I’ve Taken A Few Detours

I remember growing up and all through high school, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. There were so many choices, and so many possibilities. One week I was set on becoming a scientist, the next I was sure the career path I would follow would be that of an optometrist - then it change to business.

When I finished high school I enrolled in a Bachelor of Biomedical Science - which I did one year of before decided that science wasn’t for me. The next year I completed the first year of a Bachelor of Business, but got frustrated with the fact that all they taught me to do was work for someone else - when I wanted to learn how to start my own business.

After that I started a Diploma of Financial Services with the intent of getting into stock broking, but before I could finish that course I was offered a Traineeship in Real Estate Sales - which I took. At the end of the traineeship I decided that sales wasn’t for me and started working for my dad, building houses - which is what I have been doing for the last 12 months.

Why Am I telling You This?

Because not everyone is able to slip straight into their lifelong career right from high school, sometimes we take detours and other times we have things to learn before we are ready.

It takes a while for us to find out who we are, what we are meant to do and how we are meant to go about doing it. The funny thing is that we never usually end up where we think we will!

I remember when I was growing up, EVERYONE I knew thought I was going to be a scientist, doctor or in some other medical related field. I was smart, I read nonstop, I was interested in it and studied it in my personal time - but as I got older I started to grow and develop. To search and to learn. And I ended up in a totally different (not right or wrong - just different) spot than myself and everyone watching my life had expected.

It Is The Same With Our Blogs

When ever I start a blog, I have it all planned out. The theme, the content, the style. I have a mental picture of how I expect it to look in 6-12 months time. But just like with our lives - it never turns out like we expect!

Looking back at the last 6 months of this blog, I have seen it go through stages of growth as well as times of staleness. I have watched myself change the way I blog and tweak the way I convey my thoughts.

I have tried:

• List Posts
• Tutorials
• Motivational Posts
• Competitions
• Video Blogging

And I am sure some of you would by now be thinking ‘ just go ahead and choose your blogging style already.’

But what I am doing now is exactly what I did as I was growing up - I am finding myself and my blogging style. I am seeing what works and what doesn’t in the purpose of finding myself in the midst of millions of other bloggers, and in the process - setting myself apart.

In the last 6 months I have noticed a few things that I have learnt about finding your own unique blogging style that I hope will help you in the pursuit of finding yours. Read more

Have you ever noticed that the majority of bloggers have maybe one or two methods of making money from their blog - and that’s it. For example they will have adsense and private ad sales, or the affiliate minded ones will have their adspots with affiliate links as well as promoting affiliate links in their post.

Today I want to take a quick look at the different ways you can make money from your blog and hopefully you are able to at least pick up another revenue stream.

1. CPC Advertising

   This is adsense, bidvertiser or another other advertising program that pays you per click. Usually this is where people start and most of the time it is only pocket change -  a dollar here, a dollar there. However some blogs do make a substantial amount from adsense, but these blogs are usually in niches outside of the MMO or blog about blogging niches.

   I use adsense on a couple of my blogs, including this one. Only one of them is pulling in over a dollar a day, and that is a blog outside of those niches I mentioned above.

2. Affiliate Ad Sales

   When you blog is new, you realise that no one is going to buy your adspots because you have no traffic stats. So what do you do? You sign up with Commission Junction and Clickbank and ad your little 125×125 ads, hoping that someone clicks though and buys something.

   Affiliate ad sales can be quite lucrative if you find one that your readers seem to connect with. I know a lot of hosting companies are paying $90+ on the affiliate sales (pity HostsBlog.com can’t seem to get any referrals yet :P)

3. Private Ad Sales

   This is the path I have taken this month with my Adspot Auction. And seemed to do alright. I mean I’m no John Chow making $500 a month per spot, but its a start. Your adspot price usually seems to be determined by RSS subscribers because while I am earning about $10 per 125×125 spots, Tyler Cruz is selling out his 125×125 adspots and his alexa rating is almost twice what mine is (even though he has 4 times the subscribers!)

   But if you can make good money off your private ad sales it does provide a steady income.

4. Paid Reviews

   Similar to private ad sales, where you get paid in advance for the ad. A paid review is where you get offered money to write a review about someones product of website. Prices for these vary greatly and it doesn’t necessarily depend on PR, feed count or traffic.

   I do a mixture of private paid reviews and using paid posting websites. Currently my private paid reviews are $30 - and I get about 2 of these a month, and paid posting websites which can be quite lucrative (I know Jim from TheNetfool.com got $200 for one paid review using the program I also use, Sponsored Reviews - they pay great and have a great referral commission for you affilliate ad people :D.

5. Affiliate Reviews

   Here is where things start blending together. Affiliate reviews are a mixture between affiliate ad sales and paid reviews. The way you go about making money from affiliate reviews is you find a product that you like and wouldn’t have any trouble recommending, see if it will pay you a commission for getting people to sign up to their service or buy their product, and then write up a blog post reviewing the service or product (inserting affiliate links as you see fit).

   If you can make a habit of writing non-biased reviews that once again find your visitors sweet spot you can make quite a lot of money from affiliate reviews!

   The only thing I will add is that make sure you don’t just rewrite the sales blurb the the product has on their website. Make sure you try and test it out, see how it works. Even try and score yourself a free one by telling the creator that you want to make them some sales! But just don’t rehash what everyone else is saying… (Sorry. This is a pet hate of mine :P)

6. Creating A Product And Use Your Blog As A Launching Pad

   I have watched a fair few bloggers get REALLY good results from this. I remember when Yaro announced his Blog Mastermind Program. His blog and the network he build from his blog is what really helped him successfully launch his blog. The same thing with Darren and his Problogger book.

   I am in the initial stages of doing the same, but a little bit different because I see this as the one way to make money from your blog that can quickly and exponentially increase your earnings!

I think that about covers them all, but if I missed one just let me know. I’d love to hear your stories of the methods that have work and those that haven’t - so please comment below!

As much as we would love to believe they are, our blogs are never perfect. There are always atleast a few little things that we could do to improve them! I had a quick brainstorm to give you a few things to check on yours!

5 Small Things To Improve Your Blog Instantly!

1. Check Your Spelling And Punctuation!

   This is something I am constantly guilty of and have to make myself check, but there is nothing worse that having just posted a fantastic article - expecting fantastic comments. Just to find that instead you are receiving comments letting you know about spelling errors. Be Professional!

2. Make Sure Your RSS Subscription Is Large and Visible

   Now I’m not trying to tell you to all go out and get massively huge rss buttons that take up a quarter of your page. I just personally think that you need to be advertising your RSS subscription, so make sure it is not to small to notice - and it is in an easy to find place.

3. Remind Your Visitors To Subscribe At The End Of Your Articles

   When is the best chance to convert a visitor to a subscriber? When they have just read some of your amazing content! So wouldn’t it make sense for you to give them a friendly reminder at the end of your post? I use an image, but you could quite easily use the feedburner email subscription form instead.

4. Trim Your Categories Back

   This is something I have just done! I noticed a few of my post categories only had 1 post in them, so I moved the posts over to another category and cleaned things up a little bit.

5. Format Your Posts

   There is nothing worse than reading a whole article as one huge chunk of text. Make it easy on your readers by dividing the post up into a couple of points and use titles. Not only does it make it easier to read but it looks much better also!

These are just a few simple things that don’t take a lot of effort but your readers will appreciate it! As bloggers our focus should not only be on providing great content but also on providing it in a way that makes the readers time on your blog as enjoyable as possible!

Do You Have Any Simple Tips To Add?

What Could You Do With 90 Days Free Web Hosting?

Every so often an amazing deal comes along that you would have to be made not to take a hold of! And the ‘3 Months FREE Web Hosting. No Strings attached.
‘ offer from Jumpline is one of those deals!

The great thing about this offer is that it’s not just a small hosting package where they don’t even give you enough room to host a 10 page static website - this comes with all the bells and whistles, like:

• 10 GB Disk Space (Host up to 16 sub-domains)
• 100 Email Accounts
• Plesk 8.3 Control Panel System
• Over 30 Integrated Applications
• 3 Tiered Daily Back Ups
• 24-7-365 Amazing Customer Support (Even though you are not paying!)

This offer seemed to good to pass up! So I decided to be nice to you all and think of a few ways that you can benefit (and PROFIT) from 3 Months FREE Web Hosting

3 Ways To Benefit From This Free Hosting Offer!

• Create And Flip A Website/Blog
  This seemed the logical options for me. You are getting 3 Months FREE Web Hosting so why not spend the first month building a quality blog, generate traffic to it (read my post on 5 Ways To Take Your Blog To The Next Level post) and by the end of the first month you should have quite a successful little blog on your hands - so sell it!

  The double bonus here, is that it hasn’t cost you anything to start, and you are giving the potential buyers the added bonus of 2 months free hosting!

• Test Yourself In Affiliate Marketing
  I find myself always trying new things and affiliate marketing is one of them. So instead of getting a whole new paid hosting package for your new affiliate marketing idea, buy the domain you want and then set up your 3 Months FREE Web Hosting account to see if you are making money from it before you start shelling out money each month for hosting!
  
• Build A MFA or Ebay Affiliate Website
  The thing I don’t like about ‘made for adsense’ and ebay affiliate website is the fact that it since you are targetting search engine traffic it usually takes a few months before you start getting indexed which results in clicks and money.

  Why not take advantage of this offer, which gives you 3 months to get your new project up and running, and hopefully by the end of the 3 months your new website will be making you more than the small monthly hosting fee and it will provide you with some passive income! But if you find it’s not going to make you enough money, you can just sell the website anyway!

This seems like a great offer! I don’t usually promote things like this, but I just saw the possibilities for you all to benefit from this so I wanted to let you know. So if you interested sign up for your 3 Months FREE Web Hosting and if you do, I’d love to hear what you did with it!

——————————————————

Also, if you haven’t already, head on over and check out my AdSpot Auction, where I am auctioning off all my Adspots (currently rediculously low!) to try and buy myself a new Flip Mino Video Camera!

I have noticed a lot of bloggers talking about ‘The Flip’ video cameras! I know Market Leverage have been giving away a lot of them as prizes - AND I WANT ONE!

I enjoyed making the Humiliation Video, and I’d like to make a few more for this blog as well as just have a cool little video camera for holidays. So I visited the Flips website and found out that you can personalise your flip mino for only $179 - AND I WANT ONE!

HERE ARE A FEW IDEAS FOR MY FLIP MINO:

IDEA 1: INSPIRATION

This is a picture taken in Cambodia earlier this year of my playing soccer with a couple of the local kids.

I absolutely love this picture!

REASON TO USE IT:

I like this photo because I have a massive passion for visiting impoverished nations and helping provide some form of hope to a hopeless situation.

Sport is such an easy way to break cultural boundaries and a fantastic inroad into being able to speak with them about important issues that will help to improve their way of life and make them aware of health issues.

I decided to only use the area below the lens so that it did not block out part of the photo!

IDEA 2: AFFIRMATION

This picture was also taken in Cambodia earlier this year of a group of children from a small church that had a person joke on my behalf!

REASON TO USE IT:

As I was helping run programs with these kids I was introduced as ‘Tom’ and they all laughed at me and streached out their hands and said ‘Tooooom’.

Our translater kindly told us that in the Khmer language ‘Tom’ meant ‘Big’.

The kids thought this was hilarious considering my small size. I had a following of small kids that would consistently stretch out their hands and say ‘Toooom Big’.

I have taken this on as an affirmation that my life is destined for big things and each time I look at this photo it reminds me of this!

IDEA 3: BRANDING AND MARKETING

I could go past the idea of a ‘StandOutBlogger Flip’.

REASON TO USE IT:

What better way to market a website that has video blogs that have the video camera branded!

That way whenever I am creating a vlog in a public place, or even just using it for fun, I know that people will ask what ‘Standout Blogger’ is!

And I will be able to tell them how much I love blogging and tell them to look into it themselves by visiting my blog.

Clean and sleak, the only thing I don’t like is the fact that I have the ability to use great pictures that mean something to me and I;m not.

But that could be the price I need to pay for branding!

THEY LOOK GREAT DON”T THEY?

Well I would love to order one of these today, pay the $179 and have it in my mail ready to go within a week or so. But where is the fun in that?

So I have set myself a goal. I NEED TO MAKE THE $179 FROM MY BLOG!

This is going to be a challenge consider last month I didn’t make a cent, but I think I can do it and already I have one paid review on the way - but there is still a long way to go!

Here is where you all come it

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Well I currently have 5 adspots on my blog.

• 125X125 Sidebar AdSpots
  
• 468X60 Header Adspot
  

These are not for sale for a set price! I am holding a 7 day auction for all the adspots , starting at $1 each!

This is a fantastic opportunity for you to pick up bargain basement advertising and help me get my new flip camera!

VISIT MY ADSPOT AUCTION PAGE!

To bid, comment on the page above and I will update the post with each new bid!

Consider my massive spike in new RSS readers (now 423) this is a fantastic opportunity to reach a new demographic of visitors - plus you get to help a fellow blogger out

As you know I havnt been making money from this blog and I see this new idea as a unique test to see if there are more creative ways to make money from your blog. I will keep you updated on how it pans out!

WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS

So is this an innovative idea? Or something that is destined to fail? I’d love to know what you think and any ways for me to increase the money I make while adding more value to my offer! So comment and let me know!