I’ve spoken many times already on MakeMoneyAsYouTravel.com about creating multiple sources of income in order to make the most money from your blog. This could be something as simple as using a number of different types of advertising, such as combining affiliate ads with private advertising. It could also be that you sell products from your blog too, such as your own ebooks or memorabilia. It could also mean that you have several different websites, rather than just focusing on one. Either way, the only way you find out which methods make money is to experiment with all these different options, including any you can think of yourself, and to see what works – as not everything does! Also, what works for one site may not work for another, so the only way to know for sure is to experiment.
The key is to never be afraid to try something out on your blog, and also to give it enough time to actually see if it works for you too. For instance, when I first started blogging, the first type of advertising I tried on my blog was Google Ads. I left it up for a week, it didn’t make me a penny, and for the next 6 months I was resigned to the opinion that Google Ads didn’t make people money. However, around 6 months later I decided to give it another try after learning a lot more about blogging and self publishing in general. This time I tried it on one of my static sites. I’d heard that Google Ads worked well for location based sites, so I figured I’d give it a try on my Scotland site. This time I gave it 4 months. I was originally only going to give it 3 months, but for whatever reason I forgot to take it down. I’m so glad I didn’t as in month 4, when I started to get a bit more search engine traffic, I noticed the conversion went up ten fold. Google Ads alone on that site made 60 GBP in one month. Now I’m not saying that’s going to pay anyone’s bills, but that site continues to make that much each month on average from Google Ads, and because it’s a static site it take very little of my time. I can literally set up a site like that and forget about it while it brings me in a bit of cash for doing almost nothing. Looking back I feel silly for dismissing Google Ads. My blog had such little traffic when I first started trialing it that of course it would not convert into lots of money because there simply wasn’t enough people coming onto the site in the first place to actually click on the ads like their are now! The other reason is that I did not do my research to find out what type of sites work best with that kind of advertising in the beginning, and I also didn’t leave it up for long enough to actually get a good idea if it was something which would work.
Something which didn’t work for me however was the ebook I released. I’d seen quite a few bloggers make a lot of money from ebooks, so I thought I’d give it a try. Looking back I can see I made a lot of mistakes when launching my first ebook. The first was that I didn’t create anything that was actually useful to anyone. All of the info that was on it could be found easily on the web. That was my first and biggest mistake. If I was to be completely honest, I also knew deep down I was just creating an ebook to try make cash, and I rushed it out without really thinking “is this actually useful to anyone, or offering something different or extra that other travel ebooks aren’t?” The second mistake I made was I overpriced it. I tried to charge people £9.99 when other people were selling their books for around a third of that price. The design layout was terrible, and I didn’t market it very well. I could go on and on about all the mistakes I made with that book, but it was a good experience none the less because I learned a lot of skills in learning how to actually create an ebook (something which I had never done before), how to set up and an affiliate programme, and I also now know exactly what I will do if I ever decide to launch another ebook – which, by the way, I haven’t given up on.
Sometimes things don’t work because we make mistakes. When something doesn’t work with your site, ask yourself why. Sometimes it can just be that particular thing doesn’t work with your type of website or audience, but sometimes it can also be because you made crucial mistakes during the learning curve of trying something new. There’s no guarantee that if I was to release another ebook that it would sell lots of copies. However, having looked back at the mistakes I made in comparison to the successful decisions of other bloggers who have sold a lot of copies of their books, I am fairly certain that I could sell more than the mere 15 copies that I sold of my first book. At least, I think it’s worth another go anyway!
It’s also important when you have a blog to experiment with ways of building traffic too, rather than simply trying out direct ways of making money such as with ads or selling your own products. Even if it’s just something as simple as making the layout of your site more user friendly, running a competition, or making your social network icons more prominent to try increase the amount of people following you on twitter, or subscribing to your RSS feed. Sometimes you may just want to experiment with other formats of blogging such as video blogging or producing a podcast too. Sometimes just the smallest change or addition can make a big difference, and I often find the things I least expected sometimes make a bigger difference that other things I thought would surely work.
Experimentation is also something you should continue to do throughout the life of your blog, even when you do start making enough money to live off. I make enough money now to get a full-time wage from blogging, but even to this day I still try things out all the time to try increase the amount I earn. For instance, right now on one of my blogs I’m running the first competition in a number of mini-comps on my site in the build up to my departure on my next long term adventure. I’m only giving away low value prizes, i.e. things under $20, but I’m giving away one prize a week to see if it helps build traffic continually up until my departure. I will also try high value products too at some point, but I’ve actually heard that low value prizes seem to draw the most traffic. The competition has only been up half a day, and it’s already had over 1000 unique visitors to it’s page alone, however it’s only had one entrant so far, which isn’t a great conversion so I will just have to see how it unfolds over the week!
There have been lot’s of ideas that I’ve tried with my blog that have worked, and other which didn’t. That’s just the nature of blogging and running a business. You gain from the experiences which work, and you learn from the one’s which don’t. More often than not you are left with a few surprises too. The most important thing you can do is to not make assumptions, and just give it a try. What have you got to lose?
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