Stephan Miller

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MMO Blogs

My blog is number 53 on the top 100 Make Money Online blogs. It has hovered right that number for a while. Amazing, considering that I have neglected this blog a lot. The reason: I have other blogs and while this one talks of making money, it doesn’t really make money iteself. I wiped banners out here and went back to my roots in affiliate marketing, leaving this blog a journal of making money rather than a “buy this now so I can make money” blog.

I didn’t start making money on the internet as a blogger. Before that I was an affiliate marketer, which I still am. And that was after being a product developer and Ebay seller. I hid behind the scenes and made money promoting other people’s products. I was lucky to pull my head out of the sand long enough to notice that there were a lot of make money online blogs showing up all over the internet and I had to get in on it.

Before Blogging

One way I made money was build sites with whatever content I could find. Whether it be software listings, free articles or my own articles. I would link to landing page for products from the content. Finally, I would build links to the site.

Then I learned how to use Adwords. I found that if I knew the keywords from my efforts described above, I could build some really high returns on every dollar I spent in advertising.

And then I started blogging. I listened to blogging gurus about private ads this, widget ads that and tweaking your blog to get the most out of Adsense. And I tried this for a while. It didn’t work for me. It felt like I was a dollar waiting on a dime. I was spending three times as long to make 10% of the money. Believe me, with a blog that has lower traffic, affiliate marketing will take you farther. If you have John Chow traffic, you can do whatever you want. You are going to make money.

Where I am Going

So I figured I would go back to my two original money making methods, with a better platform for building a site, Wordpress and more unique content, my own.

And the only advice on blogging I would be throwing out is a lot of the monetization mumbo jumbo. I would throw out the banners, the Adsense, and accept no money for posts. And I would diversify income through multiple affiliate programs.

Everything I learned about blogging I would keep and learn to use, because dependence on search engines alone is putting too many eggs in one basket.

I could use what I knew to build links manually to my site through article marketing, directory submission and the like. I could stay active in the niche I was in. And I could write great content that would get links.

The money comes into play when I would use this heavily linked content to channel the link juice back into product landing pages.

I would do this by importing the products into their own category with one of the CSV file import plugins I have seen floating around the net.

I would then set the similar posts plugin to pull only posts from this imported products category. And a keyword linking plugin to further link to the product pages.

Tracking will be a must. With search terms saved to use in the keyword linking plugin and Adwords campaigns. The key to using a blog for Adwords is to create a seperate page template for your landing pages. And with the landing page surrounded by a blog with unique related content, the landing page is bound to have a great quality score and cost less for clicks.

Putting the Brakes on Development

And I wanted a control center and more automation. And this is where the issue comes in, because I will spend a lot of time chasing an initial goal when I could have been a step closer to the real goal, which is making a bit more money online.

Instead of trying to trim seconds through automation, I needed to realize that the part that takes the most time, the writing, I will still be doing myself for a while and saving a few seconds on checking sales or monetizing a post isn’t going to make up for it.

So, for now, I am pushing ahead without all my ducks in a row. The time I spent looking for an automation solution could have been used writing more content or building more links. And it should have. The results show in my recent affiliate sales which I have neglected too long.

I figured I would write this post for those of you who don’t subscribe to Digital Products Review. This type of stuff is now what I cover over there. While here, I rant, organize, prioritize, get ducks in a row and sometimes, yes, bitch like a bald cry baby, there I write about making money. Each has a part in making money online. I think most people are looking for that part of making money online. It is only after I hit the first plateau and it stuck around for a few years that I realized that there was more to making money online.