Published January 24, 2011 | 
Well it has been an interesting learning experience since I first started blogging. In December of 2009 I was hoping I’d be able to break the 60 cent per month barrier, just a few months ago in July I only had about 7,000 visitors per month across 7 different blogs.
Well jesus that was a mess. I’ve decided to consolidate to four different blogs and my traffic has increased to roughly 13,000 hits per month. I now average $80 per month and have at one point broken $400 in one month. My blogroll is now:
- BloggerBoon.com (this blog)
- A LIL’ Know How (alilknowhow.com)
- Online Scam Website (onlinescamwebsites.com)
- BodyBuildingBoon.com (my bodybuilding website)
And so I have less to manage, less blogs to log into to check for comments, and more content (and better content) for my existing blogs. After starting OnlineScamWebsites.com I broke $400 in one month barrier by writing about niche and hot buzzword topics relative to the latest internet scams. Of course those articles go in-and-out of relevance pretty fast (Turns out online scams don’t last long and thus their topic google-age is relatively short)… After about 3 months the articles written become obsolete, so fresh content is always needed. Interestingly though, my other blog’s content stays relevant for much longer period of time. While the earnings per post are MUCH lower, the traffic and earnings continue to roll in even after over a year.
Interestingly I’ve actually written an article that effectively capitalizes on Amazon.com’s affiliate program. I have been trying to figure out how I could effectively write a blog post that would drive people to buy a product through amazon.com for a while, I had limited success with the windshield wiper review I wrote on here (at approximately $5.00 / month in amazon affiliate earnings)… But a new opportunity presented itself when my sister got new Hunter Rain Boots for Christmas. They were a bargain because they had this sticky white wax residue all over the exterior. I guess real rubber rain boots sweat this white wax naturally, a process called “blooming”… Well it was our difficulty finding a solution to removing this “bloom” that led to me writing a blog post about the topic, and linking to the appropriate products needed to remove the bloom through amazon.com. The affiliate earnings from that one blog post have topped $30 per month and it has helped hundreds of people repair their hunter rain boots to look like new. See: (How to remove white residue from hunter rain boots).
I have also recently re-done this blog’s theme. While when I created the original theme I was pretty satisfied (although it was kind of busy). This new one is much more simplified with a much cleaner header logo. I still feel that it could be much more “impressive” although I really do like the logo I created. I’ll have to think of something to spruce up the sidebar or page design as its really just a giant piece of white. Not extremely creative… But definitely a step in the right direction.
Officially, My Goal for the end of this year is to be making $1000 per month through my blogs. However, I am unsure how realistic of a jump that is. We’ll see how close I can come as I am continually learning new techniques to increase traffic and increase ad conversions.
Published January 24, 2011 | These are all of my older “About me” blog entries. It used to be a static page, but since I might be updating it more often I’ve moved it to a category so I can create “about me” posts every once and a while.
Last Updated 7/1/2010
Wow it’s been a while since I have checked my About Me Page. I am now running 7 blogs, starting an 8th soon, and my combined traffic across all of my blogs is just over 7,000 hits a month. I couldn’t really make up my mind about what I wanted to blog about, so when I had an Idea about something I might want to blog about, that could potentially become a re-occurring theme, I started a new blog for it. Here’s the short list:
- bloggerboon.com – My Personal Blog – Just topics of my general interest
- alilknowhow.com – My guide / walk through blog. If I learn how to do something I post a guide here.
- outdoorsmanboon.com – My Outdoorsman blog, stuff I do outdoors goes here. Shamefully its almost empty
- bodybuildingboon.com – My Bodybuilding / Fitness blog. I document my weight gain and bodybuilding progress here, mostly to help myself, but hopefully to eventually help other people.
- And 2 photo blogs
Generating good content has really been key. Somehow Google knows the difference between crap and good content, and now when I write something new, it seems to be crawled by google and shows up high in results almost immediately. If I had been writing crap this whole time, I could have 10 times more blog posts but 1/10th the traffic. Content is always king. No matter how good your SEO is, content quality still trumps.
———————————————————————-
Original About Me Page:
Well I have interest in becoming a professional blogger and am on my way. So far I have two blogs running and hosted through go daddy (see my blog roll for my other blog), and I am still going through books learning everything I can about the subject. Having just read “ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income” I now have a much better understanding of the world of blogging. This has lead me to my next book, “SEO Warrior” which will teach me how to get the best search engine rankings for my blog posts.
I have 1 year left in university. I am getting my degree in Marketing. I’ve been thinking that after I will continue taking courses in media and communication, and possibly pick up a second major. In both of these fields I have found that the material can be directly applied to blogging, which makes them that much more interesting.
So why blogging? Well I have always had a love for web design. I want to be an entrepreneur, and I never want to have to get a real job (ex: working for a marketing firm). Starting in high school, I took my first class for HTML and I became infatuated with web design. Moving on I learned PERL, PHP and ASP.NET on my own with the help of some pretty thick text books. I have been trying to find a way to apply this knowledge in a way that can make me some money. At first, this started with me trying to create competitor social networking sites to myspace and facebook (before they became complex and before so many social network platforms were widely available and worked so good.)
Years passed and unfinished projects started to accumulate. The only thing I had actually published was a website for my mother’s business. I spent 99% of my time building platforms for projects and almost no time publishing content. It was recently that I discovered content management platforms like Drupal and WordPress (I cant believe it took so long!). I could focus almost all of my energy on content and not worry about the platform, bugs, security, etc.
I actually haven’t spent a lot of time reading blogs and there is only one that I follow (saabsunited.com) so I have a disadvantage there. The concept of the “blogosphere” is almost mind-bloggling and I wasn’t even aware of it before reading the Problogger book.
So far I am relying on writing content that is easily findable through search engines… until I figure out how to write content that would attract a returning audience. I’m not sure what my niche is, or what it could be, but I’m sure that will come with time.
And that’s me, that’s where I am as of December 2009. It will be exciting to see where I am a years from now, maybe my ads will be making me more than 60 cents a month lol.
I Confidently host all of my websites with Hostgator
