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Lessons In Making Money Online

A lot of people find my blog when they are looking to make money online. In fact, they want to know how to do it. While that’s not the main purpose of this blog, like many others I want my blogs and sites to serve three purposes. First, I want them to be useful to the readers; second, I want to use them to promote myself as a writer and blogger;  and third, I want to make some passive income (who wouldn’t?)

When I began my online existence, I was very much influenced by Rosalind Gardner, a super affiliate who had made half a million dollars in a year from her online activities. I wanted to know how I could do it too and I downloaded her excellent Super Affiliate Handbook and set out to take a crash course in online marketing and promotion. I learned a lot from that book that I still use today.

Building A Blog Identity

Around the same time, I set up my first blog, with the aim of bringing some traffic to my site. What I didn’t realise at the time was that a blog needed an identity and a purpose to be truly successful – and to make money.

It’s not a case of ‘build a blog and they will come’, but rather of laying the foundation with good content and telling people about it so that a few people might stop by. And if people don’t come to your blog, you can’t make money with it. In spite of all the claims of the Adsense revenue share blog sites, you need to promote your blog and have good content to get a regular audience. Then people might start clicking on your ads or asking you to promote certain resources.

Another temptation is to take advantage of every opportunity going so that you can clean up as soon as possible. However, there are two risks to doing this. One is that you might end up cluttering your blog with ads and posts that have little relevance to your readers, and the second is that you might actually lose readers in the process.

Selective Promotion

A better approach, I find, is to be selective about what you promote and what you advertise on your blog or site. Now, I don’t want to be hypocritical. I have other blogs where I am less choosy about the content, but those blogs are not as successful as those where I exercise some discretion. It’s a slow approach to earning from a blog, but I believe that this method results in a quality blog with a sustainable readership. I have actually turned down offers that I didn’t think would fit in with this blog.

It’s the same with choosing affiliate products. I have promoted very few on this site. In fact, all I have are a few badges in the sidebar. However, I have used those services and can genuinely recommend them. I’m also prepared to discuss the negatives, which means that people can trust me to give an honest opinion of a service or resource. I got more sales when I did a review of Rosalind Gardner’s book than when I put a pre-prepared ad on another page of my site.

Creating an online presence has been a great learning experience for me, and I’ve shared what I’ve learned in some of my posts on promotion. What are your tips for making your writing site or blog make a little money on the side?

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