PJ Media
April 29, 2005
Roger Simon, Charles Johnson, and Marc Danziger “have been sneaking around over the last few months, trying to turn blogs into a business.” At least, that’s what Simon said in April 28, 2005: An Open Letter to All Bloggers He continues, “We are working on another model that will sell ads en masse, not blog-by-blog. We expect this model to go live within a few weeks.”
They call it “PJ Media” or pajamasmedia.com. You can email them at join@pajamasmedia.com to receive three attached documents outlining their plan to monetize blogs, an NDA, and an agreement that doesn’t really say much except express your interest in getting in on the ground floor of receiving advertising and having your material used.
Sounds like one to watch.
AdSense Heat Map
April 28, 2005
Just came across this AdSense Heat Map. Neat.
A Simple But Sure Way to Make Money Blogging
April 21, 2005
One sure way to make money blogging or podcasting is by having visitors to your site click your ads. The question is, how do you get them to do that? You can’t just set up a blog and expect visitors to click your ads out of the goodness of their hearts. You’ve got to give them something valuable in return, such as information they may already be seeking–good content, for example.
Let’s pretend you’ve set up a blog dedicated to providing information about audioblogging. Your visitors may discover your site using their favorite search system or by following a link posted on another website or blog, and it’s likely they’ll be expecting some good information about audioblogging. They may even be seeking product information; perhaps they’re interested in setting up an audioblog of their own.
The best thing you can do is provide your visitors with the content they’re seeking. In the case of the example above, it would be well for you to write compact, information-filled articles about audioblogging. Don’t stray into topics only marginally related; most of your visitors will be willing to stick around and read, bookmark, or subscribe to your RSS feed only if you stick to the topic for which they are seeking information on.
Your ads should, of course, also be relevant. This may seem an obvious point, but I’ve encountered too many blogs with ads that seem to have nothing to do with the topic being discussed; why on Earth would I want to click an ad pitching DVDs when I’m looking for information on healthcare? If you use AdSense, of course, your ads will be highly relevant to your content–so make sure to develop that content if you want your visitors to click those ads!
Hat Tip to Calacanis & Co.
April 19, 2005
Just came across this post on Work Boxers.
It seems Weblogs Inc has reached the $1400/day plateau in AdSense revenue.
Last week I had taken Jason to task for revealing his CTRs and CPMs.
I had also said that I wasn’t impressed by his AdSense numbers. Clearly, I was right.
With just a few minor tweaks, Weblogs Inc went from $1,000 per day to $1,400 per day in AdSense earnings.
First off, Weblogs Inc is making plenty of dough from other sources besides AdSense. They have large banner blocks on most of their weblogs, as well as Focus Ads and text links. No word on how much they’re making from these. Jason? 
Here at Feed Money, we’re all about making money from blogging, podcasting, and syndication. If you have a billionaire as one of your investors (a la Mark Cuban and Weblogs Inc), you don’t have to worry about little things like profitability when you’re just starting up.
If you’re just two guys in a garage, with an awesome group of writers, and no outside investors, you don’t have the luxury of Getting Big Fast.
You have to be creative, and balance your network with profitable niches, like healthcare, finance and yes, class action weblogs. (Trust me, what we’re earning from these is nothing to sneeze at.)
Over 80% of our revenue comes from just a few of our weblogs. Over 90% of our payouts to writers go to the “unprofitable” fun weblogs. But that’s the way it has to be … because who wants a network with just a bunch of legal, financial, and other (niche profitable topic) news?
Hopefully this will elucidate a few of our readers out there who are trying to make money via blogging.
Will you make some serious dough blogging about that grilled cheese sandwhich you had for lunch? Unfortunately, if you’re not Jason Kottke, well, probably not.
This post has been brought to you by the “we’re probably revealing too much about our business model, but we don’t care because we’d like to see others succeed as well” foundation.
Finding Profitable Affiliate Niches
April 15, 2005
Interesting post on webmaster world on finding good affiliate niches.
Some highlights:
Finding niches with good profit.
- Commission Junction EPCs - view the full advertiser list and sort by EPC, search from the top down and don’t be afraid to sort different ways and dig around. Use your head when looking at this data. (Hint, watch for big differences in 7 day EPC vs. 3 month EPC)
Remember EPC is figured as earnings per click x 100, so $138 EPC is earning the affiliates an average of $1.38 per click.- Overture Bids - high bids = high paying niches (usually)
- New stuff in Yahoo, tip from eljefe3. Affiliates may be doing well enough to buy a yahoo listing.
How competitive is this niche?
- Number of pages in the SE on specific phrases. (Do some keyword research first)
- Overall bid prices at overture. ($3 for the top 3 spots could just be some er, challenged bidders. Look at the full range from positions 1 through 10, 20 or 30.)
- Top 10, 20 and 30 PRs on Google (editor note: not sure what this means)
…
Use your head.
- Electronics - Highly competitive industry with low margins. Sales are usually bigger ticket items not purchased often. (Small commission on a purchase that is researched quite a bit before a buy is finally made.)
- Consumables - they are consumed (rocket science, eh?) and must be purchased again. Look for programs with recurring/residual commissions here.
- Services - often have the bigger margins which = bigger commissions. (No product, fewer employees, no shipping, etc etc.)
Full thread here.
How-to Create Pretty AdSense Earnings Graphs & Charts
April 14, 2005
Via webmaster world:
To create your own pretty charts, simply follow these quick instructions:
1) Download your CSV file from Google (its above every report you can make) I recommend taking the “All Time” report because if gives a larger sample size.
2) Open Microsoft Excel or a similar spreadsheet application. These instructions are really for Excel, but most spreadsheet packages are similar.
3) Open the CSV file in Excel, you’ll have a table of figures.
4) Delete only the column heading marked “Date” (for some reason this messes charts up) (don’t delete the entire column or you can’t tell what you’ve done over time!)
5) Delete the rows at the bottom of your sheet that indicate Totals. (otherwise you have a spike at the end of your graph which makes everything else hard to interpret)
6) Highlight column A (should be date) and highlight column B (most likely to be Page impressions) and go to Insert > Chart. Go through the wizard (its really simple) looking at the lovely charts you can make. Settle on the first bog standard line graph. Next, Next, Next, until you hit the part that asks where you want to create it (in the current worksheet- no, or in a new worksheet- yes!) Click Finish and bang! Instant charts.
7) Now repeat for A+C, A+D, A+E and A+F.
Save to disk, then print. Analyse, marvel and plot for world domination.
9) Profit! (okay, I had to do that).
Weblogs Inc vs Gawker vs. Niner Niner Models
April 13, 2005
Work Boxers has a great piece on the Weblogs Inc. vs Gawker models:
Here we have two successful blog network, with two different methods of building their network. Which one is best for anyone else looking to go this route? Let’s discuss.
On the Gawker Model:
Gawker doesn’t release a million sites like Weblogs Inc., but instead takes its time to find what niche they want to tackle and also who they want to write for that site. Currently they are up to 12 sites (11 blogs since Kinja isn’t a blog, but a RSS aggregator), but don’t let the smaller number of blogs fool you. These sites make some money.
On the Weblogs Inc Model:
This is the model that most blog networks will tackle, because to me it’s just a safer route to take due to its diversity of content. Weblogs, Inc. (WIN) now has 75 blogs covering a range of topics. Some are really successful (Engdaget), while others aren’t even on the radar, but with so many sites it doesn’t matter since every little bit counts in the stat charts. The reason for this is because WIN tries to sell advertising across the whole network so having 10 blogs with 100,000 pageviews per month is going to be harder to sell than 75 blogs with 500,000 pageviews per month (made up numbers).
Hey Scrivs - what about the Niner Niner model? J/k
A few of the comments on the thread mentioned the Long Tail… Heh.
My response:
Long tail… that’s our business model all the way. (niner niner)
As a tiny upstart, we could never compete with Engadget, etc.
That’s why we’re starting off with High Heels and Medical Privacy. Just random Long Tail niches.
So far, we’re doing alright. It just takes time.
Darren Rowse Is One ProBlogger to Watch
April 11, 2005
If you want to learn how to make some serious money via blogging, why not ask someone who’s actually doing it?
Enter Darren Rowse - a blogger who just possibly makes a six-figure income from his blogging efforts.
For now, there are way too many juicy links and details to post about Rowse’s success. If you are serious about making money via blogging, ProBlogger.net is worth a thorough, thorough read!
Google AdSense’s New Ad Links Format
April 10, 2005
This was cross-posted to SEO Updates here. I realized this post actually relates more to making money via blogging, etc. than SEO.
Just came across this great thread on Webmaster World.
If you are running AdSense on your website, and haven’t yet experimented with the new Ad Links unit, you should definitely give the entire thread a good read.
Some highlights:
I have tried AdLinks in two different locations on a 3 column layout:
(a) middle of right column
(b) top of left column (just above site navigation)
Results:
1. Location (b) receives 5 times as many clicks as location (a).
2. Location (b) has increased total earnings by 125% whereas location
(a) made no noticable change to anything.
And this comment:
I included Ad Links as soon as it came out and so far I’m very impressed.
Targeting spot on which is good for publisher and advertiser alike and earnings up more than 32%!We’ll see how it pans out for the rest of the month to judge whether it’s the novelty factor or an accepted more highly focussed results page for the visitor.
Anywhere from 32% to 125% isn’t bad!
There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding the CTRs (click-thru ratios) for Ad Links, and when you actually get paid.
Google only makes money (and hence you only get paid), when the visitor clicks through on the second link via the Google Ad Link results page.
It’s key that you implement Ad Links effectively, otherwise it’s possible that your CTRs will drop and you will be penalized under this new Smart Pricing thing that Google has going. (This is all just from the thread - the Smart Pricing thing seems to be in beta or alpha stage - details are sketchy.)
Good luck! I’ll report back with my results in a week or two, after trying out a few Ad Links formats on some of the new Niner sites.
Yahoo! Feature on Podcasts
April 10, 2005
Yahoo! currently has a feature on podcasts,“Homespun ‘Podcasts’ Explore Universe of Topics”. Here’s a taste:
Some amateur podcasters hope to quit their day jobs.
Todd Cochrane hopes to attract more advertising dollars for his twice-weekly technology show “Geek News Central” (http://www.geeknewscentral.com) by setting up a network of podcasts that meet professional standards for sound quality and family-friendly language.
“We’re trying to build a brand out of many individual brands,” Cochrane said of his fledgling Techpodcasts.com network (http://techpodcasts.com).
Music remains a hurdle for podcasters. Because no licensing rules exist, podcasters must secure permission from individual artists and songwriters before playing their songs.
