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Friday, October 21, 2016

Making money by blogging.

The blog started in 2011 (it actually just turned five last month) and I applied to add ads late that year and noticed that they'd finally went active (because I earned a penny) on December 29th.

Today I was informed that I finally had earned enough money for them to pay me (the threshold is 100 USD.)  In fact, I earned more than enough by 49 cents.

This allows us to do some math.  $100.49 per 1759 days equals 5.7 cents per day.  That's actually way better than I would have thought because usually I'm lucky to earn a penny or two, but then again there are some days when the stars align and . . . I'm not totally sure but I think what happens is that someone clicks an add and then browses the site in a way that the site logs as "potential customer" and on those days I've been known to earn as much as a dollar, so days like that have obviously brought the average up.

So, you know, become a blogger and you could earn between five and six cents a day.


It almost goes without saying, but doesn't quite, that being a beggar/busker is way more lucrative.  That's basically what the donations are: they're the money thrown in my open guitar case on the subway while I regale you with my rendition of . . . what's the guitar equivalent of Twilight/Narnia/Left Behind?

That got my boiler fixed, which I still think of as a furnace because that's what we always called it, thus saving me from going homeless in the dead of winter in Maine.  To afford that on my ad revenue would take 288 years, 72 days, 14 hours, 20 minutes, 58 seconds, and one tenth of a second.


Oh, also, programming note: I went back through my disqus log to dig up any things to be posted and came up with four things on Trump, two of which have already gone up.  I'm trying to write some lighter, or at least less Trumpish, posts to break up that string of Trump Trump Trump Trump.

6 comments:

  1. Oh, forgot to add, having your own stuff to sell like Ana has her ebooks doesn't hurt.

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  2. And now it occurs to me that my first comment vanished because I hit "delete" when I meant to hit "reply." Argh.

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  3. Okay, third time the charm? I don't know what the problem is; it's not like I've linked to anywhere.

    So, after turning off my ad blocker and privacy extensions, I was able to see that you have a whole two ads on this page. BTW, I tried this experiment twice. The first time, one of the ads was for Western Union which I can kinda understand since it's about sending money to people and you spend a lot of time asking for money. The other ad that time, and both ads this time really had nothing to do with anything you write about. That's not going to make a lot of sales even without ad blockers.

    Now I am far from an expert on online business, but my understanding is that in order to make money blogging, you a) need to focus on a very specific topic (known as a "niche"), say digital cameras, and b) you need affiliate links. Doesn't have to be Amazon, btw, they just have the best known program. If there's an online vendor for niche related products that you like, try to find out if they have an affiliate program. Affiliate ads, and links to products in your blog posts will make more money than ads served up by an external network. For one thing, ads you put in are less likely to get zapped by ad blockers.

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    Replies
    1. Apparently third time is a charm, Inquisitive Raven. I was reading comments through email notifications so didn't realize the second time didn't work. Figured out the first time didn't work when you did your second try.

      I guess I need to get back into the habit of looking at comments on the blog itself so I can catch when non-spam got spamtrapped.

      It's usually the case that if something doesn't post it wasn't spamtrapped, it was lost forever into the aether. No idea why your first two attempts got spamtrapped.

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    2. The thing is, my first two tries did post, then vanished when I posted my follow ups. We'll see if the third one sticks around, because I'm not replying to it.

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