I believe it is possible to turn a blog into an "authority site" without $$$ and in less than 3 years. All depending on the niche of course. Many of the millions of blogs started years ago as a fad are dead; their owners moved on to other stuff. So it is possible to make a decent living with blogs.
I totally agree with this line.. if you like what you write than why will anyone go out of content for their blogs? After all you were writing your brain and NOT copying stuff from other same niche sites... and as far as earning money in 4 figures is concerned I think it is possible if you actually get into it and don't get discouraged with the kind of posts in this thread and many other blogs/forums. It is just that trying to earn 4 figures with freelancing sites etc. is a much easier job than with blogs. By the way friends I launched a forum and would love it if you be a part of it. Link in signature in red color
You didn't read ALL of what I said. Your talking about years ago. Try to do that with a new site today, much harder. If this thread was created 5 years ago Id say anything is possible, but now you gotta be extremely smart, work hard, and be a little lucky to make a lot of money from just one blog. I run over 10 blogs (and a few other sites) and some of them get well over ten thousand unique visitors a month cause I wrote good unique content on some of them a while back, BUT none of them make close to 1000 a month no matter how hard I monetize them.
I never said it wasn't possible to make a living with blogs. I already do that myself. Im talking about ONE single blog made in the last couple years or so. Anyone with sense, will tell you not to put all your eggs in one basket (one site) anyways. But I guess some of you will find out the hard way.
What makes you think it was years ago? I did it to my first last year. I did it to my second and third this year. Given, I don't still update the first site, so the income's dropped a bit, but while I updated regularly the income was consistent (and even when private ad sales dropped off, Adsense and affiliates made up nearly all the difference, so it wasn't just one monetization model). I don't even get 10k visitors a month. But I did pick good niches with very high paying ads (the one niche that I don't share details on regularly pays $.50 - 2.00 per click - on my small / online business site, it's not uncommon to make more than $1 per click, and on my freelance writing blog the range varies more, but high paying clicks like that aren't terribly uncommon). I didn't pick those niches specifically because of ad revenue. The trouble you're having might be niche-related, or perhaps you should try other forms of monetization. Maybe you've tried them all already, but here are some of the things I do (and nothing odd or spectacular here): 1. Adsense 2. CJ affiliates 3. Private ad sales (on some blogs) 4. Clickbank products (I've made quite a bit using a few on my writing blog, b/c building an authority site means people trust you - when you recommend something you honestly believe in, they buy it - I also promote these products in the email subscription option for that blog) 5. Information products (I used to do well selling my Press Release Writing e-book through a few of the blogs I run - I just launched a new one a few days ago which will be monetized almost exclusively this way with a series of reports I'm writing and putting out) 6. Indeed.com's job ads (if job listings apply to your site at all, these can pay even better than Adsense - don't see a huge number of people using them, but I love them) I've toyed with other strategies, but these are the ones I've ultimately had the most success with. Is there a little bit of luck involved? I'm sure there is. But there's a lot more to that, or I couldn't replicate it. Right now I'm focusing on an indie music site monetization-wise. It's much different than my business-oriented niches. Adsense ads pay crap. There aren't a huge number of great affiliate programs the audience seems to respond to. I'm planning to focus it mostly on the information product side (self-publishing a series of books when I have time, and in the meantime probably short e-books and reports on music promotion). Every site is different. I don't think it's "easy" to do, and I don't think most have the real ability and interest to engage their audience enough to make earning easier (when they market the site for you, and when they trust you enough to keep buying just on your recommendation). But I also wouldn't say it's "hard" if you have those things and knowledge in a decent niche.
everytime I read your posts it feels like going crazy.. could you please tell me how to promote a forum? I recently launched www.theSenorita.com and as it is about discovering females so I think it will attract guys well but how to promote it to get some real users coming in?
This thread doesn't really apply to forum marketing, so you should probably launch a separate marketing thread about it. And I've never been fantastic at promoting forums, so I'm not the best to answer that one (why I recently got rid of mine). Communities seem to be tougher for a lot of people to promote. As for the blog side of your site... Just taking a quick look at it, a few things jump out: 1. The language seems non-natural / overly-formal for the niche. That's going to make it a bit harder to appeal to the audience you're trying to reach. 2. "Salman is no way an experienced love guru who knows the mechanism of the machine which designs the brains of girls." So you're instantly saying that you have no credentials to give the advice you're giving. That's not going to help build trust, repeat visitors, etc. 3. You really don't have many ads in there. To monetize more, you may want to add Adsense or some dating site ads within the content. The one ad I'm seeing in the sidebar is completely irrelevant to the audience. Anything too irrelevant can turn off visitors (and keep them from coming back). Think about the demographics of your target audience, and then think about what types of ads would apply to the same group.
I do a lot of different monetization techniques too. Adsense actually is only a very small percentage of my earnings cause I found better ways to monetize sites. Regardless, making 1000 dollars from one blog is very hard to do.
its very easy if you can post quality content on your blog one years regularly and promote it .I have seen many guys after 2 or 3 months they start posting seperate thing which don't come in their niche and start losing quality traffic too .
Thank you for those tips. I think I totally agree with you on all those three points. In the coming articles I will try and be more friendly with my readers (I hope I will succeed in this.) And yeah will surely change that line in about me About that adsense, I wanted to keep this site totally free of adsense so I am not using it in this site. That ad links to my other blog but I think again you are correct. I will remove it.. I don't have any plans to earn any money of this blog yet. I want to build the reader base and then I will sell ads. As of now I am concentrating hard on quality content. BTW gave you a rep with my tiny profile. Won't change much in the ocean of reps which you have but still you deserved it. Thank You again..
well I know I'm not joining the conversation but go to Http://www.problogger.net he makes a six income from blogs