How Not to Make a Million Dollars From Blogging
Posted by Peter Brady on Wed 13th June 2007 at 06:00 AM, Filed in Key Articles
Is it possible to make a million dollars a year from Blogging?
Weblogs inc aside - Rumours, stories and tall tales abound, but there doesn’t seem to be much hard evidence presented. Nonetheless, I do believe it is possible even without resorting to questionable “Black Hat” methods. But first you and I need to eradicate all the simple errors that hinder hitting that elusive target. We all make mistakes, some are crucial, some are comedy, some are just carelessness but all can contribute to your problogging downfall. So as a reminder to myself and everybody else who might be interested, I have made a list (in no particular order) of the principal mistakes seen on my own blogs and others.
1. Poor placement of ads. The AdSense heat map is a useful guide but it’s not gospel. Experiment and mould to your own blog.
2. Too much advertising on a page that detracts from the content.
3. Poor site navigation. Jacob Nielsen has been raising the issue of dropping standards in this area and I think he is right.
4. Direct advertising and site sponsorship rarely falls into your lap - you have to go out and get it.
5. Rubbish content. I think there are times when we all don’t blog as well as we should.
6. Unrelated ads to content.
7. Under delivery to direct advertisers.
8. Poor quality site stats.
9. Too much reliance on one ad program.
10. Blogging about topics you have no enthusiasm for.
11. Breaking the terms of an ad program. Can be a heart stopping moment when you lose your account.
12. Over complicated site design. Keep it simple stupid! Boing Boing et al…
13. Not linking out generously.
14. Not using offline promotion. Old media is still a very powerful tool.
15. Your niche is just too small. A narrow focus is very important (AdSense smart pricing being one reason), but go too narrow and you limit your potential readership and your ability to create content.
16. Your niche is just too big. Too wider topic and you can’t do the topic justice. Conversely, smart pricing begins to work against.
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