Blogging For Money - April 2007
At the beginning of April, I took a look back and reviewed my progress on blogging for money and was extremely pleased with an income of $116.70 for the month. While not overly impressive to many people, I was happy because that was the first month I had really earned more than just a few dollars.
Being one to always try to set the bar higher for myself, I stated a goal of earning $125 in the month of April. At the time, I had planned to introduce monetization to this blog and I started with an AdSense block in one post and a short-lived experiment with Kontera.
Unfortunately, the early results were not encouraging so I removed Kontera and plan to hold off on the monetization of this site for the time being. However, my personal finance blog continued to make progress on monetization and I will be focusing my efforts on increasing the potential of that site in the coming months.
More Monetization Options
As I mentioned last month, I’ve realized the importance of not being too dependent on any one source of blogging revenue. Initially I had been focusing only on AdSense but added a few new options in March, such as Text-Link-Ads and Kontera.
In an effort to continue that trend, I added an additional ad network in April and also closed my first private advertising deal right at the end of the month. The new ad network is LinkWorth and I’ve already sold one ad placement.
The private advertising deal was something that came about right at the end of the month when I received an email inquiring about advertising options. The deal was for a banner ad in the right sidebar and I received a 6-month commitment paid in advance. Since this closed at the end of the month, I will not be counting these funds in this month’s Blogging For Money totals.
Last but certainly not least, I was able to use my *skillz* to win a blogging contest courtesy of The Details and that added $10 to my bottom line. 
Dollars and Cents
In the first installment of Blogging For Money, I set a goal of $125 for the month of April and unfortunately I am reporting that I have missed that goal by a little bit. However, as I mentioned above, I am not counting the earnings from my private ad deal this month even though I received the funds on the last day of the month. Instead, I will spread those earnings out over the 6 months that the ad will run.
- AdSense:
- Kontera:
- ReviewMe:
- TextLinkAds:
- Amazon:
- LinkWorth:
- Private Ads:
- Contests:
- Grand Total:
- $22.87
- $11.77
- $0.00
- $26.21
- $0.00
- $21.00
- $0.00
- $10.00
- $91.85
If I were to include the entire earnings from the private ad deal, I would have tripled my goal of $125 for the month. So even though I fell a little short of my goal, I’m still pleased with the results for the month.
As motivation for the month of May, I’m going to push myself a little more and set a new goal of $150 in earnings. It’s going to take quite a bit of work but I am confident that I can continue to build momentum and increase my earnings from month to month.
With my decision not to monetize this site right now, I’ll be busy over at My New Choice. Feel free to stop by over there and share your thoughts on a variety of personal finance topics!
i think you have a great strategy for such a new blog. hopefully soon your numbers will start to increase exponentially. keeping my fingers crossed for you!
oh yea, and congrats on the PR4!
Thanks (for both comments). I’d planned to mention the PR4 in an upcoming post when I compare my traffic and overall site goals for this site.
Slow and steady is the way I am approaching my two blogs and my attempts to build them up.
not bad with kontera, i couldn’t make anything with it
Thanks. I tried it on this site and made nothing but the personal finance blog has been doing fairly well. The first day of May is off to a good start as I’ve earned about half of my April total already!
damn you already made 6$?
well…. 5.50$? lol
I said *about* half, it’s actually $4.50 which is more like 40% (38% actually but I rounded up to about half).
lol well close enough, i didnt mean to be exact. good job thats a nice chunk from kontera. maybe ill reconsider them
If you haven’t already, take a look at my two keys to Kontera success as I really think that explains the different results between my two sites.
actually i have
i also linked to it early on a guest blog post:
http://blogaboutmoneyonline.blogspot.com/2007/05/daily-link-love-may-2-2007.html
Thanks for the linkback! I’ll head over and check out the post.
great, hope you like it
Absolutely!
Have you tried Vizu Polls? its a good way to monetize your blog traffic.
I’ve never heard of that before but it might be worth checking out. That might fit as an option on this site but I’ll need to explore a little further.
FYI, your link didn’t come through so I will repost it here: Vizu Polls
Thanks for reposting the link. I hope it will benefit your blog readers too.
No problem. How have your results been with it? Also, I noticed you said you had not been paid yet. Is that because you haven’t met the minimum payment requirement or are they slow?
Vizu paid me in March. They paid me for the earnings till Feb.
Derek, I would suggest trying direct ad sales for your blog. I’m pretty sure you’ll make the same amount you did with all the contextuals, or even more.
Maki, thanks for the suggestion and I’ll certainly be studying the post you linked to on direct ad sales.
So far I haven’t tried to sell any spots but have been contacted a few times by people looking to advertise. I think the first thing I need to do is create a “sell” page with advertising details.
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