My top 3 things to consider with AdSense or another PPC.

If you are looking for a career in blog writing, here’s a heads up for you, it won’t happen overnight. Well, maybe it will IF you are already an established top selling author or a celebrity. But for the rest of us, it will take some work.

This is the first in a series of articles on different ways to make money blogging. Some of the things we’ll be discussing are PPC ads, affiliate marketing, product marketing and anything else we can do (i.e freelancing!).

Let’s break it down to easy figures. Let’s say you want to make $3,000 a month, that’s $36,000 a year. $100 a day. (I’ll use this in each future article as well.)

First off, we’ll look at PPC ads using Google Adsense. You’ll need tons of readers because you’ll get about 10% conversion rate. What that means is, not every reader will click on the ads or buy your product. One in every 10 might. So the more clicks you want the more readers you’ll need.

Let’s see what it takes to actually make $100 a day blogging using PPC like Google AdSense.

1. Readers

If you want to use PPC as your only source of income, think again.With PPC you make a few cents from each reader that clicks on the ad. (Not every reader does that!) If you made 25 cents per click, you would need 400 clicks per day to make $100.

If for some reason your site generated an abnormally high percentage of readers that did click through the ads, (let’s say 10%), then you would need 4,000 readers per day! More people are ad blocking these days, so in reality, it’s probably closer to less than 1%.  Meaning you’ll need a ton more readers to make $100 a day this way. If you can do that, then go for it. The rest of us, well, we can still make a little money on the side.

If you want to make $10 a day you’ll need an average of 400 readers per day. While that may be achievable, it only makes you $300 a month. Not a bad supplement income!  Minterest has an excellent article about making money with Google AdSense.

You can go here to read how Google Adsense works.

2. Readability

Something else to consider is how your blog will look. How many ads will you place? Where will you place the ads? Will you use a banner across the top of your page? Or sidebar ads? How many ads will you place throughout your page?

I’ve been to a couple blogs where I thought the information would be great. But the pages were full, and I mean FULL of ads. After scrolling down from the huge banner ads at the top of the page, I finally got to the beginning of the article. It was good information to start with.

Then the article was interrupted with a square box Ad. So I had to scroll down to find where the article started up again. Meanwhile, the many sidebar ads were distracting.  I managed to find a few more sentences of the article before another banner type ad box cut through the article. Then another banner Ad box. I never finished those articles. Rather than waste  my time trying to read between all the ad boxes, I went to another site.

Revenue gained by having a massive amount of ads throughout their article? No. A reader lost forever? Yes. Too many ads can negatively impact the readability of your page.

Too many ads can negatively impact the readability of your page. So if you use PPC like Google AdSense then use them wisely! Use them to enhance your reader experience not to clutter it up.

3. Credibility

Worse yet, too many ad boxes can diminish your credibility. Those blogs I mentioned in #2 that I tried to read, well they are no longer my go-to resources on that topic. They lost their credibility because they had too many ads.

Having too many ads interrupting the information makes it feel like a content farm. That’s a blog set up for the sole purpose of generating income and is not really concerned about the type or quality of the content.

Remember the 4,000 readers it takes to make $100 a day? If you’re just pushing out content with a content farm you’ll probably need to increase your readers to compensate for those that bounce off the page before they  read the articles (like I did). And you’ll need plenty of blog writers on staff to pump out hundreds of useless articles.

Bottom line

Making money with a PPC like Google AdSence is achievable. You’re probably not the type of blogger who actually wants to start a content farm. You’re one of the good bloggers. A blogger that wants to be known as an excellent writer, an expert in your field. You’re a blogger that wants to be credible and gain readers because the information you write is good, useful and something that people want to read.

So you should start writing today. The more you write the better you’ll write. Your blog probably won’t make much money the first week, or month. But if writing is what you love then write.

I’ll be writing more on ways to make an income with your blog. So stay tuned!

Creatively Speaking,

Cynthia

For the love of writing

When I was young I liked to write poems. I played the guitar so I even tried to put some of them to music. Tried being the key word here.  In college, I finally took a writing class. This helped me to see that I was actually hooked on writing. Back then, (I won’t tell you how many years ago, that should be some indication that it’s been a long time!) I loved the creativity of writing a poem or short story. I learned the rules of writing and I felt free to express myself through the written word.

I’ve always had some sort of story plot running through my brain. I started writing longer stories. I love the entire process of writing a novel. The creativity of a new story idea. Developing the characters throughout the plot twists. It’s just plain fun! 

I have written and published a book. But it wasn’t fiction. The title is “Who Else is You? How to reduce your risk of becoming an identity theft victim”. It is a pragmatic guide. It started out as the course guide when I was presenting seminars on the topic of identity theft. The information is still good, but the web links in it are all outdated. And there are new methods identity thieves have come up with to steal your identity and your money.

I have been contemplating updating “Who Else is You?” into an e-book. That way I can keep the links and methods up to date. I can also send updates to anyone who buys it. But my heart keeps going back to my unfinished novels. I currently have five novels in various stages of development. This is probably true of many writers. I also have three short stories that are not quite finished. I know, what’s up with not finishing a short story?  Isn’t that the point of it, it’s short? More on that another day.

I write for awhile, then I put it away and ponder over the plot and characters. Sometimes it’s good to put down a story for awhile, then go back and read it with fresh eyes. I did this with the first novel I started. Actually, I got busy with life and didn’t look at it for over a year. When I did go back and read it, it actually made me laugh. And that’s exactly what I wanted. This story is a comedy mystery and I want my readers to laugh at it.  So I guess at least that chapter is good. Now I just have to decide whether to take up my research for that story again or start research on my newest novel in progress.

Research? You ask. Yes, research. If you want to write a really good book, you’ll have to do some type of research. Unless that is, you are writing about your own hometown area and people you know and topics you know inside and out. Even writing an autobiography may need research on details of areas or events from the past that may have been forgotten. Research makes a story believable. If it’s not believable, readers won’t respect your writing.

As I write this blog, my mind keeps going to my latest novel. It is the one I am most passionate about finishing.  So I ask myself, should I put each chapter, or sections of chapters, on my blog. I don’t know if any of you are interested in reading it or giving feedback about the plot or characters. I may wait until I have more of it finished, then ask again.

Writing is a personal thing. Lots of people write poems or stories that no one ever reads. Maybe the writer is embarrassed or afraid people won’t like it. It doesn’t matter. If you love to write, then you should write. Even if you never finish a story or the fact that nobody else reads them. It’s the action of writing that’s enjoyable.

Writing can be therapeutic. It helps to get our mind off the stresses of the day. It can take us to places we’ve never been. (But you should still do the research so the details are accurate!) For me, writing can be like a movie that plays in my head. I have to keep writing in order to find out what happens next.

Blogging is a great way people can express themselves through writing. But there are so many people who write a blog just for the sake of writing a blog. It has typos, incorrect grammar,  and just bad phrasing. It’s like they don’t read what they’re typing. And for sure they don’t proof read it before they hit the publish button.

And I’m not talking about just the average bloggers. I’ve seen huge mistakes on big company blogs. Multi-million dollar companies that can’t correctly write a blog article, that’s just wrong.

Okay, I’m off my soapbox about poorly written blogs and now I’ll get back to writing my novel.

Oh, and if you were tripped up with the title of my book “Who Else is You?” it’s not incorrect. The point of the title is based on the fact that if your identity is stolen, then someone else is out there presenting themselves as you. Thus the question, “Who Else is You?” Get it now?

Creatively Speaking,

Cynthia