The Million Dollar Blogger

Welcome to my Lens - hopefully the first of many. I just love making sites and blogging about my hobbies, life, making money on the net , other people and just 'stuff' I find - I can't stop..... I've been involved in the 'net since demon came online here in the UK. Those first few pages sucked (just like the millions I put up since :-o )  I was hooked then and I'm still hooked now.

One day a friend said can you blog for a living? Well this needed some thinking... is it possible... how would it be done.. what's needed.. what is a living.. The only way to find out was to try..

Well after spending quite a long time trying - the short answer is yes it can be done - but not with one blog or one site unless you are the sole expert in some high price topic or a marketing guru with a nose that dosn't grow with all the lies they need to tell online. I went off and spent the best part of 6 months checking out all the ways you can make money online to pay for my 'net addiction.

Adsense, affiliates, ebooks, eBay, selling links, selling sites, selling articles, Virtual real estate, making software and other home grown products. The more I looked the more problems I found - SEO - Traffic - stickyness (is that really a word?) - CTR - KEI - support - fraud - hacking.... The list goes on and on.... There are lots of people telling you how they make a living online and will sell you their own story/amazing tools. Some are real (often out of date and no longer work) and some are just a complete load of *&%$3""$$6.

Ok anyway - I'm not selling my story (yet?) - but this was my approach:-

I started off by building a site a day about stuff I liked (hobbies/comments about life-love-war/ trends/ bands/ movies/software....) - I'm in treble figures now and its getting harder and harder to maintain them. Some float to the top of the Google tank - most sink and either people are not really as passionate about the topic as me or there are just too many black hat guys trying to feed off that bit of the pond.

The upside of doing a site a day is that I have been able to try lots of different ideas. I can play with niches, formats and wacky ideas are one of my favs and break what would be classed as a J.O.B!

So have I made a living - NO NOT YET - but I will keep trying. So far I'm paying the online bills and have learned a lot about what does/doesn't work.
 

Now before you ask - No I won't share my business plan in detail (one day I may sell it ;-) - but I will give you some pointers:-

Start off with some sort of plan - it's easy to let other more interesting things get in the way like the TV or shopping or even endless surfing. Set real time limits - sorry it's boring but you need a P.L.A.N.

Use as much Free stuff online as possible when you start to save those pennies for later - blogger - Google's page maker  - articles - hub pages and even a LENS like this one. 

Try not to get sucked into the herd mind set - don't become one of those people who spends lots of dosh on the next best thing - trust me its all there online - hone you skills in extracting information from the web.

Read books! Yes I know an e-book seem instant - but believe me a trip to the library or amazon will turn up much cheaper options. Let me give a good example - I got a used copy of amazon hacks for £1.75. The price of a cup of latte at a megabucks coffee house. One hack from the book has paid that money back on a daily basis for the month - that's my coffee sorted ;-).  

Actually put something up - don't spend 12 months trying to work out the best way to do something. By the time you do - the net has moved on. On job training is best.

Start by making blogs and Sites about things you like and know about. OK I know having a shop selling penis enlargements will pay the bills if you can get enough traffic to it that's converts blah blah blah. But they are 1000 a penny and do they really make money for everyone? Unless you know how to generate sites - think more about having a niche and answering problems. Relate to your readers/visitors.

Automate - automate - now hold on I don't mean buy something just because it automates a task. A great example was a friend who said I'm thinking of buying article robot what's it like - I said great saves me a few hours a week - how many articles do you submit now? She said NONE! So I said why do you need it - how do you know it works the way you work? Automating doesn't just mean buying a script - I bundle stuff up do it all in one go (manual automation J ) - I use macros for boring online tasks, word/excel to generate pages/lists of things to do and lots of other tools designed to do something really well. Like any business when you find you are doing something on a repeat basis - try to automate it so you can spend more time on the important stuff.

Keeps stats on everything - but don't spend all day trying to work every visitor action. Use them for a business reason - did a change to an adsense layout effect CTR - where are people coming in to the site (home page/sub page) - where are they leaving - what keywords were used etc. Check out the free statcounter.