Written on April 1st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 03:04 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Squidoo Starts Paying Users
I just got an email from Squidoo (aff) saying that they’re moving into their next phase of actually paying their ‘lens-masters’. They also announced three new money making modules:
- They’ve added a new eBay module which allows people to promote eBay auctions and earn a commission on items sold (if bought by the person you refer.
- They’ve added an affiliate program so that if you refer a Squidoo user you’ll get $5 when they reach $15 of earnings themselves (thats why the above Squidoo link is an aff link).
- Lastly they’ve got a new partnership with CafePress with a new module for that.
They also announced earlier in the week on their blog that they’ve just past the 20,000 lens mark.
It will be interesting to watch what impact the ability to make money from Squidoo will have upon the number of people joining and the rate at which they post. I’ve posted previously that one of my lenses was among the most profitable (it’s down the list now) and my conclusion of finding that out was that if you’re dedicated (and smart) enough you could probably make some decent money from the program - but like anything, it’s a long term and hard work proposition.
Written on April 1st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 11:04 am by David Shawver Stanton
AdSense add ‘Add New Channel’ Popup
One of the more annoying little things that I’ve always found with AdSense is that in the setting up of a new ad unit you do all the design aspects of it and then get to the point of adding a channel. IF you want to make a new channel for the ad you’re currently making you need to leave the process to do so and in doing so loose all your design settings.
This seems to have been changed in the last 24 hours because now when you get to the point of choosing a channel there is an option to ‘Add new channel’.
When you click this link it opens a popup box to allow you to do so without loosing all your previous information.
I’m not sure when this was added but I don’t remember it there yesterday when I was making a new ad.
Thanks to Duncan for the email tip off.
Written on April 1st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 12:04 am by David Shawver Stanton
Diversify Your Blogging Income with Secondary Money Earners
One of the lessons that I learned after a a year of blogging for an income was the danger of relying upon a single income source for your blog.
To that point I’d heavily focussed upon AdSense as a revenue stream on my blogs and was making what I thought was a reasonable level of income (enough to justify cutting back on other work a couple of days a week). I was incredibly optimistic about the growth of my blogs and was making all kinds of forecasts to my wife of the money that we’d be earning in a year’s time if the blogs continued to grow as they were.
The flaw in my ‘business’ (and I don’t think what I had back then truly was a business - but that’s a whole other debate) was that while things were on the up and up, it all hung largely on one company - Google.
Google was crucial to my income on two fronts:
- They sent me traffic - I was lucky enough to have decent ranking in Google.
- They gave me a way to earn money from the traffic with AdSense.
While I knew this at the time I was naively optimistic and made no real contingency plans for what I’d do if one or both of these elements was taken from me.
Of course in the lead up to Christmas 2004 when my AdSense earnings were approaching a level where I could go full time as a blogger the worst thing imaginable happened to me - I almost completely disappeared from the rankings at Google for each of my three (or was it four?) blogs.
My traffic dropped by two thirds and my income similarly disappeared. I learnt at that point the lesson that I talk about regularly here - diversification. I made a decision at that time to attempt to diversify in a number of ways.
- Firstly I’d attempt to build other types of traffic (largely through RSS, newsletters and building reader loyalty).
- Secondly I’d build new blogs on different domains (up to that point each blog was on the one domain) so that if one was hit by Google the others might stay strong
- Thirdly I’d find new income streams to supplement AdSense.
It’s this third point that I’d like to expand upon a little in this post.
The beauty of AdSense is that it’s a reasonably customizable advertising system that allows you to run it side by side other ad program. This means that you are not faced with the choice between it and another program (unless the other program is contextual - AdSense doesn’t allow contextual ads on the same page).
Over the last two years I’ve experimented with a large variety of direct income earning systems on my blogs, but as I reflected yesterday upon them I realized that I have three ‘tiers’ of programs that I use.
Tier 1 (the A-list) - two income sources sit above all others for me in terms of income levels. They will be no surprise to regular readers at all. Between them they account for anything between 60-90% of my income on any given day (depending upon many factors - they are usually pretty steady but the other tiers below can be quite varied from day to day) and are at a very similar level to one another.
- AdSense - The popular contextual ad system. This is probably the most popular money maker in the blogging community at present. I’ve written extensively about it on this blog - you can find tips on how to optimize it on your blog here.
- Chitika eMiniMalls (aff) - A non contextual, pay per click system that many bloggers find converts well on product related sites (note: by no means is the opinion about Chitika as positive as mine across the board. While it works very well for some bloggers it works poorly for others - largely depending upon topic and implementation. For more on Chitika you can read my review on it here and some optimization tips on it here).
Tier 2 (the B-list) - below these two primary sources of income from my blogs comes a range of medium level income earners that supplement AdSense and Chitika quite nicely. Between them they make up between 10%- 30% on any given day.
- Text-Link-Ads (aff) - This text-link ad program has been a recent addition for me but is one that is steadily growing. I don’t foresee that it will ever reach my A-list (there is a ceiling really for it per blog as they limit how many ads each blog can sell) but it’s increasingly important as an income source on both my own blogs and b5’s. The beauty of it is that it’s a system that you can set up and leave to do it’s job. It does take a little while for them to sell the ads on your blogs (so far about half of the ads I could have on my blogs are sold and half are not) but overtime it does fill up. This month this program will earn me around $1000 across my own blogs.
- Amazon Associates (not an aff link) - Despite the bad news for Amazon publishers from yesterday, this is and will continue to be a popular income source for bloggers. It is an affiliate program and not advertising so involves publishers earning a commission from purchases of customers that they refer to Amazon. I’ve reviewed Amazon here.
- Consulting - I have very limited time for this at present but do pick up some consulting work if it’s worth my while. I tend not to talk about the people I’ve done this work for unless I’m also writing about the product and have a conflict of interests (in which case I disclose it). These jobs range from short 1-2 hour sessions through to longer ongoing associations. The income levels on these vary considerably also.
- SixFigureBlogging - last year Andy and I ran did a live version of this course and had a fun time doing so. These days it’s a downloadable resource. The income from it was decent enough (especially from the live course - although it is split between two after expenses) and was a nice bonus to my year’s earnings last year. These days it’s slower - but in the second half of the year we’ll possibly do another live run of the course and there is the possibility of some other similar courses on other blogging topics.
Tier 3 (the C-list) - lastly comes a range of smaller programs that seemingly make very little when you look at them individually on a daily basis but which overtime do add up to a nice supplementary income. There are days when some of them actually earn enough to be on the B-list but mostly they earn less than a dollar (or a few dollars) per day range.
- Clickbank - I have a love/hate relationship with this affiliate program. I dislike it because so many of it’s programs are junkie - but I love it because there are a few gems in it that actually can pay quite nice commissions. For example in comparison to Amazon paying 4-7% commission, some of Clickbanks can pay 50% or more. As a result some days this belongs in my B-list (in fact over the last 3 months the fortnightly cheques that they’ve sent me have increased significantly so it should really be up there). I’ve reviewed Clickbank here.
- BlogAds - Some bloggers make ALOT of money with BlogAds (particularly some of the more popular political bloggers) but my experience with it is that it’s not a massive earner. I could probably do better with it if I gave it more prominent position on some of my blogs but this would mean moving other ads that pay more.
- Adbrite (aff) - Similarly to BlogAds - this is a program I could probably do better with, but with my change in focus to Text-Link-Ads (above) I’m slowly moving away from this one.
- ValueClick (aff - previously FastClick) - Once again, this one bubbles away at a few dollars per day but has at times earned me enough to be featured on the A-List as it is an impression based ad and if a blog suddenly gets a lot of traffic it can be quite lucrative.
- Miscellaneous Affiliate programs - Over the years I’ve enrolled in quite a few affiliate programs - many of which I’ve forgotten I’ve signed up for. Occasionally I’ll get a cheque in the mail or a paypal payment for one but most of them don’t add up to much.
I still am largely dependent upon two income sources these days from my blogs but know that because they are spread out over a number of blogs and because I have a number of secondary income sources supplementing them that if AdSense and Chitika fell over for one reason or another that I’d have enough coming in to survive.
Keep in mind that different blogs and blogging styles are suited to different money making approaches. The above is my income mix but other Pro Bloggers will have a completely different one. What income streams do you focus upon? Do you concentrate predominantly upon one or have you diversified?
Written on March 31st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 10:03 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Online Feed Readers Compared
Frank Gruber has written a great review over at TechCrunch Comparing 9 Online Feed Readers. He concludes - ‘If you are looking purely for performance, Google Reader and FeedLounge are the fastest in our tests. Bloglines and Rojo are the best choice if you are looking for a feature rich application (and Rojo blows Bloglines away on “web 2.0″ type features. None, however, yet approach the speed and agility of the best desktop based readers like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon.’
Written on March 31st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 03:03 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Web 2.0 Spam
It seems spammers are getting a little web 2.0 in their design.
The last few days I’ve had the one below quite a few times. Large fonts, rounded corners, shiny icons…. Almost (not quite) looks like something from a collection of Web 2.0 logos.
Written on March 31st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 01:03 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Writing Blog Post Headlines That Get Results
Copyblogger has a very useful post on Writing Headlines That Get Results that is well worth the read if you’re like most bloggers and spend a lot of time writing posts and then just slap a title on it.
‘According to some of the best copywriters of all time, you should spend half of the entire time it takes to write a piece of persuasive content on the headline. So if you have a blog post that is really important to you or your business, one that you really want people to read, you should downright obsess over your post title….’
Written on March 31st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 10:03 am by David Shawver Stanton
WordPress Widgets
Earlier today Six Apart announced Widgets for TypePad and today Automattic announced WordPress Widgets.
They are a plugin for WP 2.0 (if you have a widget ready theme) which was previously just available on WordPress.com but now is ready to be used by WP.org bloggers.
Via LifeHacker
Written on March 31st, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 12:03 am by David Shawver Stanton
TypePad introduce Widgets
Six Apart has just announced that they’ve added a new feature to TypePad - ‘Widgets’. I’ll let them explain:
What’s a Widget, you ask? It could be a list of your most recent photos, or a topic-oriented search box, or a stats counter, or ads that help you make money, or a badge to help your users subscribe to your feed, or even a Flash game or a chat window. We call it “bling for your blog.” We’re launching with dozens of widgets from more than 30 partners, and more are on the way. Here are just a few of the things you can do with TypePad Widgets:
- Add your Technorati profile to your blog
- Share a custom search roll with Rollyo
- Publicize your FeedBurner feed
- Let your readers find their next job from Jobster, Indeed and Simply Hired
- Highlight your favorite lens from Squidoo to your blog
- Let your readers subscribe to your blog via email, thanks to FeedBlitz
Commerce Widgets - Among the 30 widgets released are a number of ‘commerce’ ones including CafePress TopicAds (make 20% commission on referrals on some sort of automated and relevant ads - you might want to check if AdSense allows this if you are running it on the same blog as them as it sound contextual), PostApp (an ebay widget - it doesn’t say if it’s an affiliate program or not), Fatlens (promote your favorite band or sport’s upcoming events - not sure how this is ‘commerce’), Tumri (a shopping widget - seems affiliate based) and Zazzle (a way to sell your own designs on different products - eg T-Shirts).
I don’t have a TypePad blog so can’t really comment on how it works but after an initial look at it I’d say it’s a good idea but that the ‘commerce’ ones don’t seem to be explained that clearly in terms of what the ‘commercial’ aspect of it is (ie some of them are not clear in terms of if they are affiliate programs or ad programs etc).
If you’re a TypePad user - feel free to leave your experience of Widgets in comments below.
Written on March 30th, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 12:03 pm by David Shawver Stanton
Amazon Change Referral Rates - Consumer Electronics Publishers Hit Hardest
Amazon Affiliate program members have received an email today announcing the new referral fee rates for the second quarter of 2006. There are a few significant changes.
The first is a ’simplified’ structure for link premiums. As you’ll see from the following image the commission earned has increased in each number of items shipped except for 1-20 items when it goes down by 1%.
This covers all products EXCEPT consumer electronics which will now earn a flat 4% fee regardless of units volume.
It also means the loss of the ‘direct link premium’ which was confusing but it was also quite lucrative for some publishers who now how to use it. This means that instead of getting 7.5% commission on CE products if you use direct links to specific products you’ll be getting 4% - quite a hit!
This is disappointing for me as someone who makes most of his money in the Amazon program by referring business to Amazon in the form of gadgets. I understand that the margin on electronics is not high but this will lead to significant downturns in income for some publishers.
I’m not sure that this is really a good move from Amazon - while the percentages are very small they do have an impact, especially when you’re selling products that are worth thousands of dollars. For example I had one sale today that earned me $30 (it was at 7.5% commission from a direct link premium) - if the same sale went through in a few days time it would be almost halved.
My own Amazon earnings are not massive (I stand to loose an estimated $400+ a quarter) but I do know some CE publishers who look carefully at these tiers and work very hard to climb them and I can imagine the feedback Amazon will get as a result of this announcement as a result of their income being slashed.
Update - the Amazon publisher discussion boards are going crazy. The main compaints:
- Not enough notice - on the second last day of the quarter they tell of the changes
- No acknowledgement that the changes will impact some people hard - the email notification presents it as if it was the publishers who asked for the changes. They may have asked for a simpler structure but no one asked for a cut on earnings of up to 50%.
- The only people who seem to benefit from this are those who send untargetted traffic to Amazon. The ones who go to the effort of directly linking to specific products will lose out.
- Amazon has previously promised no more major changes to their commission structure.
- Other CE affiliates offer 5% with 30 day cookies - Amazon is now down to 4% with 1 day cookies - many are suggesting other alternatives and are talking about moving on from Amazon.
To say that there is real anger among Amazon publishers would be an understatement and there are lots of people calling for people to let Amazon know what they think of the changes.
Contact Details:
Amazon Associates: 701-787-9740 (US number)
Email: associates@amazon.com
Written on March 30th, surf Active Apparel website stock video social media zone.at 10:03 am by David Shawver Stanton
Movable Type Style Generator
Blog Herald just pointed to a way to get a simple template for your Movable Type blog at Movable Type Style Generator. You start the process by choosing a layout and then have the ability to adapt it by changing colors.
The layout is pretty simple and not amazing in terms of style but it will be useful for beginner bloggers who want a quick and easy way to get a blog up that doesn’t have a default style.
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