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KetTarma posted:I have 45 articles so I have a decent amount of content.. not sure if it's time to go "full in" or not. What is your end goal of advertising? How do you make money from your site? How would getting people from SA earn you money?
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Mar 1, 2014 16:38
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Adsense + Amazon affiliate links embedded in articles that relate to the thing I'm linking to. More traffic = more chance someone clicks on something, I'd hope. What I meant by full-in was spending a bit of money (relative to how much I've made) to promote my site. After my initial social media spamming of everyone and everything I know, traffic has dropped off to about 10 views per day without me doing anything. When I was getting 50/day, I was actually getting occasional purchases/clicks. I'm still writing articles at a steady pace but I'm not really seeing any significant traffic. It's worrying since I thought things would be better in month #3.
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Mar 1, 2014 18:31
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KetTarma posted:Adsense + Amazon affiliate links embedded in articles that relate to the thing I'm linking to. Try writing some articles that focus on stuff people buy. Maybe like buying guides or how to make things (and the parts you need to purchase). People spend a lot of money on tech hobbies so they to tap into that. In my opinion, advertising on SA might get you a few views but I doubt many sales (and I'm sure most people on SA have ad-blockers so they're not going to click on your display ads).
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Mar 1, 2014 18:56
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Don't write blind, learn how to do keyword research and write to keywords. Don't drop money on banner advertising for traffic reasons.
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Mar 1, 2014 23:59
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Also realize that 75% of goons probably run Adblock so you can forget about any adsense earnings.
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Mar 2, 2014 00:10
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Omits-Bagels posted:Try writing some articles that focus on stuff people buy. Maybe like buying guides or how to make things (and the parts you need to purchase). People spend a lot of money on tech hobbies so they to tap into that. In my opinion, advertising on SA might get you a few views but I doubt many sales (and I'm sure most people on SA have ad-blockers so they're not going to click on your display ads). I took your advice and wrote this: http://www.wirebiters.com/best-calculator-fe-exam/ Do I sound like a horrible corporate shill? It's definitely not my usual writing style since I'm much more of an academic than a salesman.
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Mar 3, 2014 03:05
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I have a question about sitemaps: Do I need to only submit it once to Google or should I submit it every time I make a post? I've noticed that my "pages" count doesn't go up until I resubmit it. Am I just impatient, will it go up over time?
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Mar 3, 2014 07:43
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Google will update it every few days. You should only have to submit a site map after major changes.
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Mar 3, 2014 12:14
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Thanks. Good to know that I don't have to constantly go back and update.
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Mar 3, 2014 12:39
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Your site map should be current however. If you're using some sort of plugin to Wordpress or your existing CMS you should be fine however if you created a site map manually for some reason you'll need to update it after each post. You do not need to notify Google though.
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Mar 3, 2014 16:59
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I've been perusing this thread along with a number of other blog/marketing/SEO etc websites. I have an idea that I think could provide a few extra bucks in the long term - part personal journey, part life coaching to encourage others make simple but surprisingly powerful changes to enjoy a better life. I'd start writing about things I already picked up (health and fitness, informal leadership, novel recreational activities like DJing and parkour) while documenting/instructing how to work towards new things like DIY woodworking/plumbing or minimalist hiking. A (possible?) downside is that it won't deal with one single subject, but a number of divergent ones with the overarching trend of becoming a better, more interesting person. This may be outweighed by more opportunities to get my foot in the affiliate marketing door. The biggest obstacle is that I'm living in another country and don't have a work visa. It's not worth risking my job to dodge taxes or declaring income in my wife's name while living in the US, and the legal/tax implications of my situation seem too complex to reconcile painlessly (screw the CRA  ).Given that, I'm thinking about just establishing the site and updating it periodically over the next couple years until I can possibly monetize it. This has the advantage of being able to create a readership organically and removes some of the pressure to perform when I am busy with work/life. I can also take my time learning SEO (a future entry, perhaps...?). Downsides include me eating all hosting costs until then, but with goonhosting options available it's only maybe 50-60 bucks a year. I have what I think are a couple awesome options for a domain name as well as an idea that might catch on eventually, and I do legitimately have some interest in honing my writing skills and learning how this whole internet thing works. I'm just not sure if there's something else I'm failing to consider, or possibly a better way of doing things. If anybody can disperse some advice or is willing to go over this with me one on one I'd appreciate it.
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Mar 18, 2014 00:39
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My advice is you're entering possibly the most competitive blog space and need to be prepared to dedicate a significant chunk of your life to it and building your personal "guru" brand in order to have a shot at monetization. The way those sites make money is by cultivating a personality following and then continually hitting them with affiliate links to the latest gee whiz tool they need for whatever compelling reason. If your end goal is money, you should consider a less competitive niche unless you're really good at the hype game.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:10
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Find things that make you stand out from the rest of the pack. Why not add some "culture" to your blog? Give your followers a nickname (like Lady Gaga and her monsters), invent new terms and encourage everyone to participate in this culture through comments.
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Mar 18, 2014 13:23
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To clarify I wasn't aiming for the guru angle...think a little less Tim Ferris, and a little more Money Mustache.VeggieSmuggler posted:Find things that make you stand out from the rest of the pack. Why not add some "culture" to your blog? I like the culture idea, though it might be a little uncouth coming from something with the word 'Badass' in the title 
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Mar 18, 2014 15:54
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Guest2553 posted:To clarify I wasn't aiming for the guru angle...think a little less Tim Ferris, and a little more Money Mustache. I like stuff that has a little Badassery in it.
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Mar 18, 2014 17:23
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welp, just bit the bullet and registered https://www.breaking-badass.com and a year of hosting from some goon. What do you think of the name? I have a bunch of stuff going on at work right now but will probably get something up in the next week and a bit. It only cost 30 bucks at any rate, I've blown more on less
Guest2553 fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 02:28
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How do you guys write for keywords? I find that my writing starts become a little robotic if I actively try to write around my keywords. I've been writing my articles naturally then going back in to squeeze in keywords when I can. Is using my actual keyword once or twice ok? I use related words or parts of the keyword throughout the article it just seems kind of forced if I used "healthy fruit smoothie recipes" more than a few times in a 400 word post. Anyone have any backlinking tips or want to trade backlinks with a food related blog? I'm currently getting all of my traffic(20-40 clicks/day) through a related niche forum that I've been posting at. I've started with pinterest and foodgawker but it seems like I'll have to wait until I get my new camera to get any value out of those sites. Anyways, got my first ad click yesterday, $3.16 so far!
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Mar 26, 2014 00:00
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My advice is to keep doing what you're doing. Good content trumps all. Just make sure your code is semantic and that your headings are targeted toward SEO and getting views. There's a difference between "All about dogs." and "Why your dog is going to get fat." as a heading. One makes me feel like I'm reading an essay and one makes me feel like I'm in an argument. I will read the argument. Both contain the same keyword, however. Just make sure you're writing good content and get it in as much as you can.
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Mar 26, 2014 00:32
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The question is whether you want to build an audience of people interested in health food (or whatever it is you blog about), or whether you want to pull in search traffic for a few select keywords. You can do both, but it's hard. Your keyword-stuffed posts (let's just pretend Google is still all about keywords for a sec) will probably turn off your regular readers. And your Google drop-ins probably won't care about the rest of your stuff. There's no question to me which is more valuable. I'll take regular readers over search-engine traffic any day. So my philosophy is that to the extent you can write compelling content that is also well-optimized, you absolutely should. But if those goals are ever in conflict, go for the compelling content every time. Because search engines don't build readership. I mean, if you get enough people finding your blog through search engines, a few will stick around. But you are much better off building readership through forums, as you are doing now (hopefully in a non-spammy way), or with copy that attracts links from other bloggers who want to write about it. Great content is harder than keyword-stuffing, but it is also much longer-lasting.
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Mar 26, 2014 02:44
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Thanks! Makes me feel much better about just writing and letting people come to me through promotion rather than keywords. I'm a peace corps volunteer so I feel like it is much more interesting and fun to write my recipe posts with the peace corps twist rather than just stuffing in keywords. The niche forum I'm on has a recipe section so I have just been posting a few of my best recipes there with a link to the full blog post at the bottom. It's a pretty dead part of the forum but it still brings me about 10-40 views a day currently which is basically all I am getting at this point.
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Mar 26, 2014 03:55
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Why does AdSense show I earned two cents today with no clicks? I got a click earlier this week worth 3.16, was hoping for a few more of those.
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Mar 29, 2014 00:49
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Adsense pays on display ads as well as clicks. Depends on how the advertiser wants to run their campaign.
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Mar 29, 2014 02:31
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Keyword seo wise make sure its in a h1 heading and ideally in another heading of smaller size later. Place it once in or very near the first sentance of your article and just be aware of it after that aim for an exact use about ever 500-1000 words. Feel free to use more related words and symonyms around your text as would be natural. Pretty easy to do and thats more than enough for google to figure out what your article is about these days.
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Mar 29, 2014 11:06
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Writing for keywords: First, find a topic through keyword research. Don't bother to write if there's no volume (unless it's supporting content designed to flesh out an evergreen piece). Second, write the thing. Ignore the keywords. Third, go back through and insert the keywords, related keywords, synonyms, etc. Try not to repeat yourself much. Keyword density is a myth. Make sure it's human readable at all times. Humans > Robots. Get the main head keyword in the title and H1 and above the fold. After that, synonyms are great. Don't worry about it overmuch. You can run it through scribe if you want help from a keyword robot until you get your legs under you. What's most important after writing the thing and basic inclusion? PROMOTION. That's where you'll make or break your efforts.
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Mar 29, 2014 21:55
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I have pinterest, Facebook and g+ pages going. Also put $15 down for a stumble upon campaign. Should have a new camera soon which will help a lot seeing as I blog about fruit recipes. grenada fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Mar 29, 2014 22:21
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What's with the big grey box at the bottom?
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Mar 29, 2014 22:26
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KetTarma posted:What's with the big grey box at the bottom? Google ad, I need to make the background match the rest of the page.
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Mar 29, 2014 22:37
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https://www.wirebiters.com trip report, month 3. I was really busy with classes, work, and other things so I only published a few times. I didn't pay for any advertising or anything so my expenses were very low. I did get some freelance work from someone else's blog to write a few articles. My end of month tally: Google Adsense: $0.04 Amazon Affiliate: 0 Sponsored Posts: $17.16 Hosting costs: $4.25 Paid Advertising: 0 Net: +$12.95 This month I didn't spam twitter and facebook with old articles and my traffic really suffered. Last month I made 7$ from Google, and 8$ from Amazon.. but I also published about 6x as many articles and was spamming everyone regularly. Right now I'm seeing about 5 visitors per day, usually from Google for a total of 318 hits this month. It seems like the overwhelming bulk of my traffic is from people clicking on my social media spam the day that I publish an article. Any thoughts? Am I doing comparably well? Poor? Site feedback? Anything?
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Mar 30, 2014 16:40
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So after 7 days I have a blog set up: http://ccenticnd1.com/ A Blog about entry level networking, focusing on the Cisco entry level exam. It was just supposed to be a little test site leading into setting up a test ecommerce to make sure I know what the hell I was doing. Ended up having a lot of fun with, so I am just going to run with it for a few months and see what happens. Very lean on content right now, but I am working on it. Hell I even made .43 cents with my amazon links all ready. Next week after I have a few more pages of content I am going to hammer social media and see if anyone likes it.
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Apr 4, 2014 00:15
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Just found this thread. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing on the business end of things besides Adsense and fighting my way through legions of lovely ad networks which promise better eCPM than Adsense but seem to inevitably fall short. tl;dr: I run a silly internet spaceship empire in Eve Online, A Bad Game, and game journalism annoys me, so I started a gaming blog in August 2012. We've now got 300k uniques a month and push about 3m views, plus the Wall Street Journal just ran a profile on us. http://themittani.com We're looking to do a total site redesign because the frontpage/article view was put together in May 2012 and lots of things on the site are a clunky relic. We swapped from using AWS for hosting to DigitalOcean, which has saved a lot of cash. I highly recommend DO if you haven't checked it out. We don't have an email list, and now I'm going to go back and read this whole thread to see if there's anything in here we've missed. My constant fear in this business is that there's something obvious that 'everyone' knows that we're missing due to a lack of professional web media experience. I'm happy to give "big" site advice, but we've only been doing this for a couple of years and it's mostly one long  . The big next step is to move to selling advertising directly ourselves rather than relying on Adsense, which is kind of terrifying and I don't know how well that's going to pan out.
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Apr 5, 2014 07:08
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Numismancer posted:Just found this thread. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing on the business end of things besides Adsense and fighting my way through legions of lovely ad networks which promise better eCPM than Adsense but seem to inevitably fall short. Do you use Amazon affiliate links? I noticed that you do book reviews so you might as well throw up an Amazon link to the book. You might not earn a ton of extra cash but it is an easy way to earn cash. If you have a super loyal fan base you can simply ask them to click through one of your Amazon links when they want to buy something and tell them that you'll earn a little cash for each sale. Just be honest — "Hey guys, support me by clicking on this Amazon link if you ever buy stuff from Amazon. It helps me keep this site going. K. Thanks. Bye." Omits-Bagels fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Apr 5, 2014 |
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Apr 5, 2014 16:25
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I think Amazon could do very well actually. Amazon referral cookies stick for 24 hours and your target demo does a ton of Amazon shopping I'm guessing. Even if they don't buy anything on first click you'll probably do well on later purchases alone. Congrats on your traffic, I think Adsense is still the best paying for ad networks. Running your own ad slots and maybe doing sponsored posts are the next logical step. You might even be able to get into the pickier ad networks like Federated media with your traffic and demo.
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Apr 5, 2014 18:35
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An easy way to jump into selling your own ad slots is buysellads.com. There's still some management, but it's better than being completely on your own. You should also pay someone (real money) for an audit of your site, just a few minutes on there and I'm seeing a ton of correctable on-page seo issues.
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Apr 5, 2014 20:21
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Hey guys there was an incredible plugin for Google Adsense that I used to use and cannot, for the life of me, remember. It would allow me to save the ads as widgets and I could place them anywhere on the blog. Maybe it was just part of the heatmap theme? If so, what kind of plugins are you guys using for Adsense?
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Apr 9, 2014 13:42
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Moniker posted:Hey guys there was an incredible plugin for Google Adsense that I used to use and cannot, for the life of me, remember. It would allow me to save the ads as widgets and I could place them anywhere on the blog. Maybe it was just part of the heatmap theme? If so, what kind of plugins are you guys using for Adsense? Heatmap theme does indeed have this built-in. For non-Heatmap themes I've used Easy Adsense for a while. Puts ad in most popular locations and I think it supports custom locations if you modify the template. http://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-adsense-lite/ Make sure you disable the option to give 5% of impressions to the author.
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Apr 9, 2014 23:07
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Awesome, thanks FCKGW. I knew you'd come through.
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Apr 9, 2014 23:14
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Anyone use rich snippets on their site. I tried using a wordpress plugin for it but it added an ugly box tot he bottom of my posts with all the structured data. Seems like I'll have to do the markup myself if I just want the content that is already on my page to be displayed next to my search result. edit: Looks like google authorship is what I want. Sort of confusing to set it all up but I think I was successful. grenada fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Apr 12, 2014 |
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Apr 12, 2014 16:10
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Started working on this site: http://guitartheoryhour.blogspot.com Seems like a good niche, don't want to get into affiliate marketing quite yet. Any feedback?
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Apr 23, 2014 00:49
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I cant rhyme posted:Started working on this site: http://guitartheoryhour.blogspot.com Do not build on a property someone else owns. I'm sure someone (including me) can set you up with a discount coupon to get started for cheap. Myself, I'm using a "baby gator" plan at Hostgator, and have about a dozen of these "Hey, this could be a good idea!" side projects set up. Costs me $10/mo. to host for all of them. Even if I never do anything with any of them, the ability to set up 'throwaway' email addresses whenever I'm signing up for a contest or something is pretty handy.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:38
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So I've been doing some SEO for some local companies with decent results so I decided I'm going to make a couple of authority sites. I found one keyword that has 12,000 searches per month with some high competition according to Google Keyword Planner, but the first page is just full of Google Images and a couple of Youtube videos so I really hope that i can get some quality content written and toss some Adsense ads and some Amazon links for some products that are (closely) related. Another one has to do with snow removal so I figure if I can get it up and running now and let it slowly generate some age and slowly build some back links to it over the course of the next 6 or 7 months then maybe it will pull in some traffic around January of next year. I guess I don't have much of a question except about the first keyword. It has a high competition rate but the first page is full of BS content. It's still a decent idea to go for right?
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Apr 27, 2014 14:10
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