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Black Friday is here and Christmas is rapidly approaching, anyone got any plans? I got two new BF blogs I just dreamt up but I have to wait until next year to flesh them out as I'm running out of time.
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Nov 17, 2015 21:19
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Hmm--I run a small blog for a niche MMO/game reviews and so far 850 views which is actually higher than I predicted. Should I try SEO stuff or just keep it as a hobby? Mostly, I wanted to find more people who liked the same games I did... https://www.knightime.net
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Nov 25, 2015 23:52
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Alder posted:Hmm--I run a small blog for a niche MMO/game reviews and so far 850 views which is actually higher than I predicted. Should I try SEO stuff or just keep it as a hobby? Mostly, I wanted to find more people who liked the same games I did... In how long did you get these 850 views? Was this a few hours, or a few weeks? Given the combination of "video games" and "niche," I can't imagine that's a silver bullet for commercial success. If your goal is to find people who like the same games as you, I imagine you'd be happiest if you kept doing that and worked to mold this community in a way you see fit. If it gets a large enough following and users are contributing to the content or community, then you may have other commercial possibilities (publishers placing ads, affiliate links to game stores / Amazon) come along.
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Dec 13, 2015 21:28
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snagger posted:In how long did you get these 850 views? Was this a few hours, or a few weeks? Yep a few weeks. Thanks will keep working my site then I'll check out Amazon Affiliates too.
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Dec 14, 2015 14:29
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Here's the annual stats from this year's Black Friday blog. Here is last year's post to compare For those that don't know or forgot, I have a Black Friday blog that I run that is related to a regional electronics retailer. In fact, I used to work for this retailer many years ago. They had a horrible website, zero marketing and only advertised their black friday deals through the newspaper. I saw an opportunity to take their incompetence and create a website that presented the Black Friday ads in a digital form and break down the listing, prices, and discount from them an their competitors. I've been running the site in some form or another since 2006 but have really just started pushing it heavily since 2010. I've dropped off most my other blogs since getting a big boy job so this is my main money earner for the year. All the stats I'm posting are from November 19th to December 1st which is the bulk of the traffic. This year saw a slight decrease and some weird traffic patterns. While my overall traffic was actually higher than last year, a big majority of that was mobile traffic which does horrible for clicks and revenue. Traffic from Nov. 19th (about a week before Black Friday until the day after Cyber Monday)  (Green is page views, Blue is Uniques and Orange is returning) I'll explain the weird traffic patterns in a minute Adsense Revenue:  Skimlinks rev was around $100 and Amazon directly another $100 Notes:
I'll be happy to answer any questions!
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Dec 23, 2015 20:12
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Alright: After the success a few years ago with my firefighting site, I've kind of kept tabs on stuff that pops up from time to time - tracking what people are interacting with, engaging with, etc. I've noticed, especially lately, a lot of what I like to call 'right-wing outrage' sites are getting a *ton* of action, at least on facebook. Like, ridiculous amounts of people engaging. Is it wrong to spin up one of these on my own, even if I know it's all made-up bullshit?
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Dec 28, 2015 01:40
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invision posted:Alright: 90% of the site admins for those sites also know it's bullshit and do it for the clicks. Those people are fun to engage with like the government conspiracy theorists.
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Dec 28, 2015 01:54
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invision posted:Alright: It's up to you and whether you're comfortable doing that. A lot of people that blog aren't doing it to help spread useful information - they're doing it for money. Researching, promoting & ranking for items they don't use themselves is common, and I don't see how selling stories you don't necessarily believe in to be much different. If your goal is to make money online then following trends like that can be profitable. And for all of you potential or current bloggers out there be sure to listen to the Problogger podcast. There's a lot of vague blogging advice out there but these contain actionable steps. http://problogger.com/podcast/ Royal Jeans fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 16:21
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Anybody have any theme recommendations outside of what's included in wordpress?
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Jan 9, 2016 19:54
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Dead Pressed posted:Anybody have any theme recommendations outside of what's included in wordpress? Are you looking for other free themes or maybe a premium one? There's a lot of love for the Genesis framework as far as premium goes (I use it myself on all my blogs). I like using https://wpsniffer.com/ to browse through different themes & see them in action on real sites. They've got a lot of popular themes listed, both paid & free that are easy to sort through. Royal Jeans fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 22:41
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I really like the ones on themeforest.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:08
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This is going to be a dumb question, but can you just use the Genesis framework and create your own child theme?
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Jan 15, 2016 21:11
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diremonk posted:This is going to be a dumb question, but can you just use the Genesis framework and create your own child theme? Yeah you can do that. A little bit of CSS & PHP knowledge can go pretty far when it comes to customizing their stuff. If you look on Etsy or other sites there's actually a bunch of people selling their own Genesis child themes - they're all over the place which is pretty cool that they allow you to do that.
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Jan 16, 2016 03:43
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Hi blogthread Wow, what a wealth of information in here -- I'm a little overwhelmed! This past month I've been thinking about starting a website for travel books, but I'm not sure about the blog format. What I'd like to do is to build a website with a simple landing page with a little text and a navigation choice like "where are you going?" and then either a list or a dropdown menu with the countries I've added. If you click, say, Ireland, I'd want it to go to something like website.com/ireland-travel-books and then have an orderly list, where each book is represented with a bookcover and then next to it in a table the author, name of book, published what year and finally an amazon affiliate link. Next to or below the book data, I'll write a little review of the book. So, less of a "posted on Jan 15th 2014" and more of an orderly and minimal list. Is this possible with wordpress? Furthermore, I've heard HTML5 microdata is very useful if you want good google results. Does anyone have any experience with increased visitors after switching to microdata? Also: When using amazon affiliate links, does it automatically correct between UK and US users or should I add two links, one labelled US and one labelled UK? edit: Sorry, this last part was just mainly venting  It's still a long way off, though. I've set myself the goal of making enough money online (which is proving very, very difficult as I'm in the EU and most sites seem geared towards the US) to start the site. I mean, I could afford to just set it up now, but I like the challenge, and probably also the procrastination, of trying to scratch together all my starting capital for the site from working online. So far I've made about 5-10 bucks writing content from using something called reddit/r/slavelabour. I've actually spent quite a lot of time this past week looking for a way to make some money online, but so far I've really not been successful in this endeavour. prinneh fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 04:48
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I just installed Avada from themeforest. Jesus Christ, there's a lot of options now!
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Jan 16, 2016 05:24
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prinneh posted:Hi blogthread There are wordpress plugins that will detect if the user is from the US or UK and direct them to the correct Amazon listing. I have very little luck with Amazon UK but it doesn't hurt to link there.
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Jan 17, 2016 01:49
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prinneh posted:When using amazon affiliate links, does it automatically correct between UK and US users or should I add two links, one labelled US and one labelled UK? EasyAzon is a pretty good plugin as it gives you the option to plug in Amazon tracking ID's from not only the US and UK but also Canada, China, Brazil. everywhere. Plus it'll switch amazons depending on where you're based. It's a little bit of work to setup but very handy once you're done.
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Jan 20, 2016 01:50
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I finally got reviewed by AdSense. I want to display ads more in-line with my blog, video games. I see that Video Games ads are in the "Sensitive categories". Should these be avoided?
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Jan 28, 2016 17:30
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Curious question - has anyone here taken/recycled some of their blog posts and sucessfully transitioned them to a epub book that they sell through Amazon or such? Obviously this would be for general interest blogging more than targetting a keyword - (something similar to Jeremy Clarksons books: a bunch of his previous newspaper and magazine articles spanning a range of topics). Curious to see if anyone has attempted this and how they went? Just thinking out loud as I have a lot of previous posts that could be reworked and given a second chance.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:49
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Question for amazon affiliates. Just wondering about the response rate of the reporting. I don't really have a blog but just started trying out affiliate links in some instructables I've been writing. The report page claims its "nearly real time", supposed to be response rate of an hour or so i think, but my reports seem to update once a day and lag behind by a day. Does that sound normal? Also I've read that you are not supposed to purchase from your own links and you could get banned. I'm not trying to do that, but sometimes I have a bunch of affiliate links in a post and want to verify that I'm using the correct one, is it ok to click those, or do I need to take some precautions like opening them as incognito so amazon doesn't think I'm trying to scam them if I happen to make a purchase that same day? That seems trivial for amazon to detect if you as a purchaser are the same person as the affiliate that the link came from and just ignore it. e: As for the day of lag, i guess it makes sense that if none of the clicks ever buy anything, it has to wait 24hrs before it counts it 
peepsalot fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 01:25
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peepsalot posted:
My report usually updates between 8-9 am EST time, so yeah just once a day. I've clicked my own links before to make sure they're working, I'm guessing that's fine as long as you don't make a purchase in the 24 hour period afterwards while the cookie is there.
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Feb 19, 2016 17:03
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What kind of conversion rates are people getting? After a few days I've got 59 clicks and 0 purchases.
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Feb 19, 2016 23:52
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Camo Guitar posted:Curious question - has anyone here taken/recycled some of their blog posts and sucessfully transitioned them to a epub book that they sell through Amazon or such? I used to follow the a Windows Home Sever blog and they would package all their massive setup guides into ebooks. I think John Saracusa from Ars Technical was doing the same thing for his OSX reviews. No idea how any of these ventures went though.
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Feb 20, 2016 05:49
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I was following the blog creation instructions in the OP but I seem to have hit a road block. I've registered a domain name and have bought hosting from LIthium Hosting, but now when I attempt to use Wordpress it seems to be asking me to map my domain to use it as my site's address for $13? Did I take a wrong step somewhere?
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Feb 20, 2016 06:49
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The Unholy Ghost posted:I was following the blog creation instructions in the OP but I seem to have hit a road block. I've registered a domain name and have bought hosting from LIthium Hosting, but now when I attempt to use Wordpress it seems to be asking me to map my domain to use it as my site's address for $13? Did I take a wrong step somewhere? You're not going through wordpress.com are you? From memory you log into cpanel through lithium, install wordpress through one of the options and go from there.
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Feb 20, 2016 08:03
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Okay, I figured out not to use the website. I downloaded Wordpress, and it dumped about a thousand files onto my harddrive, none of which seem to be an actual startup program  I'm trying to work through cPanel now, and I ended up creating...something? A host name, I guess? I've still found no option to actually get wordpress up and running, though. It's kind of shocking how extremely confusing this all got in the moment the instructions in the OP stopped. EDIT: I feel like my head is going to explode. So if I'm understanding these random instructions I found on the internet correctly, I now need an "FTP client" to upload the thousand documents I downloaded that is "Wordpress" into the root directory of my website? But what is the root directory? Why would the instructions not explain this? EDIT2: But wait, the cPanel provides an "FTP Account"? So if I make a fourth account for this one website I can now have an FTP account, and then...? I guess what I need to know is: is there a magic "Use Wordpress" button I've been missing this whole time on Lithium or is making four accounts on the cPanel to start building the site just something that has to be done? EDIT3: Ok, I'm going to lose it, I really am. After much miserable trial and error I downloaded FileZilla and have been attempting to upload the Wordpress documents for the last hour. I've been following these instructions (https://lithiumhosting.com/tutorials_data/demo.php?id=5034&series=217) and it was finally starting to make a bit of sense until I was told to use FileZilla. Now I've been following yet another series of isntructions on using FileZilla, which has led me to the point where I am uploading the documents but the connection is continually failing... according to THIS list (https://c180.lithium.hosting:2083/cpsess3509055308/frontend/paper_lantern/ftp/instructions/filezilla.html?acct=spiralg%40foolandtheworld.com) (Jesus loving christ)... I needed to select my domain from the site manager and then simply click connect... but it asks for a password, and I'm giving the password I used for my accounts on the cPanel and it is failing to connect...whether because it's the wrong password or some other bullshit I didn't account for I have no idea. According to the next Wordpress instructions I should be able to see an option to create a Configuration file on my website now, but all I'm still seeing are some goddamn ads. I'm literally beginning to feel sick, I'm going to need to take a break. gently caress me. (Please help) The Unholy Ghost fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Feb 20, 2016 |
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Feb 20, 2016 08:12
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The Unholy Ghost posted:I'm literally beginning to feel sick, I'm going to need to take a break. gently caress me. (Please help) Okay you're probably going to hate this on account of all the time you've spent working on it, but if you're with Lithium there's an easier way. Take a deep breath, pour your favorite drink and lets begin. You've got your domain, you've got your hosting, now it's time to tell your blank bit of the web what you want to run on it. -Log into Lithium - In https://lithiumhosting.com/billing/clientarea.php you'll see 'Your active products/services' (Usually Somethingawful Lurker V2 and then the domain you've registered.) Click on that domain link. -On the page that lists all your new website details, scroll halfway down the page until you see Login to CPanel -Down the very bottom of the page you'll find the one-click installers. Select Wordpress. -It won't take long before wordpress is installed on your domain. Sorted! (no need for FTP and everything else you've been driving yourself insane with) From here on in you might have to work out the next process yourself (or it'll talk you through it) as I'm not keen on trying to install a new version of wordpress over the one I've already got running and customized. What I can tell you though is when it's all installed to get in and start blogging your little heart out, it'll be your domain name and /WP-ADMIN So in my case I registered http://driveanotherday.com To log in and update my posts I need to go to http://driveanotherday.com/wp-admin Hopefully this cures what ails ya Any questions sing out (and if any goon wants to chuck in anything I've missed that'd be great.)
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Feb 20, 2016 13:42
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I do not hate this, no, thank you, I am loving this. Thank you a thousand times. EDIT: Hmm, so I successfully downloaded Wordpress onto my website, but my admin link links to a "No data received" page. Do I need to wait for the installation to take effect? The Unholy Ghost fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Feb 20, 2016 |
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Feb 20, 2016 18:20
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My admin page doesn't seem to exist? I have wordpress installed, but my admin page leads to a "No data received" page?
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Feb 21, 2016 00:00
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The Unholy Ghost posted:My admin page doesn't seem to exist? I have wordpress installed, but my admin page leads to a "No data received" page? I'm not familiar their wordpress installation setup, but have you checked to see what the installation path was? It might have been installed into it's own folder and in that case the wordpress login would become sitename.com/FOLDERNAME/wp-login Royal Jeans fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 21, 2016 |
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Feb 21, 2016 00:21
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Royal Jeans posted:I'm not familiar their wordpress installation setup, but have you checked to see what the installation path was? I ended up submitting a ticket. I was able to find folders in the cPanel (no idea if they are the right folders) but there are a LOT of files with confusing gibberish names and I don't know how to even begin to find what I'm looking for. EDIT: What kind of filename am I looking for? Am I looking for a "httpd/unix-directory" type file with the name of my website, about 4 KB? The Unholy Ghost fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Feb 21, 2016 |
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Feb 21, 2016 00:34
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Any recommendations for an Amazon affiliate plug-in? I'm using EasyAzon but it looks like the CTA image button is getting blocked by Ad-Blockers so I'm getting zero clicks. I could always go back to using a text=based link to Amazon but don't want to go through a bunch of pages to redo them and then redo them again if there is a better option.
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Mar 8, 2016 21:34
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Bumping to ask if there's still any money to be made in niche sites, blogs, SEO, etc. I used to work for an Internet marketing company where I basically wrote a bunch of content for their niche sites in-house and slowly moved on to doing the keyword research myself as well. My co-workers always joked that I could basically do the "hard part" of the business by myself if I had the sites/resources. I've thought about delving into this world and building a few sites from scratch based on some niches which I suspect could drive traffic (based on research); however, I simply haven't had the time. Bear in mind that this was back in 2010-11 and obviously times have changed in terms of ad-blocking, user behavior, etc. I know how to write pretty much any type of content (legitimately good and readable articles/list, spammy SEO bullshit, spun articles, etc) and want to basically just manage that side myself, and I've worked with enough blogs so that I feel comfortable about set-up, WordPress, SEO, etc. The one thing I'm trying to figure out is how "deep" these sites need to be in terms of static content. Would something like 20-30 static pages of information plus a few blog posts a week (coupled with marketing via social media, Reddit, forums, etc) be enough? Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated. I'm basically going to be in a position where I'm in between jobs for a few months and could really dedicate the time and energy to going balls to the wall and building some sites.
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Apr 17, 2016 14:47
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Destroy My Sweater posted:
A lot of it depends on how specific your niche is, and how you're going to be driving traffic back to your site. If you're going to be doing your own social media marketing & relying on organic traffic it's probably going to be a long process before you see much traction. Not saying that it isn't worth it in the long run, just that it generally takes a long time ( 6 + months ) for blogs to start ranking for keywords (unless they're low competition/competing with bad quality stuff like videos on the front page). If I was starting a blog over again with the idea of making money the first thing I'd focus on is the business side before beginning. I'd come up with a way to help solve a specific problem, whether it's through a service, product or information & then start doing some keyword research to find out what the competition looks like. Creating content with one goal in mind ( how to help ___ ) is a lot easier than coming up with articles related to a broad niche every week. The problem I had when starting out is getting sidetracked by all the general "how to make money blogging" advice out there. A lot of it is sound advice, but I know if I had started the process with a business plan first, rather than just focusing on creating good content with lots of visuals around a very broad niche & sprinkling in some affiliate links it would have been much easier. It certainly can be done, and creating that much content sounds like a great start, but coming up with 2-3 posts a week yourself can lead to burnout if you don't see the results you were expecting. Royal Jeans fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Apr 17, 2016 |
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Apr 17, 2016 20:56
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So does anyone still blog for bucks? I'm thinking about starting a little side hustle and blogging about it as a side side hustle.
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Aug 30, 2016 15:51
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Saint Fu posted:So does anyone still blog for bucks? I'm thinking about starting a little side hustle and blogging about it as a side side hustle. I do on a very part time basis. An article or so a month. I don't make much but it buys me some beer. Most of my focus is generating leads nowadays. If you're going to do it, just be consistent. Focus on nothing else but content. Consistent content.
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Aug 30, 2016 18:08
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Saint Fu posted:So does anyone still blog for bucks? I'm thinking about starting a little side hustle and blogging about it as a side side hustle. I get about 50-100$ a month for writing something once every month or so. It takes a while to make any money. It took about six months to see anything.
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Aug 31, 2016 02:36
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Every little bit helps. My thought is to start doing bike restorations along these lines sort of as a hobby. Possibly as a service for other bike people or more likely buying bikes on CL and flipping them after fixing them up and bringing the bling back. I don't anticipate making a lot of money off of that but I like doing it already, it might be a hobby that actually breaks even. For the blog side, I'm basically wanting to do what this guy is doing but do it better. I feel like I might have good luck with affiliate links or something along those lines by advertising for vintage bike parts makers such as velo-orange etc. There seems to be somewhat of a renewed interest in vintage bikes (and anything vintage I guess). Or maybe I'm just getting into vintage bikes lately so it just seems like other people are interested too. I think I have decent photography skills and can write better than the guy I linked above. Plus the posts will be pretty easy to come by by making updates to ongoing restoration projects, lots of pretty pictures. No programming experience but I'm confident I can learn. This is all in the very early stages, just kicking around ideas. spf3million fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2016 03:10
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Saint Fu posted:So does anyone still blog for bucks? I'm thinking about starting a little side hustle and blogging about it as a side side hustle. I still write on occasion but also branched into doing Youtube stuff to add an extra element to my car blog. While it's early days so far the revenue from Adsense for both streams (blog ads and video) has been roughly the same - not much  (But better than nothing!)
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Sep 1, 2016 09:23
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I started a dumb blog about podcast reviews because I like podcasts. Yes I'm probably 10 years too late to start a blog but better late than never I guess. Feel free to criticize or whatever! https://www.thepodcastnerd.com Also I have exactly one post so there's not a wealth of content. But looking forward to adding a steady stream of content without burning myself out. Wish me luck!
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Sep 2, 2016 09:05
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