search make money

search adsense

Make Money Blogging

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do – you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging – there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging.

In this page I want to share some information for beginners on making money from their blogs.

I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.

What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though – keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others – the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.

The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.

I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Chitika

Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They work best on product related blogs although their recent announcement of their Premium ad unit is exciting as they now offer ads with a non product focus that I’m hearing great conversions on (I have one reader who is getting $28 CPM on this ad unit).Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me – mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars – I can’t recommend them enough!

3. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

Private ad sales directly to advertisers have continued to grow over the last few months and as a result they’re now my third highest income stream. I expect them to overtake both Chitika and AdSense in the coming months. This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two at Digital Photography School.

4. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it grew even more than previously as a result of continued growth of DPS where I recommend books, software and cameras.

5. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include – - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program (about to open the doors again), SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource) and the excellent Teaching Sells course (which just continues to grow in what it offers to it’s members in terms of content).

The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!

6. Shopzilla

As I wrote recently – Shopzilla has really impressed me with how it’s performed over the last few weeks. It’s actually doing well enough to debut in this list at #6. The ads are similar to Chitika but the click values have been higher for me to this point. They don’t offer quite as many options as Chitika does in terms of types of ads but for a new ad network there’s definitely promising signs. I’m looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop!

7. ProBlogger Job Boards

The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.

The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.

8. WidgetBucks

Another newcomer to this list is WidgetBucks – another ad network that ProBlogger readers will be familiar with.

WidgetBucks is similar to Chitika and Shopzilla in many respects and works well on product related sites. It does best on sites with US traffic (the reason I’ve not used it as much as I get a lot of international traffic) so if you have a product related site with a US audience it’d be a no brainer to try out WidgetBucks. I’m hoping they’ll continue to expand their offerings in terms of ad types and visitor location.

Disclaimer – WidgetBucks are an advertiser on ProBlogger

9. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here – and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include ShoppingAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me – not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).

I think that that covers most of it although it’s worth mentioning that last time I did this list I also included TextLinkAds which used to be every bloggers favorite way to make money blogging by selling text links. I’ve stopped using them due to Google cracking down on them (read more about this here) but it’s worth noting that many bloggers still use them successfully – I advise to proceed with caution. Disclaimer – TLA are an advertiser on ProBlogger

Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging

A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there – but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.

Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.

Subscribe to My RSS Feed – everything that I know about making money from blogging is here on ProBlogger in my archives. I don’t hold back information and write about what I’m learning as I learn it. To get future updates subscribe to my RSS feed or add your email address below to get daily updates via email.

Enter your email address:

Recommended Reading on Making Money Blogging

• A Reality Check on Blogging for Money – I don’t like hype – this post attempts to paint a realistic picture of blogging for money.
• How Bloggers Make Money – a post that I wrote in 2005 (updated) which gives a broad introduction to how bloggers make money blogging.
• Making Money from Your Blog – Direct Methods – bloggers make money from blogging in two main ways – directly and indirectly. This post explores some of how they do it directly.
• Makeing Money Because of your Blog – Indirect Methods – and here’s an exploration of indirect methods.

Making Money from Advertising

• Advertising Optimization – A series of posts on how to optimize advertising on your blog including posts on Traffic, Ad Positioning, Ad Design, Ad Relevancy and High Paying Ads.
• AdSense Tips for Bloggers – an 8 part series of posts that walk bloggers new to Google’s AdSense (the way I make much of my income) through how to use it effectively to make money on their blogs.
• Positioning Your AdSense Ads - a 3 part series on how I literally doubled my AdSense earnings overnight by repositioning my ads
• How to Guarantee that You’ll Never Make More than 0.14 cents per month from AdSense – 10 points to help you earn more money from AdSense
• How Quickly After Starting a Blog Should I put Ads on it? – one of the most common questions I am asked
• 10 Ways to Make Your Blog More Attractive to Advertisers – an Ad Guy tells all

Making Money from Affiliate Programs

• 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog – these tips helped me grow my affiliate earnings many times over
• The Power of Getting Readers in the Door at Amazon - a case study on how linking to Amazon can lead to some surprising results
• 9 Reasons Why I am an Amazon Affiliate – Amazon is one of my bigger earners

Other Articles on Making Money from Blogs

• Principles of Choosing a Profitable Topic for Your Blog – key factors to consider before choosing a topic for your blog
• Should I Blog for Money? – before you rush into monetizing your blog – here is a post on whether you should at all

How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

My Personal Income Streams

As an update to this post I’ve more recently written one on How I make Money Blogging which highlights the most profitable ways that I use blogs to generate income. I’ve also written extensively on how bloggers make money in ProBlogger the Book.

How do bloggers make money from blogs?

I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers – How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs – Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google – Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds – one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising – The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point – but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship – In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month – one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases – as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies – either in one off or a regular fashion – and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs – There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets – Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future – in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities – with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks – bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging – by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks – there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself – blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities – as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties – but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities – Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors – this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations – Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs – Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ – or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising – My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising – quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales – especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details – but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking – While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work – his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago – but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

Update: Looking for more information on how to make money blogging? Here’s a post I wrote talking about my own experience – particularly looking at the top ways that I make money from blogs.

Also check out these resources on how to set up a profitable blog:

• ProBlogger the Book – where I and Chris Garrett sum up all of the basic tips about starting up a blog in the one volume.
• Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program – one of the best coaching and training course going around on blogging.
• Become a Blogger Videos – a free series of videos that talks new bloggers through how to set up a blog. Easy to understand and best of all, free.
• Blog Profits Blueprint – a free report on how to build profitable blogs.

What is a Blog?

So what is a Blog anyway? I am asked every week via emails, conversation and Instant Messaging chats to define: ‘what is a blog’. If you’re reading this you may well be asking the same question.

There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.

Before I define the ‘what is a blog’ question – here are a few definitions from other much wiser people to get us started:

‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ Source

‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source.

So What is a Blog???

Confused yet? Don’t be – its really quite simple. To put it as simply as possible – a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

Have a look at the main page of my blog at here for an example. for a different example you might like to look at this one (another of mine).

Ok – now you are a seasoned blog reader – you’ve seen two already at least.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic – there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies – blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

Blogs usually have a few features that are useful to know about if you want to get the most out of them as a reader. Lets examine a couple briefly.

Archives – You might look at the front page of a blog and think that there is not much to them. A few recent entries, some links to other sites and not much else. However its worth knowing that there is a lot more going on under the surface that might initially meet the eye. For example in addition to the main page of this blog – at the time of writing this post there are over 520 other pages or posts below the surface that I’ve written over the past few months.

When I write a post like this one it goes to the top of the front page. As it gets older and as I add more current posts it begins its journey down the page until it disappears from it. This is not the end of its life however, because it goes into the ‘Archives’ of my blog. It sounds like a dusty dark place but its really just like a filing cabinet that is easily accessible in a couple of ways. You can read my ‘archives’ simply by looking on the ’sidebar’ (over on the left of this blog) at the ‘archives’ or ‘categories’ section. There you will see links to all my old posts which you can access either by category. You’ll see a category for ‘Advertising’ – click that link and you’ll see all my old posts on the topic of Advertising with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom.

Comments – Not all blogs use comments – but most do. This blog is not a monologue but a conversation. You can give me feedback on almost everything I write simply by clicking the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each one of my posts. This will take you to a little form where you leave your name, email and a link to your own blog if you have one as well as your feedback, comment, critique, question, essay on why you love my blog, promise of money…. etc). Try it now. Scroll to the bottom of this page, click ‘comments’ and fill in the blanks with a little introduction to yourself.

A great way to learn about blogs is to read a few. Leave some comments, ask questions and bookmark your favourites. An even better way to learn about blogs is to start your own. Ok – you might be laughing at me now – you think you are not web savy enough to have your own site? You wouldn’t know where to start? You don’t know how?

My Secret

Let me share a secret with you – three years ago I knew nothing about blogs, I had never used the internet for anything more than email, surfing and chatting to friends and I could only barely do any of that! But one day I discovered a blog and after surfing from one to another (blogs tend to link up to other blogs a lot) for a few hours I was hooked and wanted to start my own. I found that there are free blog services that almost anyone could set up in a matter of minutes. Really it is that simple. Literally millions of people blog from around the world. Its not just something for young people, or geeks, or cool folk, or Westerners, or even for people with their own computers – instead its something virtually anyone with access to a computer and the internet once or twice a week can start up.

Are you still confused? Would you like more information? Below are a few helpful articles on the topic – there are many more on the web – just do a search on your favourite search engine. Otherwise shoot me an email using my ‘contact’ button with your question and I’ll do my best to get back to you.

• Rebecca Blood has written a helpful history of blogging for those who are interested in learning more about the blogging evolution over the past few years.
• Harvard Law has a helpful article titled What makes a Weblog a Weblog
• Trudy Schuett writes a good article title What is a blog and why do we need one?
• WordPress: Introduction to Blogging

If you are new to blogging and want some hints on how to get started – keep an eye on my Blogging for Beginners Page for more ways to explore blogging.

One more post you might be interested in – What Is RSS?

Lastly – let me finish with a video that explores the question of what is a blog in a visual form that I’m sure many of you will find helpful.

So now you know WHAT a blog is – learn how to start one and use it to build an online income with ProBlogger the Book.

Also check out Become a Blogger Videos – a free series of videos that talks new bloggers through how to set up a blog.

Blogging Tips for Beginners

Welcome to my Blogging Tips for Beginners Guide.

On the page below you’ll find links to a series of blog tips that I’ve written with blogging for beginners (and ‘Pre’ Bloggers) in mind. It unpacks the basics of blogging and a lot of the decisions and strategies that you’ll want to consider when setting up and starting a blog.

My Ultimate Guide to Blogging for Beginners

Since developing this series I’ve produced a book specifically for beginner bloggers. You can learn more about it on our ProBlogger the Book page. The book is filled with up to date blogging tips for beginners – you can get it on Amazon here.

3 More Excellent Resources on Blogging for Beginners

Also – if you are looking for some more personalized help in starting and running a blog I highly recommend that you check out these resources by a blogger that I respect – Yaro Starak:

• Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program – one of the best coaching and training course going around on blogging.
• Become a Blogger Videos – a free series of videos that talks new bloggers through how to set up a blog. Easy to understand and best of all, free.
• Blog Profits Blueprint – a free report on how to build profitable blogs.

Lastly- if you enjoy these posts and want to keep in touch with ProBlogger – subscribe via our RSS feed.

Blogging Tips for Beginners

Introductory Posts

• What is a Blog?
• 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers – Is a Blog Right for You?
• How to Choose a Niche Topic for Your Blog
• Choosing a Blog Platform
• Choosing a Domain Name for your Blog
• Blog Tools

Blog Design Tips

• Blog Design for Beginners Part 1
• Blog Design for Beginners Part 2

Tips for Writing Content for Blogs

• Useful and Unique Content
• Post Length
• Granular (One Topic) Posts
• Using Titles Effectively on Blogs
• Scannable Content
• Basic HTML Tags
• More on Writing Content for your Blog

Tips on Making Money from Blogs

• Introduction to Making Money from Blogs
• Should I blog for Money?
• Making Money From Your Blog – Direct Methods
• Making Money Because of your Blog – Indirect Methods
• How Much Money Can a Blog Earn?
• Introduction to Advertising Optimization – Traffic
• Introduction to Advertising Optimization – Ad Position
• Introduction to Advertising Optimization – Ad Design
• Introduction to Advertising – Ad Relevancy
• Introduction to Advertising – High Paying Ads

Blog Networks

• Introduction to Blog Networks
• Why Should you join a blog network?
• Why you shouldn’t join a blog network

Other Beginner Blogging Tips

• An Introduction to Using Images on Blogs
• How to Start a Blog Partnership
• Kick Your RSS – Jumping on the Syndication Bandwagon
• Introduction to Trackbacks
• Tag You’re It – Leveraging Tagging for your Blog
• 10 Techniques for Finding Blog Readers
• 19 More Strategies for Finding Readers

Want more Blogging Tips for Beginners?

If you want more blogging tips I can recommend two things.

1. Subscribe to ProBlogger – This blog is updated daily with news and tips relevant to bloggers wanting to improve their blogs. You can subscribe via our RSS feed or via email by adding your email address to the field below:

Enter your email address:

2. Check out the archives of ProBlogger – Over the last few years I’ve published over 3000 posts and blogging tips to ProBlogger. The links above just scratch the surface. One way to get into our archives is through our Archives Page which highlights the different categories of the blog and suggests some of the more popular posts from each. Alternatively use the search feature at the top of the blog to hunt down the topics you want to know more about.

3. Get into these resources

• ProBlogger the Book – where I and Chris Garrett sum up all of the basic tips about starting up a blog in the one volume.
• Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program – one of the best coaching and training course going around on blogging.
• Become a Blogger Videos – a free series of videos that talks new bloggers through how to set up a blog. Easy to understand and best of all, free.
• Blog Profits Blueprint – a free report on how to build profitable blogs.

Free Blogger Templates

“Where do I find Free Blogger Templates?”

I’m regularly asked by bloggers using different blog platforms where they can get nice designs for their blogs, usually for free. I’m a WordPress User and therefore know a few good spots for WP templates (here, here, here, here, here, here and here for starters) but one of the platforms I’m less familiar with that many blogs use is Blogger.com.

Gecko and Fly have a nice list of well designed Blogger Templates that I think I’ll be sending people to from now on. Most are designs imported in from WP designs that are quite unlike Blogger.com default designs.

Share your Free Blogger Templates below if you’ve got any good sources.

Free Blogger Templates were found via blogHelper

Introduction to Trackbacks

The following post has been submitted by Andy Wibbels – a guy who is a good friend and associate. He and I run Six Figure Blogging together (something I enjoy because I think our skill sets complement each other very well – ie he knows what he’s talking about technically and I have no idea). I’ve asked Andy to write an introduction to Trackbacks – a topic I’m constantly asked for information about.

Summary: TrackBacks automate the interlinking of blog posts, but often don’t contribute to search engine ranking.

TrackBacks are notoriously difficult to explain and is an exercise that makes a great judge of the skill of any self-described ‘blogging expert.’ So here I go!

You get comments right? Easy enough. You write a post on your blog. Someone reads it and thinks you’re either sliced bread or vile ooze and comments accordingly. Just like having a mini-guestbook for each post.

What if I want to leave a comment about your blog post on my blog? That’s where TrackBacks come in.

Let’s say I read something pretty fantastic on your blog and so I write up a post about on my blog: “Hey you gotta check this out, here’s a quote from it and here’s the link to it.” And I link to that particular post on your blog. And I click publish.

Unbeknownst to most, your blog platform – whether it is WordPress or Movable Type or TypePad, scans all the links in a post each time a post is published. It finds my link to your post and then goes out to your blog and checks to see if your post is accepting TrackBacks. If so, my blog sends a little ping! to your blog as if to say, ‘Hey! Andy’s talking about you over on his blog.’ and your blog answers the ping and says ‘Alright, I’ll make a note of it.’ And then your blog makes a little note on that particular post that in effect says, “Besides all these comments under this post, here’s someone talking about this post on their own site – and here’s the link to it.”

So readers of your blog can see not just what the commenters are saying about it on your blog – but what other bloggers are saying about. I’ve seen a post’s list of TrackBacks described as ‘Other blogs linking to this post.’ Many blog tools, like WordPress, lump comments and TrackBacks into the same list.

You don’t have to know how TrackBacks work in order to use them, you can simply set a post to be able to receive trackbacks and set your blog to send them when you publish new posts. Your blog platform should do all the heavy lifting and email you when there are new TrackBacks – just like it does when there are new comments to a post.

TrackBack was first created by Ben and Mena Trott during the early days of Movable Type and has gradually been integrated into the features of most popular blog platforms. A similar technology is pingbacks which has the added security of checking to see if the pinging site actually exists.

Of course like anything fun or cool online, the evil bastard spammers got busy funneling their sewage into automated TrackBacks pingbots that left everyone’s blogs with dainty messages about mortgages, online poker and Viagra. Most comment spam blockers are now configured to also scan TrackBacks to help stem the tide of spammy TrackBacks.

One of the best parts about TrackBack is that it helped to increase your blog’s linked-ness and search engine ranking. With the introduction of the ‘no follow’ attribute, links in comments and TrackBacks are usually often not included in the calculation of your blog’s Google PageRank. I presume this applies to the other search engines as well. Still, the findability may not be in the search ranking – but links from other blogs is always a Good Thing.

In TypePad:

To enable TrackBacks by default in TypePad, go to Weblogs > (Your Blog) > Configure > Preferences > Comment and TrackBack Preferences: Check the checkbox ‘Hold comments and TrackBacks for approval.’ And set Default TrackBack Status set to ‘New posts accept TrackBacks.’ (for receiving TrackBacks)

In WordPress:

To enable TrackBacks by default in WordPress ,go to Options > Discussion: Check the checkbox ‘Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article.’ (for sending TrackBacks) Check the check box ‘Allow link notifications from other Weblogs. (for receiving TrackBacks)

In Movable Type:

To enable TrackBacks by default in Movable Type, go to (Your Blog) > Configuration > Preferences > Publicity/Remote Interfaces/TrackBack: Check the checkbox ‘Allow TrackBack Pings On by Default.’ (for sending TrackBacks) Check the checkbox ‘Email New TrackBack Pings.’ Check the checkbox ‘Enable TrackBack Auto-Discovery.’ (for receiving TrackBacks)

Andy Wibbels is an award-winning blogger and author of Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging. He has helped companies all over the world use blogs to market their businesses through seminars like Blog Your Way to a Bestseller, Easy Bake Weblogs, RSS Essentials, Podcasting Bootcamp and Business Blog Basics (co-creator). Andy is co-creator of the Six Figure Blogging seminar, with Darren Rowse.

How I Make Money Blogging

Below you’ll find my latest update on how I make money blogging (this is something I post about every few months – although it’s been a over six months since I last did it ).

Also note – I go into a lot of detail on how I make money blogging in ProBlogger the Book.

How Much Money Do I Make from Blogging?

I get asked how much money my blogging makes me on a regular basis. These days I don’t go into specifics about it – all I will say is that it continues to be well over six figures per year (but less than seven figures). What you’ll find below are my top income streams – ranked from highest earnings to lowest.

Keep in mind that this is a summary of all of my blogs (not just ProBlogger). It does not include any income that I earn from b5media where I’m paid a salary as VP Training.

I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more I continue to use AdSense with real effect on my other blogs. While I do use AdSense Referrals and their search feature it is their normal ads that work best for me. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design).

2. Chitika

Last time I did this sort of summary Chitika ranked #1. This time around it has been overtaken by AdSense – not because Chitika slipped in how much it earned but because AdSense went up and because I also replaced a few Chitika ad units with WidgetBucks ones. Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me – mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars!

3. Amazon Associates

This has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it overtook TLA as my third biggest earner – largely on the back of me directing traffic to Amazon from my product related sites – mainly digital cameras. While the commission on cameras is only 4% this adds up when those that you refer buy higher ticket items.

4. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a couple of private ad deals that I did with sponsors on my camera blog (including sponsorships with Canon, Kodak and Adobe). This area has jumped up since last time also as a result of the new design here at ProBlogger and our expanded sales team at b5 who now sell ProBlogger’s ads for me.

5. Text Link Ads

The income from TLA has dipped slightly over the last few months simply because I took the decision to stop selling them here at ProBlogger and most of my other blogs. This was because I wanted to focus more upon selling the 125 pixel ads instead and felt that the ads I was attracting were not as relevant to this site as they could have been. As it turns out this might have been a good move because it seems Google has been penalizing blogs that run them lately.

6. ProBlogger Job Boards

The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are now so low maintenance to run! I’ve just given a development team a new brief to expand the job boards in the coming month so stay tuned for some new features coming soon which could see this revenue increase and more importantly for it to become an even more useful resource to readers.

7. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include – - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program, SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource). This area is set to continue to grow in the current quarter with me having had reasonable conversions from the promotion of the excellent Teaching Sells course.

8. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here – and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include AuctionAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me – not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).

I think that that covers most of it. Since last quarter I’ve also been experimenting with WidgetBucks as well as one other ad system that is still in a closed beta test. I’m certain that WidgetBucks will feature in next quarter’s list because I am getting good returns on that so far. In fact at it’s current earnings it’ll debut at at least number 4 on the list and perhaps even at number 3.

How Much do I Spend?

As mentioned last time – I don’t spend a lot of money in order to bring in my income. I do have some basic blogging costs (hosting etc) and play around with a limited amount of advertising (AdWords and StumbleUpon) but rely more heavily upon word of mouth and organic ways of drawing income into my blogs. I also have some costs in paying writers on a couple of blogs – but these don’t make up a massive part of the overall earnings each quarter.

Want to Learn More about How to Make Money Blogging?

Check out these resources that have been written specifically for bloggers wanting to make money blogging.

• ProBlogger the Book – where I and Chris Garrett sum up all of our basic tips about starting up a profitable blog.
• Blog Mastermind Blog Mentoring Program – one of the best coaching and training course going around on blogging.
• Blog Profits Blueprint – a free report on how to build profitable blogs.

Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days

The following post on how to increase website traffic was submitted by Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes.

Get more tips on increasing website and blog traffic by subscribing to our RSS Feed.

I started the PC Doctor blog in May of 2005 and for the first few months my traffic was really low – down in the few hundreds of visitors a day. It was pretty depressing I can tell you and there were times when I thought about quitting.  I knew that the site was in the Google ’sandbox’ and so I either had to keep on plugging at it until it was out or I had to give up.

Fortunately, I decided to keep on posting but in the interim I decided that I was also going to do my utmost to drive traffic to my site manually until Google kicked in. I took a look around at what some of the successful blogs were doing and came up with three tactics that helped to double my website traffic in a month.

1. First, I made the most of Technorati tags.  I tagged every key word in each of my posts. Initially I did this manually but them I discovered a WordPress plugin called SimpleTags that made the job a whole lot easier.I found that by tagging my post effectively they were getting a lot more attention then their untagged counterparts, and as an added advantage I was getting focused, quality traffic to the site!
2. I leveraged my existing website.  I’ve been running my business website for a few years and that was getting modest levels of traffic that was relevant to my blog – so why not try to drive some of that to my new blog! I placed a few FeedBurner headline animator blocks on some of my most popular pages and after a day or so I noticed a significant increase in traffic for 5 minutes worth of work on my part.
3. Finally, I made effective use of trackback links to popular sites. If I commented on a post on another site I would make sure that I set up the appropriate trackback for it. The results from this are varied depending on the site and post that you are linking to but since I liked to comment and interact with the wider blogosphere anyway, it was free traffic!

Using these three simple techniques, I took The PC Doctor blog from a few hundred hits a day into the thousands in less than 30 days. This kept my interest in the site until it came out of the Google sandbox and I started to receiver some serious traffic. However, I’m convinced that these actions I took at the early stages have helped me create a loyal and targeted readership that continues to benefit my blog today.