Last night I was chatting with a blogger who was feeling completely overwhelmed with their goal of making a living from blogging.
I asked them how much they wanted to make from blogging.
They responded that they wanted to be a full time blogger.
I pushed them for a figure – what does ‘full time’ mean for you?
They thought for a moment and said that they could live off $30,000 USD a year (note: they wouldn’t have minded earning more but would be able to quit their current job at this kind of rate).
$30,000 a year sounds like a lot to make from a blog – especially when you’re starting out and are yet to make a dollar. To this blogger it seemed so overwhelming that she had almost convinced herself that it was not possible.
Advice for Becoming a Full Time Blogger
My response was threefold:
1. Don’t Give Up Your Day Job…. Yet
It is possible to make $30,000 a year blogging, but it’s unlikely to happen over night. Keep your feet on the ground and your expectations reasonable. IF it happens (and there are no guarantees) it is almost certainly going to take some time.
2. Be Specific
Saying that you want to be full time as a blogger is a great goal – but it’s not really specific enough. This is why I wanted the blogger I was chatting with to name a figure. For her full time was $30,000 – for others it could be more or less – the amount is not the point, the point is that you need something more concrete to work towards so that you’re able to measure where you’re at.
For me when I decided I want to go full time as a blogger I decided that I wanted to aim for $50,000 (Aussie Dollars) in a year as the bench mark (at that time $50,000 was around 36,000 USD). That’s around what I would have been earning in my current main job if I had been doing that full time (I was actually working a number of part time jobs at the time as well as studying part time).
Knowing what I was aiming for helped me in a number of ways when it came to getting to that goal.
3. Break it down into something more Achievable
$30,000 USD still sounds big when you’re a new blogger – and in some ways it is. However there are different ways of thinking about that figure. Lets break it down in the way that I used to look at my target.
* $30,000 a year = $576.92 per week
* $30,000 a year = $82.19 a day
* $30,000 a year = $3.42 an hour
We could break it down on a monthly or on a minute by minute basis if we wanted to (in fact I did do it by minute from time to time for fun) – but the exercise is really about helping you to see that perhaps your big goal is a little more achievable if you are to break it down. Making $82.19 somehow seems a little bit easier to me than making $30,000 (or is that just me?).
OK – the other way that I used to break down my goal that I found really helpful to me was to do it based upon what I need to achieve to meet that target. For me I would usually look at the daily figure – in this case $82.19.
What do I need to do to make $82.19 a day ($30,000 a year)?
Well there’s a number of ways that much. Lets look at a few:
* CPC Ads – lets say we’re running mainly AdSense on our blog and that the average click is paying 5 cents. That equates to 1643 clicks on AdSense ads (note: AdSense also runs CPM ads so it’s not quite as simple as saying you need 1643 clicks… but to keep this simple lets just go with that).
* CPM Ads – lets say that we’re running CPM ads on our blog and we’re being paid $2 CPM per ad unit and we had 3 ads on each page (which is effectively $6 CPM per page). This would mean we’d need 13,000 page impressions.
* Monthly Sponsorships – one way to sell ads directly to advertisers is to sell ads on a month by month basis as a sponsorship. To make $30k in a year you need to sell $2500 a month in ads. You might have 6 ad spots on your blog so this is 6 advertisers at $416.66 per advertiser per month.
* Low Commission Affiliate Products – Lets say we were promoting affiliate products from a site like Amazon and your commissions were on average about 40 cents per sale. To earn $82.19 you’d need to sell $205 products.
* High Commission Affiliate Products – In this case you might be promoting ebooks and earning $8 a copy (that’s what you’d earn selling my 31DBBB ebook per commission). The math is simple on this one – you’d had to sell around 10 e-books a day.
* Really Big Commission Affiliate Products – of course e-books are not the biggest product out there to promote – there are products like training courses where you can earn hundreds per sale. Lets take one that might pay out $300 for a yearly membership on a bigger product. In this case you need to sell 8 of these per month.
* Selling Your Own E-book – got your own product, perhaps an e-book, to sell from your blog? At $19.95 a sale you need to sell just over 4 of these a day. You can do the sums on cheaper or more expensive products.
Of course there are many many other ways to make money from blogs. Subscriptions, donations, paid reviews, selling yourself as a consultant….. etc. You can do the sums for yourself on your own model.
I know that some of the above figures still sound out of reach for bloggers – 1643 clicks on your AdSense ads sounds massive to a new blogger…. and it is – but dokeep in mind that you can combine some of the above (in fact I’d recommend you diversify your income).
You might run 2 ad networks on your site, promote Amazon affiliates, sell your own e-book and promote someone’s membership course.
Looking back on my own figures for around the time when I hit my $50,000 AUD (around $100 USD a day) goal and for me at that time my income mix looked a like this (going from memory here):
* AdSense: $35
* Chitika: $20
* Private Ad Sales: $20
* Amazon: $15
* Other Affiliate Commissions: $10
Note: I didn’t achieve this milestone until I’d been blogging for over 2 years (I blogged for the first year without trying to make money).
This didn’t happen over night but I really found that breaking things down into more bite sized pieces helped me to stay motivated but also helped me to identify what I needed to work on in order to reach my goals (and for me to quite my day job).
Again – don’t quit your day job yet (in fact you may not want to quit it even when you reach your goal – it can be good to have a back up plan) but do work hard at being specific about your blogging goals and attempt to break it down in a way that helps you move towards them.
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Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Article Writing and Backlinks
What every blog needs is one way non reciprocal backlinks. Free article submissions to directories and content providers, article marketing, submissions of press releases and other forms of content distribution are a means of getting them.
If you write quality content other people will want to link to you, so if you want to put your writing skills to work to promote your blog this article will interest you.
Here are some sites of interest:
- article marketing, online publishing and syndication services to website owners and ezine publishers;
- directory services, utilities for webmasters and site owners to enhance their marketing, ecommerce and webmaster skills.
Submission guidelines: The articles that you submit must be your own work, and the content must be unique.
- Free articles, free web content, and free article feeds are submitted to a network of quality registered authors;
- once registered, authors are free to submit articles for distribution to Ezines, affiliated websites and anyone else who wishes to use the article database.
Submission guidelines: Amazines.com is a directory of articles, not blatant advertisements. Your article must contain useful and informative content.
- a free article directory, a base of over 60,000 active authors and more than half a million pages of content;
- a network of informational sites; content any of our sites may get used elsewhere on the network if our editors feel the content is appropriate;
- content is free to use if a working hyperlink is retained to the source page on Article Alley and the author has selected their articles to be free to republish.
A1 Articles, Women’s Articles, Web Hosting Articles, Article Heaven, Going Legal, Finance Alley
- You declare that you are the author of the article.
- You have sole ownership of the article and all copyrights pertaining to it. In case of a dispute over copyright, content, trademarks, intellectual property or other infringements you agree to defend, indemnify and hold ArticleBiz and its officers, directors and employees harmless from and against any and all claims made by or liabilities to any third party.
- You grant permission to ArticleBiz to publish your article on our website and have it distributed to our RSS feed.
- You grant permission for your article to be reprinted in other ezines, websites and print publications.
- collection of articles on various subjects free articles to add to web sites
- articles for use in opt-in newsletters and e-zines
- an online article search engine and directory for both publishers and authors;
- provider of free niche content for webmasters, authors, ezine owners and internet entrepreneurs.
Submission guidelines: The articles that you submit must be your own work. You may not submit articles written by other authors and the content must be unique.
- an online article directory for both publishers and authors;
- providing syndication services to website owners, ezine publishers, and more.
Submission guidelines: The articles that you submit must be your own work and the content must be unique. No rebranded articles allowed, you must be the sole copyright holder for each article you submit.
- content for general web visiotrs, writers/authors and publishers/webmasters;
- a free article directory or hub that brings web visitors, writer/authors and publishers/webmasters together;
- quality articles for reprint and syndication via RSS feeds on their own websites, blogs and ezines — all free of charge
Submission guidelines: Must be original and authored by you and educate and inform rather than just a promotional piece.
- a free article directory
- All articles you see on this site can be freely used on any website, providing you just follow publisher guidelines.
- ArticlesBase now offers custom articles written for you by expert authors. While free articles certainly serve their purpose of giving you content for your website, it’s widely acknowledged that there is nothing better than original content for both the search engines to improve your ranking and indeed your site visitors.
- Our professional team of Article Writers can write on any topic you desire and more importantly, you own all copyrights to the articles that you purchase.
- We do not charge for article publication or pay for content submitted. We run advertising on our site to help us keep the site running free of charge.
- Articles Factory is free
- registration is required.
- Provides practical information tools and resources for starting, growing and managing small and home-based businesses;
- Business Know-How includes several related web sites. We also distribute content to other sites, including some major commercial online services.
Submission guidelines: We only accept submissions from the original author of the articles or a publicist hired by the copyright owner to submit material here. By submitting material, you acknowledge that you are legally entitled to distribute the work and to allow it to be redistributed.
ContentDesk.com
We focus on bringing traffic from several different sources instead of just focusing on search engines. We believe (and we have proven) that search engine rankings will come by using consistent and long-term strategies to build the exposure of your site.
ContentDesk.com is launching a blog network called the CDBlog Network. We are looking for writers who want to write for us on one of many different topics. We pay a beginning stipend (up to $800 per month depending on experience) to start, with the potential of a full-time, lucrative income for writers, who help us take their blog to the top of a market niche. We handle all the set up, domain registration and site build, all the technical issues and all the marketing.
ExcellentGuide.com/article
ExcellentGuide.com offers free quality resources for users to post, read, view, and browse articles and videos posted by the members of this Website.
ExcellentGuide.com also features ‘Trusted Websites’ section that reflects a collection of useful websites that we recommend to the users. Besides, ‘Bookmarks’ section contains quick links to the most popular content on the Internet that the users recommend to the fellow users.
EzineArticles.com is a matching service — bringing real-world experts and ezine publishers together. Expert Authors & Writers are able to post their articles to be featured within the site. Our searchable database of hundreds of thousands of quality original articles allows email newsletter publishers hungry for fresh content to find articles that they can use for inclusion within their next newsletter (up to 25 articles per year per our Publisher TOS).
- GoArticles.com is an article search engine and directory with more than 1 million indexed articles and a membership exceeding 135,000 authors;
- aims to provide authors, publishers and visitors with the best and largest free content article database on the Web
- Allowing individuals to post articles to be featured on the site.
Articles are stored in a searchable database. - Web surfers, researchers, publishers, webmasters and ezine editors can then come in and find content.
- An article directory search engine and at the same time an article distribution service provider offering a very affordable marketing service online without sacrificing quality.
- All articles we host are exposed to our very high search traffic, direct traffic and organic traffic.
- A collaborative environment for readers, writers, and advertisers
- An online provider of unique content and powerful tools for the web hosting, website promotion, and domain name registration industries;
- Our major properties include HostReview, PromotionWorld, DomainInformer, and a variety of other websites that cater to webmasters and online business owners. Our experienced staff, unique editorial features, and powerful free tools make the DevStart Network the Webmaster’s Homepage.
- Our mission is to foster intelligent discussion from diverse viewpoints while providing useful information to the World.
- Our vision is to be a platform for common people to be heard while airing sometimes uncommon points of view.
- We pledge to use our small corner of the World Wide Web to make the World a better place.
- SearchWarp is a writers’ community. A writers’ community is a place where people write for passion, read for entertainment & understanding and discuss for useful interaction. If your purpose for submitting an article to SearchWarp falls outside of this (such as for commercial or profit purposes) SearchWarp might not be the place for you.
- Provides informative, quality Self Improvement and Natural Health information ranging from Goal Setting and Stress Management to Natural Health and Alternative Medicine.
- Our network is composed of four websites, SelfGrowth.com, NaturalHealthWeb.com, SelfImprovementNewsletters.com and NaturalHealthNewsletters.com.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Pay per Post v3
Get paid to blog about the things you love!
You can blog almost anything that you want! Blog about your travels, blog about your friends or blog just about anything that you encounter in your everyday life.
Simply register by filling up the sign up form below to get started...
You can blog almost anything that you want! Blog about your travels, blog about your friends or blog just about anything that you encounter in your everyday life.
Simply register by filling up the sign up form below to get started...
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