr4 View Post

        Thanks for the help, I only know the very basics of dropshipping, I have thought about it before but it just seems like there are so many of the same sites, selling the same thing. I just never thought it would be too competitive. I may be wrong, but it goes like this right:
        Open e-commerce site
        post products for sale that are available from your dropshipper
        when people buy, the dropshipper sends it to them...

        I am fairly involved with modifying cars in my life so that is the type of site I am most familiar with. There are like 10,000 sites selling the same exact car parts and I will see the same part range from $100 to $300 or something like that. I thought it would be awesome to be the $300 guy if he was actually making sales but I just figured no one would be dumb enough to buy from him. I figured all of the competition was in the 1,000 sites ranging from $100-$105 and all the rest just didn't make sales. I may be way off, but that is what I think of when I think of dropshippers. I assume you do dropshipping. Would you mind posting or pm'ing me a link to a site of yours so I can see a nice example?

        That would be greatly appreciated. As far as sticking to one thing, I would love to do that. Right now my drive goes back and forth between cafepress and the powder coating blog. I just don't see either one of them ever bringing in enough money to live off of so that is why I take long breaks from them.
        You could create the best ebook/manual for powder coating a car and sell it to your readers for $10 or so? You said not many people need to buy products to do it, but im sure if you told that the book would tell them The best products etc (i know nothing about powder coating) they would buy it. You could use the money from the first sale and buy a domain! Then you are on the road, possibly making a little bit of money from a blog you like to run. Then you could use that bit of money to start anything else!
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  • Profile picture of the author Brannigans
    Hi man, thanks for sharing your story.

    You've got a track record of success online so you're going to be fine at this. You've got a lot to learn though...

    Firstly, your blog is great. So much awesome info for guys who are into powder coating. It's just not very good for making money. 5000 per month is a good number of traffic.

    Have you been promoting your site? I'm guessing they're all coming through SEO?

    But, wouldn't you rather have 100 people coming to your site and 3% of them buying a $30 ebook? Not all traffic is equal.

    You've chosen a niche that isn't full of hungry buyers.

    If you decide to start another blog in the future find a niche that is full of people with some desperate problem to be solved (think health / wealth / relationships).

    BUT since you've put so much work into this blog you may as well have a go at making some money from it.

    Here's what I'd do.

    Find some problem that beginner powder coaters experience. What is the hardest part about powder coating that most people get stuck on? I'd never heard of it before now so I can't help you with that.

    Although on your first post you say

    "A lot of the powder coating sites I have read do not offer anything more than the instructions that came with my first powder coating gun. Other more detailed guides I have read seemed to be aimed at large powder coating factories..."

    So you create the ultimate step by step guide to powder coating and give it some catchy title which reflects the common problem powder coaters are experiencing that you're guide will answer.

    Put nice looking photos in your guide and write in a nice easy going but detailed style. Set it all out in a pdf doc. Don't spend too long writing this. A few days to a week to get it sounding really nice.

    Now you need to make money off it....

    If you are finding this helpful let me know and I'll keep going.

    Good luck man.
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    • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
      Originally Posted by Brannigans View Post

      Hi man, thanks for sharing your story.

      You've got a track record of success online so you're going to be fine at this. You've got a lot to learn though...

      Firstly, your blog is great. So much awesome info for guys who are into powder coating. It's just not very good for making money. 5000 per month is a good number of traffic.

      Have you been promoting your site? I'm guessing they're all coming through SEO?

      But, wouldn't you rather have 100 people coming to your site and 3% of them buying a $30 ebook? Not all traffic is equal.

      You've chosen a niche that isn't full of hungry buyers.

      If you decide to start another blog in the future find a niche that is full of people with some desperate problem to be solved (think health / wealth / relationships).

      BUT since you've put so much work into this blog you may as well have a go at making some money from it.

      Here's what I'd do.

      Find some problem that beginner powder coaters experience. What is the hardest part about powder coating that most people get stuck on? I'd never heard of it before now so I can't help you with that.

      Although on your first post you say

      "A lot of the powder coating sites I have read do not offer anything more than the instructions that came with my first powder coating gun. Other more detailed guides I have read seemed to be aimed at large powder coating factories..."

      So you create the ultimate step by step guide to powder coating and give it some catchy title which reflects the common problem powder coaters are experiencing that you're guide will answer.

      Put nice looking photos in your guide and write in a nice easy going but detailed style. Set it all out in a pdf doc. Don't spend too long writing this. A few days to a week to get it sounding really nice.

      Now you need to make money off it....

      If you are finding this helpful let me know and I'll keep going.

      Good luck man.
      Thanks for the comments on the site. It really makes me happy to hear feedback on it. Yes all of my traffic comes from google. I once posted on a powder coating site and no one their liked the idea of a guide teaching everyone how to do it(even though they post how to all day on the forums??) They are scared they will loose money by being undercut by some guy in his garage. I did get some positive reception from it on some car forums but I feel like I am being spammy when I post it on forums that I don't normally go on.

      The ebook sounds like a pretty good idea. It crossed my mind when I started it but I disregarded it because I personally wouldn't buy an ebook so I figured, why would anyone else. That skews my view on a lot of things. I really dont mind abandoning the blog for something that makes money. I spent a decent amount of time on it but that was so long ago that I dont care too much anymore. If you were me, how would you go about doing the ebook? Just copy and paste what I already posted in the blog and then add a lot more material. And then shut down the blog when I go to sell the ebook? I would love to hear more input about the ebook, I'm all ears.

      As far as choosing a more profitable niche, I think I misunderstood the niche word when I started viewing these forums. As I thought I was supposed to write about what I knew, and obviously that hasn't worked out too well yet. For those of you writing about health, wealth, relationships, I am assuming you were not experts on those subjects when starting. Did you learn everything you could about the subjects before starting, or is it kind of like a copy/paste thing with a little re-wording.

      The thing I have noticed most about IM is that, the people making sights and selling their ebooks, dont seem to be just selling any everyday life type of thing. They are selling their own internet marketing knowledge to other internet marketers. I believe thats why I am seeing anyways.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brannigans
    As you have 5000 people per month coming to your site I would recommend giving the ebook a go and see what happened. If you sell an ebook for $10 to 1% of the visitors you would make 50 sales at 10 - $500 a month recurring. For a weeks worth of work writing and marketing the ebook that's a good return in my book.

    You then take this money and invest it into another project. You would have a working formula and it would just be a case of repeating it in a different niche - one which is more likely to have more hungry buyers.

    With your knowledge it shouldn't take too long to create. You don't wan it to be too long. Just a SIMPLE guide to powder coating. Put in some nice pics and address all the most common problems faced by powder coaters.

    An idea for getting started would be to spend a couple of hours and rack your brain as to the problems that people face when they get started. What questions are being asked in the forums?

    Then plan out the necessary steps to powder coating and then logically address each step as you go through. Put in pictures where applicable - you can either take them yourself or get some stock photos online.

    Writing the ebook is easy - just by creating the website you have proven you can do this.

    Step two is going to be selling it to your visitors. It's important to remember that you are not trying to sell it to all 5000 visitors. You are trying to to sell it to the 1% of people who visit your site that will be prepared to buy your book.

    There's a few options here that you could take. PM me if you want ideas with this.
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  • Profile picture of the author Wadud Peterson
    Hi

    I would definitely advise you to really consider changing your blog to the WordPress platform. You can set up a hosting account with HostGator or BlueHost for about 4 bucks a month.

    As someone else mentioned, you have a history of success which is a marketing point. Write a couple of ebooks to motivate people when they come to your blog. Even though the Craigslist thing is watered down, maybe you can teach people how to make an extra $500 a month if that's still achievable.

    You also might want to tap into YouTube, Vimeo and some of the other video marketing sources to promote your powder coating.

    If you need help with your site design you can always go to Fiverr.com where you can have just about anything done for you for $5... headers, banners and anything else you can think of.

    Leverage your previous successes and make it work for you.

    Thanks
    Wadud
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    • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
      Originally Posted by Wadud Peterson View Post

      Hi

      I would definitely advise you to really consider changing your blog to the WordPress platform. You can set up a hosting account with HostGator or BlueHost for about 4 bucks a month.

      As someone else mentioned, you have a history of success which is a marketing point. Write a couple of ebooks to motivate people when they come to your blog. Even though the Craigslist thing is watered down, maybe you can teach people how to make an extra $500 a month if that's still achievable.

      You also might want to tap into YouTube, Vimeo and some of the other video marketing sources to promote your powder coating.

      If you need help with your site design you can always go to Fiverr.com where you can have just about anything done for you for $5... headers, banners and anything else you can think of.

      Leverage your previous successes and make it work for you.

      Thanks
      Wadud
      Thanks buddy, and thanks to everyone else. I like the ebook idea and I think I'm going to go down that path. I have been very active with the blog lately and traffic is at an all time high. I know I need to get out of the blogger thing and that will take place as soon as I am confident enough. Which I am getting there. I am surpised as the traffic results that was directly related to what I have been doing the last couple days.

      As for the craigslist thing, there is still plenty of money to be made. It has just changed and I am getting burnt out. It is extemely tedious and I have started to dread every bit of it. I considered making my blog about the craigslst thing instead of powder coating but at the time, I was very secretive to avoid competition(I still am I guess). It would definitely make for a more interesting blog (I can tell people are more active in entrepreneur blogs than hobby blogs). I may still do it. I have records and pictures of thousands of things I have sold on craigslist. If the powder coating blog fails or doesnt ever meet my expectations, I think a craigslist blog would be a backup. Although, again, it would probably get lots of traffic but wtf would I advertise besides leading up to an ebook.

      The hardest part about this seems to be making a game plan that leads to money. The ebook seems like a viable option but my ultimate goal is passive income(I guess who's isnt?) lol.

      Anyways thanks again. Ill continue posting my experiences.
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  • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
    Well I hit an all time high of 1,044 pageviews yesterday, never been near 1,000 before. For those of you on here that saw my blog, do you have any idea why adsense would have denied me for lack of content?
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  • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
    So after working at this pretty much non stop, I moved the site to my own domain name: powdercoatguide.com . Still powered by blogger for now, taking baby steps, lol. I realized the reason I was denied for adsense was because I was using bloggers dynamic views template. Those templates do not work with adsense. It would have been nice for blogger or adsense to say that as they are both from Google but oh well. Switched my template and now have adsense and I am making a couple bucks a day from it. Watching my adsense account for clicks has become somewhat like a drug, but for I never get more than 3 clicks per day. Trying to figure out how to get more.

    Also how to get more consistent traffic. I know car forums, I have been visiting them for years, so I have made a list of car forums from most popular to least popular using Alexa. Signed up, put my link in my sig and searched for previous powder coating threads. I then posted answers to their questions which a subtle hint to check out my guide. After several posts and I sense a want for the information, I make my own thread directing people to my site. It is surprising that the higher traffic car forums barely responded to my post and hardly any visitors to my site from them. So that forumla didnt work at all.

    For example, vwvortex is ranked 11,000 and sent me 3 visitors, yet garage journal board is like 100,000 and sent me 200 visitors.

    This method seems bad overall though. I post the thread, visitors spike for that day, and in 2 days it drops off to nothing. The thread gets burried and the traffic dies. I am having trouble finding sites that would give me long term traffic that would appreciate a powder coating thread.

    I made a facebook and twitter page but the traffic from both is pretty low.

    Im at about $9 total on Amazon affilliates but no one has actually bought a product that I have linked to. It seems the get to amazon from my link and happen to buy something completely random like a wetsuit or a novel.. So I am not doing that right either.

    I signed up for clickbank and started posting Harbor Freight tool links, I thought I would do great after that because I love harbor freight and thought I could persuade someone to buy a tool from them from my praises. It is getting clicks, but no purchases at all. If anything, their probably driving to their local harbor freight to buy it after looking at it online. Thats what I would do anyways.

    While I feel like I am getting a taste for how to go about this, the results seem minimal and I see no noticeable improvement day to day. I realize its only been about a week since I have really got into it but I just dont see my current formula working.

    Any tips?

    As for adsense, for those that wouldn't mind critiquing my site again, do you think I should move the ads to the middle of the posts or is that just annoying to readers?

    For any succesful guys here in the automotive niche, any tips on where to post my links to get some long term traffic?

    Also I am getting no comments and my still have 0 email subscribers, yet on the forums, people seem to love the site.

    Also, I have almost completely eliminated the blog look of my site and have tried to make it look more like an actual site. Do you think I should reverse the order of the articles on the left side of the page. Currently, the welcome article is at the very bottom, and the newest article is on top. When people go to my website, the homepage is whatever my newest post is, and not a welcome page. I was thinking this might be confusing. But I also don't want my newest posts to loose attention because they would be at the bottom of the Article list. What do you guys think? Reverse it or leave it?

    Thanks for any help, I would greatly appreciate it.

    Edit: Just so it doesn't seem like I was blowing off the people that recommended the e-book, I am just not confident that it would do that well for the powder coating thing. I can't even get people to leave comments on my site or sign up for email updates. Trying to sell them something that they have to pay money for just doesn't seem possible at the time. I don't think I have an actual following that seems checks the site often, you know, the type of people that would buy it.
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  • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
    Just an update, I have been extremely lazy with the website, barely written any content on it, but I am now consistently making $100/month on adsense and about $50/month from Amazon affiliates all while never updating the website. So it is, in a sense, passive income. I just need more of it. One thing that really helped my traffic was writing an article on air compressors. I then posted that article on Reddit, I got a huge spike in traffic that day, but since that day, google must have increased my page rank because the traffic increased x10 since that reddit post. I would call the website a mild success, I just wish it could make more money, I am still unsure of how to do so and unfortunately, to lazy/busy to write an e-book to see if that has good results.
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    • Profile picture of the author Chris Silvey
      Ahh I used to be in the Auto body trade. I used to specialize in restoring vintage Mustangs.

      Now that you are focusing on powder coating, you could also branch out a bit. Add some categories and other posts. Such as base coat/clear coat systems, tri coat. Polyurethane sprayable bed liners. General auto body, Water transfer printing (dipping), vinyl wrapping, etc.

      Tons of material you can write about and cross sell.
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  • Profile picture of the author greenowl123
    Your blog looks really good ! Congrats.

    You already got some good advice from other Warriors here, just from the couple of posts I read.

    My 2 cents : Invest in buying a domain name from NameCheap, you can get 1 for less than 10 bucks the last time I checked. Get your own hosting to host your new domain from HawkHost... less than 10 bucks a month. Blogger can, and WILL take down your free blog, for any reason or no reason at all. If you MUST use a free blog platform, I would recommend Weebly, Webs.com or LiveJournal or Typepad. But... if at all possible, get your own domain name, your own hosting, and set up a WP blog.

    One other thing you should do is put banner ads at the top of your blog, and on the sides. You can create banner ads with Amazon to promote related products. Also, use banner ads from Clickbank for related products. I know that Clickbank has 1 affiliate offer that is related to buying cars which have been "seized" by the government and offered at gov. and police auctions. If you promoted something like that on your blog, you would probably make some sales from it also.
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    • Profile picture of the author 99ishvr4
      Originally Posted by Chris Silvey View Post

      Ahh I used to be in the Auto body trade. I used to specialize in restoring vintage Mustangs.

      Now that you are focusing on powder coating, you could also branch out a bit. Add some categories and other posts. Such as base coat/clear coat systems, tri coat. Polyurethane sprayable bed liners. General auto body, Water transfer printing (dipping), vinyl wrapping, etc.

      Tons of material you can write about and cross sell.
      This is in line with my orignal plan, the powder coating site was to be just one of several sites that would cover all aspects of car restoration. Then i planned on merging them all together into one all encompasing car restoration site. My plan is moving along at a snails pace though and i am constantly held back by the thought of it not even being worth it. It is very hard for me to commit lots of time to something and not know if it will be worth it. My irrational goal is to make 100k a year online and just let the site run itself. Basically what the powder coating site is doing x1000. I am holding back from commiting to the site because i dont think it is capable of making that much money ever.

      Originally Posted by greenowl123 View Post

      Your blog looks really good ! Congrats.

      You already got some good advice from other Warriors here, just from the couple of posts I read.

      My 2 cents : Invest in buying a domain name from NameCheap, you can get 1 for less than 10 bucks the last time I checked. Get your own hosting to host your new domain from HawkHost... less than 10 bucks a month. Blogger can, and WILL take down your free blog, for any reason or no reason at all. If you MUST use a free blog platform, I would recommend Weebly, Webs.com or LiveJournal or Typepad. But... if at all possible, get your own domain name, your own hosting, and set up a WP blog.

      One other thing you should do is put banner ads at the top of your blog, and on the sides. You can create banner ads with Amazon to promote related products. Also, use banner ads from Clickbank for related products. I know that Clickbank has 1 affiliate offer that is related to buying cars which have been "seized" by the government and offered at gov. and police auctions. If you promoted something like that on your blog, you would probably make some sales from it also.
      Yeah I definitely should follow their advice, I did get a domain name and i would really like to get my own hosting and use a wordpress plugin. Blogger seems to be very limited in site design, and since i have added custom html to my page, the blogger theme designer doesn't even work anymore. I cant even figure out how to change the red sidebar lines to black. I come up with ideas for my site all day, but actually when I go to try them out, I am always stopped because I don't know how to implement them.

      With my very limited web design abilities, switching to my own hosting and redesigning the site seems like a massive project and i really don't know what I'm doing. I have all of my articles saved in case blogger shuts me down and because i have my own domain name i can direct it to a future site so hopefully my traffic (around 15k views a month) will not disappear.

      You have somewhat opened my eyes with the advertising, I tried wordpress and could not find any powder coating products to put on my site so I just gave up on it. I guess I should think about what type of lifestyle a diy powder coater would have and try to find products that they would be interested in even if it is not directly related to powder coating. As far as the banner ads, I don't really want to overload the page with ads, I currently have 3 adsense ads on every page, and I am scared to do any more than that. What are your thoughts on that?
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  • Profile picture of the author greenowl123
    If you have your own hosting (again, I highly recommend HawkHost) and your own domain name, then setting up a WP blog, adding plug-ins, etc. is easy. There are lots of videos on YouTube that will show you how... or you can hire somebody on Fiverr.com to install WP for you and design your blog, add plug-ins for you, etc. Just go to Fiverr and use the search function there and look for "install wp" or "create blog" or similar phrases. Lots of talented people there...
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