I’ve just done my post month checks for February and noticed that I’d jumped way up the rankings for a keyword I set out to target in early January. I thought it would be interesting to see if the jump in ranking coincided with a jump in income. Boy did it. Here are the screen shots for the 1 full day I was at number 1 for my target search phrase (please keep in mind that these screen shots ONLY relate to that 1 page where possible):-
Lets do some maths shall we. Because most of my visitors are American (thank you Google Analytics) lets put a 1 day dollar value on this keyword.
USD Amounts = $1410+$48=$1458
GBP Amounts = £22.73+£41.40+£14.40 = £78.53
Exchange rate on the day was 1.56 so overall on that one day I made $1580 from 1 web page optimised for 1 keyword. That’s not bad is it? It’s better than a kick up the ass anyway. That would pay for a whole 7 months of the Shoemoney System. My total income for that one day was…errr…a wedge.
The truth is I only held the top spot for a couple of days (perhaps only 1 full day) and then was Google danced to mid-bottom of the first page. It’s still making good money but not as spectacular as that one stand out day.
So what am I trying to say here, or am I just showing off? The lesson I want to get across is that you just don’t get results like that from general blogging, certainly not in my experience anyway. Maybe I’m a shit blogger? You can write fluff about any old nonsense and how “it’s all in the mind”, “buy this course” all you like and you will not make that money. The real money is to be made by doing your keyword research, building high quality relevant content for your chosen keyword and then legitimately link building your way to the top. I’m not going to pretend it always works out that well, because it doesn’t, but it is a numbers game. Research, build, promote, repeat, research, build, promote, repeat etc etc etc
I know it’s not as exciting as pretending that there is a magic bullet out there with your road to internet riches written all over it but it is how the vast majority of people are making real full time incomes online. I was a solid 2 hours digging around with Market Samurai until I found that 1 phrase the got my water tingling (when you’ve done this enough you do get those feelings, it’s like when you first climbed the rope in PE 
), not the most exciting way to spend a Friday night I know. A $9 article from TextBroker re-written to add my own style, opinions and a couple of programmed interactive elements that took a morning to write. The link building was easy. Overall it’s not a massive amount of work for the return, it could have only made $0.50 and I wouldn’t have cared. I would just have started over again with my next keyword.
If you’re somebody that spends all your time reading blogs or writing your own MMO blog in the hope that some magic system is going to fall in to your lap then I’m sorry but unless you are very very lucky you are deluding yourself. You’d be much better getting out there and actually working for your online dollars.
The great thing is that I know 99% of people will totally ignore this, woo hoo, less competition for me
ps I forgot to add the second lesson. Don’t always rely on Adsense. I would have only made £22 that day if I’d stuck to Adsense alone.
3 Responses to “Why Blogging Sucks”
Chris
March 8, 2010
Great post Paul.
This is exactly why I rarely blog. I am too busy chasing real money instead of blogging. Not earning as much as you but I’ll get there!
What are your staple link building methods? Article marketing of course but what else?
I used to love directories but they seem to have dried up somewhat recently
Congrats on the keyword though! I recently found one and a SUPERB exact match domain but its very hard to rank for. Need to get it off the 9th page lol
|.-= Chris´s last blog ..Update: Where have I been? =-.
Paul B
March 8, 2010
I have quite a simple system for back links depending on the nature of my content.
If it’s a new page on an existing domain then I’m a huge fan of using your own internal linking structure. Combining that with some article marketing and maybe a dedicated free hosting blog to help is generally about as much as I do – besides the obvious social bookmarking etc Blowing my own trumpet but I do find that I pick up natural backlinks from other webmasters as well if i post on an established site.
If I’m building a whole new site around a keyword then I’ll usually pay to have a staggered large directory submission done. I’ll research my competition (MS is great for this) and set out to get as many of their backlinks as possible. It’s usually possible to pick up 50-60%. I’ll also use my own network of websites to help push the new site (I’m sure I wrote a post about having a launch pad way back). Hubpages can help you get traction in the early days. Generally speaking I avoid spreading the articles until the site has found its feet.
There are also gimicks I’ll use in certain markets, like writing some custom software and using the software directories to pick up some more diverse links. There’s no harm in blog commenting/ forum posting either I suppose but I do a lot less of that these days.
|Simon The Scammer
September 28, 2010
Hey there Mr. Linkbait, another good one here. Why waste any time tho on this bloggin’ thingy? It’s more fun for stupid folk to look for magic bullet.
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