Blogging for Money

A few years ago I launched my first web site, http://www.4fraziers.com. My interest at the time was simply to create a family portal with a photo album and discussion board to help bring my relatives a sense of closeness since we are scatterred to the four corners of the earth.

The side benifit to that initial undertaking was that it gave me a place to post and distribute articles that I wrote as a hobby and stress reliever. Lots of friends and family enjoyed the site, and eventually a web savy buddy told me I should "monetize" my site. He pointed me to Google Adsense and told me if I signed up with them and pasted in some simple code they would provide me I would start receiving revenue from there context sensitive advertisements on my site.

I couldn't see a reason why not, so I did it. For months I watched as my Google Adsense revenue brought in mere pennies a week, and finally I decided I was never going to reach the $100 minimum pay threshold from Google, so I pulled the ad code

Later, I discovered Helium.com and AssociatedContent.com. Both those sites pay writers for sumbitted articles based on how popular the article is. Helium was a huge dissapointment, but I quickly started earning several dollars a month through Associated Content. I found myself challenged to discover ways to promote my Associated Content articles to boost page veiws and increase my earnings. That led me to many articles and online tutorials about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keywords, and keyword density. The happy by-product of all that research was my discovery of why my initial attempts to earn money with Google Adsense on my own site had failed.

My old site had never been promoted beyond simple submissions to search engines. Content on the site was not updated daily, I would write a few articles here and there, and often only update the site with them once every month or two. Discovering how fast my articles on AssociatedContent escalated in page views because of the site's massive appeal to the search engine crawlers was eye-opening. Because so much content is being perpetually submitted at AC, the search engine crawlers probably never leave. Although I can't begin to create and post content as often and as fast as a site with multiple contributors, it is easy for me to crank out at least one article per day and get it uploaded. That was one of the habits I started that began to turn my fortunes around with Adsense.

After a recent total overhaul of http://www.reizarf.com and redirecting my old domain name, www.4fraziers.com to it, I've begun to see a signifigant upward trend in earnings. Just adding content to the site daily didn't do the whole trick by itself. I've been rewriting articles and using keyword density tactics to make them atractive to the search engine crawlers as well as human readers. Quick daily five minute searches for niche keywords have been giving me great ideas for new articles.

While there are all kinds of expensive software tools out there to help with locating keyword niches, I've been successful using the free Google webmaster tools so far. Perhaps there will come a time when the sites I run are so successful that they will generate enough revenue to justify buying additional search engine optimization tools, but for now I'm very happy with the growth trend I see. It's certainly not time for me to quit my day job and become a full time writer, but if the trend continues as it is that day will eventually come for me, and a lot faster than I first thought.

Presently I own and operate http://www.reizarf.com, http://www.chlgrapevine.com, http://www.k9grapevine.com, and two private organization portal sites.

If you've been discouraged by your blog's performance, consider signing up at http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/85502/timothy_frazier.html for a jumpstart on earning money for your writings and getting your name exposed. It's a great way to promote your own site as well, and as you learn what makes your AC articles perform better you will gain valuable insight into inproving the hit counts on your own sites.