Blogging for Cash Part 2
Recently an article titled Joe Harris, Blogging for Cash caught my attention. Though it was written well over a year ago, Nov. 2005, the interview ended on a high note with Mr. Harris making an increasing amount of money by blogging about selected high paying keywords.
While not all of his blogs were focused on the high paying keywords, they were the ones making him money through Adsense. Here is a quote from that interview:
The problem was that of the 15 blogs cited in the interview (not including the gambling related sites), 7 were no longer up, and at least one, but likely more, were being run by someone else. I was interested to know what happened to Joe and decided to do a follow up interview.
Many of your blogs were pulled from Blogger, was this backlash at all a result of the first interview?
Not particularly. I don't know that I got much backlash. Perhaps people reported my sites to blogger which is why so many got deleted but I can't prove it. I didn't get any harassing comments on my blogs or emails.
What exactly did happen in your fights with Blogger?
Well, if I could catch it in time, blogger would just lock a site of mine. I would ask for the site to be reviewed. After about a week or so blogger would email back saying my site was ok and not spam. NONE of my sites were ever declared spam by blogger. The problem was that several of my sites were just deleted. I didn't even get a chance to go through the review process. And then when I would try to recreate it, I would find someone had taken my URL which conveniently for them would already have a PR and incoming links.
1031-tic.blogspot.com I assume was one of them. How did it make you feel that these people were pouncing on your already generated traffic?
I was very pissed off when I lost my 1031-tic site. That was a good site. I liked reading about 1031 TIC too. It was new to me. It was a good paying key word. The problem is that blogger has released so many anti-splog bots that some sites just get deleted before one gets a chance to have the site reviewed.
I think it is unfair that people can snatch up a blog URL within minutes of its deletion. I think blogger should have a cooling off period of a week to allow the owner a chance to reclaim it. There are entities out there that site and snatch up blogs as soon as they are available. They look for PR3+ sites, take them, and fill them up with trash like porn. But there is nothing illegal with what they do.
The lesson for me was if I was going to be serious then I should buy my own domains and host my own sites.
At the end of the original interview you were making ever increasing amounts of money from Googles Adsense, yet in an earlier email you mentioned a dropoff in revenue
Yes, this past summer of '06 I saw a dramatic drop. I was never making a ton of cash. But I would get a check from adsense every couple of months for $100. I was hoping to build that up over time. I was doing the usual SEO, building links, etc. For a while my Lending Tree site would pull up on an MSN search on the first page. Sometimes as high as the number 2 spot. My Lending Tree site would also pull up on Yahoo on the first page (for a search fro Lending Tree respectively).
And then one day nearly all my blogs vanished from the major search engines (google, Yahoo, MSN). I kept resubmitting the URL's, They would pick the sites up for a few days then drop them. I began redoing my links, dumping irrelevant links, redoing my meta tags, and reading as much as I could about SEO.
Something happened. Google redid their PR and I lost the PR on alot of my sites, some of which were PR3. And then it just got to be too rediculous for me to follow. It seemed site owners and search engines are locked in a perpetual game of Spy vs. Spy each one trying to out do the other. I could not keep up nor could I compete. I just don't know enough.
On the one hand I understand the search engines want to make sure that when someone does a search, they will find what they are looking for. And so they have delisted a lot of sites they consider spam. But it seems too that seach engines have been played. Searches now pull up pages of paid search advertising often not even related to the search. Half of the top ten for a search these days seems to pull up these sites with nothing but paid link advertising for that particular search.
Ultimately I think the search engines want to get paid more for search than they already are. I think we are moving more and more toward a pay to play system.
Working full time and trying to maintain 28 blogs, what are your thoughts on the workload of maintaining that many blogs?
It ended up not being worth it. I would spend hours upon hours a day making a site, maintaining my sites, building links, doing SEO, reading, and teaching myself SEO. In the begining I was excited because I thought I could build the revenue. Even perhaps quit my job in a few years. But as the years dragged on and the revenue dropped it got harder and harder for me to be excited about just making blogs with adsense.
You also mentioned using other peoples articles in your blog posts, is this something you continue to do?
I just can't be an expert in all areas. While writing original content for one or two blogs is possible, trying to write original content for 20 or 30 blogs just seems unreasonable, especially since blogs should be updated at least once if not twice a day. But I did move toward only using free articles through sites like goarticles, ArticleYou and ezine versus risking violating someone's copyright.
What would you have done differently knowing what you know now?
Knowing what I know now, I would not have gone down the route of trying to create a bunch of high paying keyword blogs. I would instead by a domain or two and focus on selling products via an affiliate program. This is what I am leaning toward doing right now but just have not had the time to do it. I also would have taken classes on html and website building.
What words of wisdom would you impart from your experience to someone looking to make extra money in their spare time by blogging?
First off, if you are going to blog, blog about something you care about; something you enjoy. Don't expect to make any money; consider it a pleasant side effect.
If you want to make money off the internet beware all the online scams selling systems for making money. Beware the high paying keyword lists. Get yourself a solid background in designing webpages first. Study SEO first. Then buy a domain name and pay for hosting.
If you want to blog, I would advise against blogger. Pay for a service. Use typepad or moveable type.
If you want to just make thousands of blogs and hope for adsense revenue clicks then by all means use blogger. After all, it's free. I just don't know if it's worth it. People do it. Search blogger for cell phone, insurance, etc and you'll get thousands of hits for blogs setup solely for the purpose of advertising.
I guess someone is making money at it, just not me.
While not all of his blogs were focused on the high paying keywords, they were the ones making him money through Adsense. Here is a quote from that interview:
Initially I made just a couple dollars a month. It was not until July 2005 that I even realized that A) certain keywords pay more than others B) that certain ads pay more than others.
I really cannot give you an accurate picture of what I make from blogs because I am relatively new at this. I started in March 2005. What I can tell you is that for the months of March, April, May, and June I made at most a few dollars month. In July after I started building high paying keyword based blogs I made around $30. In the month of August now I am well over $120. I have in my opinion seen a dramatic improvement in my AdSense revenue in as little as two months.
The problem was that of the 15 blogs cited in the interview (not including the gambling related sites), 7 were no longer up, and at least one, but likely more, were being run by someone else. I was interested to know what happened to Joe and decided to do a follow up interview.
Many of your blogs were pulled from Blogger, was this backlash at all a result of the first interview?
Not particularly. I don't know that I got much backlash. Perhaps people reported my sites to blogger which is why so many got deleted but I can't prove it. I didn't get any harassing comments on my blogs or emails.
What exactly did happen in your fights with Blogger?
Well, if I could catch it in time, blogger would just lock a site of mine. I would ask for the site to be reviewed. After about a week or so blogger would email back saying my site was ok and not spam. NONE of my sites were ever declared spam by blogger. The problem was that several of my sites were just deleted. I didn't even get a chance to go through the review process. And then when I would try to recreate it, I would find someone had taken my URL which conveniently for them would already have a PR and incoming links.
1031-tic.blogspot.com I assume was one of them. How did it make you feel that these people were pouncing on your already generated traffic?
I was very pissed off when I lost my 1031-tic site. That was a good site. I liked reading about 1031 TIC too. It was new to me. It was a good paying key word. The problem is that blogger has released so many anti-splog bots that some sites just get deleted before one gets a chance to have the site reviewed.
I think it is unfair that people can snatch up a blog URL within minutes of its deletion. I think blogger should have a cooling off period of a week to allow the owner a chance to reclaim it. There are entities out there that site and snatch up blogs as soon as they are available. They look for PR3+ sites, take them, and fill them up with trash like porn. But there is nothing illegal with what they do.
The lesson for me was if I was going to be serious then I should buy my own domains and host my own sites.
At the end of the original interview you were making ever increasing amounts of money from Googles Adsense, yet in an earlier email you mentioned a dropoff in revenue
Yes, this past summer of '06 I saw a dramatic drop. I was never making a ton of cash. But I would get a check from adsense every couple of months for $100. I was hoping to build that up over time. I was doing the usual SEO, building links, etc. For a while my Lending Tree site would pull up on an MSN search on the first page. Sometimes as high as the number 2 spot. My Lending Tree site would also pull up on Yahoo on the first page (for a search fro Lending Tree respectively).
And then one day nearly all my blogs vanished from the major search engines (google, Yahoo, MSN). I kept resubmitting the URL's, They would pick the sites up for a few days then drop them. I began redoing my links, dumping irrelevant links, redoing my meta tags, and reading as much as I could about SEO.
Something happened. Google redid their PR and I lost the PR on alot of my sites, some of which were PR3. And then it just got to be too rediculous for me to follow. It seemed site owners and search engines are locked in a perpetual game of Spy vs. Spy each one trying to out do the other. I could not keep up nor could I compete. I just don't know enough.
On the one hand I understand the search engines want to make sure that when someone does a search, they will find what they are looking for. And so they have delisted a lot of sites they consider spam. But it seems too that seach engines have been played. Searches now pull up pages of paid search advertising often not even related to the search. Half of the top ten for a search these days seems to pull up these sites with nothing but paid link advertising for that particular search.
Ultimately I think the search engines want to get paid more for search than they already are. I think we are moving more and more toward a pay to play system.
Working full time and trying to maintain 28 blogs, what are your thoughts on the workload of maintaining that many blogs?
It ended up not being worth it. I would spend hours upon hours a day making a site, maintaining my sites, building links, doing SEO, reading, and teaching myself SEO. In the begining I was excited because I thought I could build the revenue. Even perhaps quit my job in a few years. But as the years dragged on and the revenue dropped it got harder and harder for me to be excited about just making blogs with adsense.
You also mentioned using other peoples articles in your blog posts, is this something you continue to do?
I just can't be an expert in all areas. While writing original content for one or two blogs is possible, trying to write original content for 20 or 30 blogs just seems unreasonable, especially since blogs should be updated at least once if not twice a day. But I did move toward only using free articles through sites like goarticles, ArticleYou and ezine versus risking violating someone's copyright.
What would you have done differently knowing what you know now?
Knowing what I know now, I would not have gone down the route of trying to create a bunch of high paying keyword blogs. I would instead by a domain or two and focus on selling products via an affiliate program. This is what I am leaning toward doing right now but just have not had the time to do it. I also would have taken classes on html and website building.
What words of wisdom would you impart from your experience to someone looking to make extra money in their spare time by blogging?
First off, if you are going to blog, blog about something you care about; something you enjoy. Don't expect to make any money; consider it a pleasant side effect.
If you want to make money off the internet beware all the online scams selling systems for making money. Beware the high paying keyword lists. Get yourself a solid background in designing webpages first. Study SEO first. Then buy a domain name and pay for hosting.
If you want to blog, I would advise against blogger. Pay for a service. Use typepad or moveable type.
If you want to just make thousands of blogs and hope for adsense revenue clicks then by all means use blogger. After all, it's free. I just don't know if it's worth it. People do it. Search blogger for cell phone, insurance, etc and you'll get thousands of hits for blogs setup solely for the purpose of advertising.
I guess someone is making money at it, just not me.
posted by Chris at 6:06 AM
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