My First $100

[mysticmadness]

I started blogging about 2 years ago in a blogspot site. I wanted to try different things related to blogging and also earn some money. The experiment was successful and I have eventually launched my first own hosted blog.

The good thing that has happened is that now I know where it is easy or difficult to make money. While subject is vast but let me tell you about my first $100.
1) My blog (google hosted in blogspot) got page rank 2 in about 4-5 months
2) I average visitor in that blog was 50 except those days where I used to broadcast my posts
3) I used adsense and started paid blogging
4) My first $100 came though paid blogging two months afterI started doing it (six months after launch of blog). I got that from smorty and socialspark. (in socialspark they pay you after 1 month of approval).
5) Adsense give me my first $100 in about 18 months. It was obvious because of nature of traffic.
6) the problem with social spark (part of payperpost) is that you have to incorporate a disclosure badge.
7) Google recognized that and dropped my ranking to zero
8) Social spark dont condier google page rank and hence I still get assignemnt in that.
9) other paid blogging sites like smorty and sponsored reviews no more give me assignment because of page rank.


Some conclusions
1) Paid posting spoils your blog
2) Its difficult to earn from adsense
3) paid blogging gives you money but does not grow you intellectually.
4) Page rank is important for some sites while there are other which do not value it at all.
5) Inspite of all above, if you have a decent blog with good pagerank than paid blogging can get you much more money than you can make in adsense. But for that launch a different blog
6) I could have earned more if the blog was hosted in my own domain


frankly, I have decided not to do paid blogging anymore. I am now investing my time in my new blog and keeping it as clean and informative as I can.

[Mossereath]

What resources did/do you use to drive traffic to your blog?

[Angela Leeds]

Huh. I don't know what you mean by "paid blogging" and smorty & socialspark. But congratulations on your first $100. It's just... that sure is a long time to wait for some cash. These are definitely not major avenues for income, but nice for "date money" now & then.

Have you included any affiliate links related directly to your blogging topic?

[mysticmadness]

I didnt used anything to drive traffic except forwarding relevant topics to some forums. Otherwse it was mostly from google search.

Affiliate marketing depends upon traffic and I didnt had the required numbers for that. I tried but it didnt worked

[SimonaRich]

I got google pagerank of 2 after 3 months, and I have alexa rank of #399,723 at the time of writing this article (also three months after the launch of my website).

I was considering to write one pay-per-post article, but now you got me thinking. I did not quite understand why google removed your pagerank. Is it possible, considering the pagerank is mostly the reflection of importance of your site and how many other important sites link to it?

[Grandiouse]

Very cool. You have good blog going with great content. Keep it up!

[mysticmadness]

yes page rank is important especially in terms of serp's i believe. Also in pay per post you get less opportunities omcpares to smorty or sponsoredreviews or review me. hence whereever they ask for non-disclousre badge dont go them as it has sever penalities wrt to page rank.

[mistertortoise]

Originally Posted by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

I started blogging about 2 years ago in a blogspot site. I wanted to try different things related to blogging and also earn some money. The experiment was successful and I have eventually launched my first own hosted blog.

The good thing that has happened is that now I know where it is easy or difficult to make money. While subject is vast but let me tell you about my first $100.
1) My blog (google hosted in blogspot) got page rank 2 in about 4-5 months
2) I average visitor in that blog was 50 except those days where I used to broadcast my posts
3) I used adsense and started paid blogging
4) My first $100 came though paid blogging two months afterI started doing it (six months after launch of blog). I got that from smorty and socialspark. (in socialspark they pay you after 1 month of approval).
5) Adsense give me my first $100 in about 18 months. It was obvious because of nature of traffic.
6) the problem with social spark (part of payperpost) is that you have to incorporate a disclosure badge.
7) Google recognized that and dropped my ranking to zero
8) Social spark dont condier google page rank and hence I still get assignemnt in that.
9) other paid blogging sites like smorty and sponsored reviews no more give me assignment because of page rank.


Some conclusions
1) Paid posting spoils your blog
2) Its difficult to earn from adsense
3) paid blogging gives you money but does not grow you intellectually.
4) Page rank is important for some sites while there are other which do not value it at all.
5) Inspite of all above, if you have a decent blog with good pagerank than paid blogging can get you much more money than you can make in adsense. But for that launch a different blog
6) I could have earned more if the blog was hosted in my own domain


frankly, I have decided not to do paid blogging anymore. I am now investing my time in my new blog and keeping it as clean and informative as I can.

Thanks for taking the time to post that, interesting info there.

AFAIK the PR of your site doesn't have an effect on your position in the SERPs. Have you noticed a drop in google visitors since your PR was taken away?

From what I have read a drop in PR rank only has an effect on the amount of "link juice" you pass on to the sites you link to. This would make sense considering the fact that google took your PR away when it discovered you were being paid to write reviews and link to other sites from your blog.

A big part of the reason that people will pay for a review from your site is because they also get a link from a site with good "link juice" which will give them improved SERP results. When you lose your PR you lose the ability to pass on much in the way of "link juice" and the paid reviews dry up.

Cool blog BTW!

[mysticmadness]

true mistertortoise. but why sites need link juice. They associate the keyword with a link which helps them get good serp in google.

[AttractIt]

Looks pretty good Mystic,

Only one thing - I've tried to read some posts, and it would have been more easy for me if google ads were horizontal,
I mean the ads that are inside the text,
I saw there are some horizontal ads up before the text,

Maybe you can switch between them,

Cheers,

[mysticmadness]

thanks attractit. I am experimenting various formats and will try next with your feedback. Thanks again for taking some time out and visiting my site.

[SimonaRich]

Originally Posted by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

yes page rank is important especially in terms of serp's i believe. Also in pay per post you get less opportunities omcpares to smorty or sponsoredreviews or review me. hence whereever they ask for non-disclousre badge dont go them as it has sever penalities wrt to page rank.

But I cannot still understand how that works. Take Yaro Starak for example, he always writes paid reviews but he has a pagerank of 5/10.

[mysticmadness]

he must be writing for sites which does not force him to include a disclosure badge. pay per post and social spark force you to add that. while there are others like sponsored review, reviewme,smorty etc. which dont force you. hence you are safer with the latter one's.

[mysticmadness]

another $150 from social spark for my last blog at Chilli Flakes. I am not doing this for my new website Mystic Madness. this time i got approx. $1.5 dlollar from sponsor for 30 days who displayed his banner in my site. You can see how clumsy it looks with paid postings.