I’ve been at this blogging for money stuff for about a month. How did I do? Well, I’m not quitting my day job any time soon. But I did learn a great deal!

Lesson #1 – Crowded Market

It is a crowded market. If you’re not offering something of value, something unique, you’ll get buried in the mush. Personally, I know that I have a unique perspective, but I’m not sure I’ll make it as a Make Money Online (MMO) blogger. And I don’t have a passion for it the way some do.

Lesson #2 – Focus

There is no shortage ways to make money online. From ads (text and graphic), affiliate marketing, and pay-per-post, the ways and number of vendors is overwhelming. My advice, find one or two that work well for you and stick to them (especially when you’re new at this). More is not better.

If you focus on just a couple, you’ll figure out how to maximize them for your site. Also, you’ll hit your payout amount that much sooner. It does you little good to have regular, but small earnings on several networks and not ever hit the payout amount for any one of them.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with them, but once you find one you like. Stick with it and make it pay.

Lesson #3 – Integrity

Integrity matters. There are tons of people who use inappropriate ways to make the money they make. They will trick you into signing up for a subscription service when you think you’re buying one e-book. They will lie about various aspects of their strategy or the amount they’re able to generate with a given strategy. Or they will post about something they don’t know anything about or really use all for the sake of getting paid for the post. Don’t sell your integrity. The price goes down fast when you start down that road.

Lesson #4 – Work

Posting fresh, well-written blog entries takes a lot of work. From research, writing, editing and posting, a good post takes a lot of time. Also, to keep an active audience, you’ll need to post regularly. At a minimum that will be two to three times a week. Many MMO bloggers post one or two posts per day. If you’re looking to make a post once a week, you won’t draw much traffic. And if the quality of the content isn’t there, it won’t matter how many posts you make.

Lesson #5 – Promotion

To get and keep traffic, you will have to promote your blog. There are lots of ways to do that, from directories, commenting on other blogs, traffic swapping, and social media. Each promotion opportunity will give you a different amount and quality of traffic. Pick the one that matters most to you. Also, if you don’t continue to promote, you’ll usually lose most of the traffic you were getting. Promotion takes time and effort. Make sure you dedicate enough time to this pursuit.

Lesson #6 – Be The Brand

A blog is an extension of you. If you are an interesting person, with good writing skills, you can be a successful blogger. But, to make that happen, you’ll have to connect it all together. Your promotion should blend naturally with your blogs. Your ability to connect with readers through the comments takes it to the next level. This is the building of a brand. If you have a consistency across all of this, you have a brand. Then you can focus on building the best brand possible.

Lesson #7 – Socialize

The most successful bloggers are very social. They comment on other blogs. They are responsive to readers of their blogs by answering comments and emails (I read about one blogger who even takes phone calls from his readers). They are also active on the primary social media networks, such as Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. While this may be fun for some, to do it successfully as a blogger, you’ll need to make it an extension of your blog persona. And therefore, it is more work.

Lesson #8 – Analyze To Grow

It is vital that you know the details about your site’s traffic. Where are they coming from? What were they looking for? Did they find it on your blog?

There are a ton of questions. The answers come from reviewing the analytics for your site. I use Google Analytics as a means of getting the data I need. I am only beginning to get enough data to be able to know anything. The data is eye opening. I will use it, and as a result, I expect to get better at this.

Lesson #9 – The Art of SEO

Despite what people tell you, SEO is an art not a science. There are truckloads of “SEO Experts” out there trying to sell you on their work or tools. While there are some good general rules to follow relative to SEO, how it will work on your site/keyword situation takes trial and error. And, the rules change from time to time as the search engines (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!) tweak their search algorithms.

The basics of SEO can be wrapped up in one phrase, “Keep It Simple.” If you write good prose, keep your content fresh, and keep at it for a while, you’ll place well relative to your overall niche.

Lesson #10 – Take Breaks

It is easy to get so involved in the whole cycle that you lose sight of why you’re blogging in the first place. It takes a heavy investment in time and effort to get a good blog going and keep it going.

However, you’re human. And that means you need a break from time to time. To be a good writer, you need to have a life. Experience new things away from the blog. Enjoy!

Have you ever gone to a blog and seen comments where the commenter has their picture next to their comment? At first, I thought this was just how blogger or wordpress.com rewarded their members. Mine would always be a gray blob or a gray square smiley face. Well, it wasn’t something they did, it was something the commenter had done.

It is called a gravatar and you can get yours at gravatar.com. At the site, you register the email address that you use for your blog comments and upload a picture. That’s it. Blogs that allow gravatars will pick up yours based on your email address.

Why is this important? Blog brand. Yes, your blog has a brand, whether you want it to or not. And if you aren’t maximizing your brand, you’re minimizing it. Like the flavicon I posted on last month (see Flavicon From A Picture File), a gravatar shows professionalism and polish.

My flavicon and gravatar… sounds like a kid’s robot cartoon a bit there, doesn’t it? Sorry , I’ll be back on topic. You’ll see that I used the same picture for both. I also use this image for my message board avatars and for Twitter. With this, I’m keeping my brand intact across sites. I’d encourage you to do the same.

Happy blogging!

I’ve seen it happen in the tech industry where various tech companies that compete with each other cooperate (EDS was reselling IBM tools). I’ve seen it in other mature industries (Joint ventures created for oil and gas exploration). But blogging?

Very much so!

The first, and most prevalent form of cooperation that I’ve seen is link sharing (particularly in blogrolls). In this case, two bloggers include links on their sites to other blogs. Obviously, if you like a blogger, you should like the blogs they like, right?

I’ve also seen guest posts. In this case, you have another blogger guest post on your blog (or you guest post on theirs). The blog gets good content and the guest blogger gets more exposure. The goal is to create some reciprocal traffic as the result.

But both of these provide very limited (typically one-on-one) results.

Now, I’ve found a new form of cooperation that has me really excited. Effectively, it is an RSS/Twitter Cooperative. The organizer has created a list in a special format that allows members of the cooperative to subscribe to each other’s RSS feeds through a simple import. As a function of the cooperative, we all agreed to assist each other in marketing to include Tweets, Stumbles, Diggs, etc. This could be big!

I’ll be monitoring the results over the coming week or so and will let you know how it is going in my monthly update.

I found this little gem while surfing around other blogs and needless to say, it kept me on the site longer than I otherwise might have been. Nothing graphic, but just enough to make me watch.

It got me to thinking. I know we’ve talked about content. Content is king (or queen)! But what makes good content? Or in other words, can you make your site sticky?

The short answer is, “it depends.” Who is your audience? And why are they coming to your site?

I have built up some traffic to the site in six core places, Entrecard, Sitehoppin, Mybloglog, BlogCatalog, Twitter, and by commenting on other blogs. The audience is clearly identifiable. They are other bloggers, which is perfect for this blog because this is a blog about blogging. For other sites, a pure diet of bloggers might not be a good fit.

So, now I know my audience. Why are they here? Most of the bloggers that come to my site are doing so to promote their own blogs. I use Comment Luv, so all comments return a back link to their site (hint, hint). And they know I’m much more likely to visit them if they write good comments here. There are new bloggers joining the fray every day. Many of them, like me, are looking for easy to understand answers. That is my niche.

Now I just need to ensure I do three things:

1) Provide regular and fresh content.

2) Provide it in an easy to understand (and preferably entertaining) fashion.

3) Rinse, lather and repeat.

P.S. My apologies that the video was off topic. Stick around a bit longer and join the conversation and I’ll feel less inclined to pull out the gimmicks.

Just a quick note too all of the mothers out there. Thank you for all you do!

Now that I’ve been at this a while (okay, a few weeks), I’ve looked at a lot of opportunities to make money online. So far you’ll notice that I’m mostly talking about affiliate opportunities. What I haven’t discussed are the “pay per post” opportunities. Why not? In one word, integrity.

I’ve looked at a few of these opportunities and I must admit that they are quite impressive. Some of these sites will pay you upwards of $30 just to make a post about their product. Seems like a good deal, right? Well, maybe not. For one, if I haven’t used the product, then what business do I have touting it? And if I’m getting paid to post about it, can you really trust what I have to say?

I also don’t feel it is a good deal for the advertisers. Yes, they get some good press, but who is reading it? And do the readers trust them?

In my opinion, affiliate marketing is different. I present the ads and the reader decides whether or not to act. If I like the product or service, I’ll often blog about it. The readers know how I feel. And the advertisers only pay when I bring them leads.

I hope over time that my readership and their trust of me increases. At that point it will be a win-win-win.

When I heard about More Niche, I thought it was too good to be true. I mean, an affiliate market partner that wants your business so much that they will pay you to join (and pay those who refer you!). How much will they pay you? Try $15 just to create an account. And for each person you refer you get $20.

Here is my account screen. I did nothing but sign up and there it is, $15 in my account.

There’s a catch, right?

Well, no. They have some really good products (one of which pays a commission of as much as $300). I really think you should check moreniche.com out! Tell ‘em baldeagle sent ya!

I came across this interesting article from a recommendation by someone I follow on Twitter (I guess there is some value to it, huh).
For 30 years now, you’ve been getting spam

Maybe your blog or website isn’t everything, but I bet it is pretty important to you. Especially if you’re relying on it to be an income stream. Now, when was the last time you backed it up? I take it it has been a while…

Right after you Stumble, Digg, Reddit and Twit this post, do it!

Backing up isn’t difficult, it just takes patience and diligence.  I back my sites up about once a week (or just before and after I’ve made significant changes).  And while you’re at it, don’t forget to back up the databases too.  If you’re using Wordpress, you have a MySQL database that contains all of your posts, pages and categories.  If you have any questions on how to back up the MySQL database, check out the support pages of your host.  Most have easy to follow instructions.

Do your friends a favor and send this to them as a reminder.  Back up your site!