Why blog - to earn or not to earn...

I found it interesting that when Jackie wrote a post about monetizing a blog someone left a comment asking, "What if you don't want to monetize your blog?"

Jackie responded with the simple and sensible... "Then don't" ;-)

I find myself still pondering the question. It prompts me to remind myself, as well as others, to be clear about our purpose, passion and pleasure when it comes to blogging. If you're blogging for public viewing you might want to ask yourself to what aim? Are you simply interested in sharing information? Looking to make connections with others who share your interests? Perhaps you simply enjoy writing and find pleasure in drawing an audience to appreciate your talent. Maybe you you want to supplement your current income using a blog. Maybe you want to ramp up your current income and a blog will complement that. Or maybe it's a combination of any or all of these.

At this point, I hope you have an idea of the kind of blog you would like to start as well as the reasons for starting that kind of blog.

Naturally, if you don't want to monetize your blog you would not provide any links in your blog that would connect you to payment for a product or service. And if you DO want to monetize your blog then you DO want to connect through links in your blog with something that pays you directly.

We've talked about how to get ideas and be clear about the kind of blog you want, some of the ways to drive traffic to your blog so that people are actually viewing what you are sharing and we've mentioned some of the ways to make money from your blog.

For those who DO choose to add an income stream through their blog I want to talk a bit more about that.

Text links are advertisements placed on your blog in the form of hyperlinked text. Just in case you're not familiar with the term 'hyperlinked' it means there is a link to a url embedded (hidden) in an advertising message like

"Cl'ck here to get the FREE Report Cash Pulling Blog Tactics Revealed!" or it can simply be a single word like "Toddlers" which will contain a link to a site like Jackie's lens offering activities for toddlers.

Text links like this have become very popular and are quite effective because they show up within the commentary that is only being read by people genuinely interested in the subject... a very likely candidate for your product or service.

Something I'm just learning about are text ads...
I want to share with you something I've discovered through the guys who wrote that report mentioned above:

There are basically two ways to add text ads to a blog:

1) An advertising broker

2) Text link generation software

In exchange for a share of the revenue, the following
brokers will add text links to your blog:

Adbrite.com

Advolcano.com

Blogads.com

Blogkits.com
Chitika.com

FederatedMedia.com

Text link generation software is a really great alternative
to text link brokers because you do not need to be approved
by a broker in order to start running text ads and you have
a lot more control over the both kind and quantity of text
ads appearing on your blog.

Perhaps the best software for generating text ads is called
Click Bank Text Ad Generator. Once installed, this software
will automatically scan all of the content of your blog for
certain keywords and turn those keywords into affiliate
links for products listed on Clickbank.

The products listed on Clickbank are great products to link
to because they tend to have much higher payouts than
physical products. With clickbank, it's not uncommon to
have $97 product with a 75% commission payout ($72.75
payout per sale).

A few text ads with a $72.75 payout can be very lucrative,
even if you only receive a few hundred hits a day.

For example, suppose again that your blog was receiving
just 500 visitors a day.

If 10% of these visitors clicked on one of these high
paying text ads every day and 4% of these visitors
purchased the product you would then earn a whopping
$145.50 every single day!

10% x 500 = 50 clicks

=> 50 x 4% = 2 sales

and 2 x $72.75 = $145.50!!!

And remember that all of this would be done without you
lifting a finger!

....Talk about easy money :-)

Fascinating to me are all the new discoveries to be made... we might not have the time or inspiration to implement them all and that's okay... adding even a couple of new actions periodically will boost your traffic and boost your earnings.

Here's to Prosperity!
Catch ya later...

--Mary K

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EXPECT MIRACLES!