Saturday, December 22, 2007


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Holiday Blogging
21 Dec
Posted by DomTags: , ,
Late December is traditionally a time of year when a large chunk of the world takes time off. I certainly plan on taking a few days to spend time with friends and family this year.
The question is, is it worth blogging when a large chunk of your audience has gone offline?
Well personally, if I’m going away I like to switch off completely. That means not blogging, not checking emails - in fact, I won’t even be taking a computer with me.
Of course I could use the “future posting” feature of Wordpress to post articles for me, but with much of my audience away, there’s not a whole lot of point. Great content becomes much less great if nobody actually reads it.
But for some people there may be opportunities to be had. Some seasonal topics do particularly well this time of year, and you could be at an advantage if you’re producing quality content while all your rivals are on holiday.
It’s a difficult decision… but I think I’m coming down on the “spending time relaxing and eating too much” side. :)
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Paying Tax
20 Dec
Posted by DomTags: , ,
Andy got in touch and asked an interesting question about the money you earn from blogging:
“What are the tax implications for the money that you earn?
Now obviously, tax laws vary from country to country and I’m not an expert in UK tax law - never mind any other country.
But unfortunately, the answer is still quite easy: You need to pay tax on it.
If you’re earning money - even if it’s just from a few AdSense ads on your blog, the chances are your local tax man will want a slice of it.
Andy also mentioned the fact that I’m re-investing my earnings back into advertising so not making a great deal of money in actual profit. While this is true, I still need to tell the tax man. I may not end up paying a lot of tax, but I need to document everything I’m earning and spending on my blog.
If you have any doubts or questions, then speak to a local accountant or tax advisor. I certainly can’t give financial advice, but you should just be able to give your local tax office a call and ask them what you need to do. They’re usually quite friendly (unless you haven’t paid something you should…)
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Affiliate Marketing on Blogs
18 Dec
Posted by DomTags: , , , ,
Jeremy Schoemaker has posted a video of his BlogWorld presentation, and it’s well worth a look (despite the poor sound quality).
I don’t particularly agree with everything Jeremy says about AdSense, primarily because I think the benefits more than outweigh the down sides Jeremy mentions. Maybe he’s just not using it right. :)
But what he says about affiliate marketing is spot on. The presentation is quite basic, but for those of us just starting out in affiliate marketing, it’s incredibly useful.
Quick Tips
Always check to see if there’s an affiliate program me for the topic you’re blogging about. If you’re going to be linking to someone, you’d just as well be making money from it.
Banner ads don’t really work. Incorporate your affiliate links into the text of your post.
Be honest and be yourself. If you’re blogging about a product with the intention of using affiliate links, then at least be honest about the product. Don’t go recommending a bad product because it might make you a few dollars.
Don’t go spamming your own blog with nothing but affiliate links. As a blogger, your primary goal should be to keep your readers engaged - and subscribed. Nobody wants to subscribe to a spam-blog.
Use deep linking. If at all possible, link to the actual product you’re talking about rather than the default affiliate link. Most affiliate programmes provide a mechanism for doing this.
Don’t expect overnight success. Successful affiliate marketing takes time, effort and practice and the actual conversions often take time too. So give it time and don’t lose heart if you don’t make money on your first day!
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200 Subscribers
17 Dec
Posted by DomTags: ,
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Ok, I promise to try not to get excited every time we get another 100 subscribers, but we hit 200 Money Blogger subscribers over the weekend.
The interesting thing about this is that it took precisely half as much time to go from 100 to 200 as it did to go from 0 to 100.
I did want to take this opportunity to say hello to everyone who’s new here. If you don’t already know, Money Blogger is a year long project to see how much money I can make from blogging. Along the way, I hope to share some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned - as well as details of my earnings.
Check out the archive of posts to see the full story so far.
Subscribe to Money Blogger - and tell your friends!
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Yahoo Shortcuts for Wordpress
14 Dec
Posted by DomTags: , , ,
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Yahoo Shortcuts for Wordpress is a new Wordpress plugin from Yahoo that automatically adds shortcuts to Yahoo content to your posts.
I’m experimenting with it here for the first time, and as I’m typing this post, the plugin is searching through what I’m writing to find interesting and relevant content. There’s a short demo of how it works on the Yahoo site.
I’m in two minds about this. It’s undoubtedly very cool, but by using it I’m effectively sending my traffic to Yahoo - and doing it free of charge. For those of us trying to make money from blogging, it’s probably not particularly useful - at least not until Yahoo allows people to make money by using the plugin. (And judging by their performance in this area in the past, I doubt that will ever happen.)
But one of the most interesting features of this plugin is that it can automatically search for and insert relevant Flickr images into your post, complete with full attribution. Adding photos to your post can dramatically improve its appearance, so I may keep using the plugin just for that functionality.
The plugin makes extensive use of dynamic HTML and AJAX to find relevant content as you’re typing, and it also edits the text of your post to insert the links. I find that a little distracting and disconcerting as I’m used to having full control over the HTML as I type.
It’s certainly a plugin worth downloading and playing with, and I think I’ll probably end up using it on another blog, but so far the minor annoyances outweigh its usefulness on Money Blogger.
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Future posting in Wordpress
12 Dec
Posted by DomTags: , ,
Here’s another Wordpress tip for you. This one should be particularly useful to those of you wanting to take a break over the holiday season.
Did you know that you can schedule Wordpress to post articles at any time in the future? That means you can write a week’s worth of posts in one go and schedule them to go live at different times. You can be spending the holidays with your family or on a beach somewhere while Worpdress is busy doing the blogging for you!
Here’s how you do it:
1. First, prepare your post as usual. Nothing unusal here, except you might want to spend some extra time proof-reading it given that you won’t be around when the article goes live.
2. Next click on the “Post Timestamp” at the bottom right of the screen. Check the ‘Edit timestamp’ box and set the time and date in the future that you want.
3. Publish the article. You’ll notice that your post will not appear on your blog straight away, but will automatically be published at the date and time you selected.
That’s all there is to it. Now you can go spend Christmas on the beach!
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Is AdSense still relevant?
11 Dec
Posted by DomTags: , ,
I’ve been using Google AdSense for over 4 years now, and during that time I’ve earned over $50,000 from it.
But for the past couple of years, I’ve never really recommended it to other people.
My main issue has always been a lack of transparency from Google. Publishers don’t know what percentage of revenue they’re getting or if Google is reporting accurately. Google often implement far reaching changes to AdSense without getting feedback from publishers. And then there’s the fact that Google is just getting too big for a lot of people.
As a result, I’ve been gradually moving away from using AdSense on my sites over the last couple of years. Where I have used them, I’ve treated them as “placeholder” ads - something to fill the space until something better comes along.
But lately I’ve seen a bit of a change - for the better. Improved earnings and better quality ads mean I’m earning more from AdSense (on a eCPM basis) than ever before. In fact, my current eCPM is about twice what it was a year ago.
I put this down to a number of factors, including:
Google reacting to increased competition from new ad networks.
Advertisers reacting positively to Google’s recent changes in ad clickability.
So, in answer to the question “Is AdSense still relevant?”, my answer has to be a resounding “Absolutely!”.
If you’ve never tried AdSense on your site, or even if you just haven’t used it for a couple of years, now (Christmas shopping season!) would be a great time to try it.
Sign up for AdSense.
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More on competitions
10 Dec
Posted by DomTags: , ,
I’ve mentioned the value of running competitions a couple of times already, but I just wanted to share the results of the Chocablog competition that’s just finished.
The competition ran for a couple of weeks, with entrants having to subscribe to the email version of Chocablog’s RSS feed, then fill out a tie-breaker.
In the two-week period that the competition was running, Chocablog managed to pick up 200 new subscribers from the competition alone. Given that the cost of the prize was around £10 ($20), that’s about 10 cents per subscriber. That’s not bad at all!
Of course, in order to get the attention of all these potential new subscribers, I had to submit the competition to several “prize finder” competition web sites. It’s also likely that I’ll lose some of those new subscribers now the competition has closed. But with the promise of more competitions coming in the new year, I’m hopeful Chocablog will keep most of those new subscribers.
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