I think all to often we see articles and advice that you can make money blogging but then when moms go out and try it they may  only sew a few dollars trickle in. They get discouraged and they think they have been duped or that it is a matter of luck. Some quit blogging and others continue but are highly dubious of the moms who “claim” to make real money. I know I felt that way at one time. I saw Internet Marketers online claiming to make upwards of 5-10 grand a month and when I managed to squeak by with only $50 after busting my butt behind the screen…I was skeptical.

I am not skeptical any more but I am realistic. Some of the figures floating around are not going to be within the reach of the average blogger. Much of it is about having the right niche at the right time. Much of it is about having the right voice and the right writing style. BUT much of it is still about working hard, finding a unique voice and site, testing and tracking your efforts, and always looking for ways to put your content in front of more and more eyes.

I saw this article online today that addresses a WSJ claim that bloggers who have 100,000 uniques per month make on average $75,000. In my personal opinion that figure is crap. I am sure some do make that much but they must have a super hot niche with hot affiliate products to promote. That just cannot be the “average” IMO. I had 88,000 uniques to just ONE of my sites last month and that would theoretically make me $66,000 richer this month. Yeah… that didn’t happen. If that HAD happened I would be blogging right know from my villa in Tuscany or my condo in Costa Rica.

So how can you gauge the amount of money you can potentially make? Heck if I know!

Well, actually I saw a much better model on Frederic Patenaude’s site a few weeks back. I like Frederic because he makes a very good living online in the raw foods niche. He also does some business to business stuff but mostly I see him promoting health and information products so he is closer to my “niche” than a guy who promotes IM stuff. The IM niche (Internet Marketing) model is not very relevant to me and what I do.

Anyway in his graph, in the video on that page, you see the general figures you can make depending on the size of your list. He claims that if you have 3000 readers you can make about $1500-3000 per month. For 5000 readers the number is $2500-5000 and for 10,000 readers the figure is $5000-10,000.

I really like this chart but that may be because I have had results that mesh with it. My list number and monthly income falls within the second tier and I DO see gains when my reader numbers go up. For me the key is having regular readers and also still having that search engine traffic that comes from relevant, focused, content. Those visitors don’t always subscribe but they DO buy and they do increase ad network revenues.

So overall I find it better to work on building your lists (subscribers) rather than just trying to drum up high traffic numbers. The money is in the list.

If you want to make money with your blog eventually you will likely consider joining an ad network. They basically act as a broker for advertising and their large reach and network of bloggers makes it easier for them to contract with big name advertisers. You devote a spot on your blog, usually a  top position for their ad code and whenever they sign new advertisers they automatically show up on your blog and you get paid on a CPM basis. The ad network does all the work finding advertisers and collecting the money. This makes it easier for YOU to make money selling ads. But is it always peachy working with ad networks? In one word, NO.

Foe one thing, joining an ad network typically changes the way you blog. Many bloggers start out using full RSS feeds where their readers can read all the content in their feed readers. But no money can be made from ad impressions by doing that so bloggers will usually opt to use summary feeds and make their readers click on over to the actual web site. Readers may get annoyed and they may stop reading. At the very least you may have fewer actual readers since you only have a title and a short summary to catch their attention.

Ad networks may also contract with advertisers you and your audience do not approve of. While most networks allow you to opt out of certain campaigns some can get by you and it is highly embarrassing to have junk food ads displaying on a  healthy eating blog, for instance.

Ad networks are also getting more and more picky about your content. A large network that I use recently added a bunch of new rules for their bloggers. You have to post at least once a week, you cannot review products given to you by a company that are valued at over $40, and you cannot do a company sponsored giveaway of any kind. Another ad network disqualifies any social media traffic, like referrals from Stumbleupon or Digg.

More and more it seems that companies wanting to buy ad space on blogs do not want compete with your other money making ventures. They do not want their ad next to giveaway for another company or a review of another product. They want their ad next to a rant about potty training or your latest garden produce…safe posts that will not detract from their banner ad. Frankly it is getting rather annoying.

The network I mentioned earlier decided that you could do reviews and giveaways if you put them on a page that had none of their ads. This required you to make a custom template and relegate your content to a static page where it would not appear with your other posts or be picked up in your RSS feed.

Thanks to help from the lovely Lynette at Mom Masterminds I was able to create a custom “post” template so that I could post giveaways and sponsored reviews in a special category that would not display ads. It is a great solution for me and allowed me to keep working with this ad network. Otherwise I would have kicked them to the curb for trying to dictate the terms under which I run my business…blogging IS a business for me and the other ways I make money are none of their concern.

So if you are considering joining and ad network look closely at their policies and see if the advantages are truly worth it. And if you do decide that the money is worth the aggravation, join up with Mom Masterminds as they ALWAYS help me find tech solutions when I need them and it is all part of the membership!

Check it out…very interesting.

I am super happy with the way it turned out especially because I knew I wanted a magazine style WordPress layout and all the best ones were premium themes you have to pay for. I was just about to drop $150 on a developers license for one such theme when my stubbornness kicked in and I decided to look one last time for a freebie. Woot! The theme I ended up using is called Visionary. I love it and it was easy to customize and the layout is perfect. I was afraid to pay for a theme and then have it be so complicated I would spend a week figuring it out…I hate themes like that.

I think I had this blog up and ready from domain purchase to completely finished with 4 posts, 6 pages, 1 Amazon astore, and 2 galleries in about 3 hours.

A few days later a fellow blogger emailed me to let me know that his own blog had been hacked and spam was being injected into his blog invisibly. You could even look at the source code and not see a darn thing. He found the links by analyzing his blog with CURL and the links all went to my site…aka buy your viagra here and then a link to my blog…only there were 30+ plus links for all sorts of spammy products and drugs. Of course he went to my blog to see if I was the spammer who hacked his blog and of course found nothing..until he looked at my blog with CURL and saw I was hacked too. He was nice enough to email me and let me know.

I hoped he was wrong but since I didn’t know how to use CURL I couldn’t verify. Then I did two things to test. I went to Google’s Webmaster Tools and looked at the keywords they had indexed for my site and sprinkled throughout were the spammy keywords. Then I searched for “viagra and my URL” and TONS of links had been indexed. I was dangerously close to getting banned by Google for being a spammer and in fact I have met several people during this fiasco that didn’t catch this hack until they did get banned.

Also, via a tip to use CRON from a Mom Masterminds member (LOVE that group) I ran a CURL string:

curl –user-agent Googlebot + URL

This verified in a way easy for me to see, where the links where. I was still shocked when I saw them for the first time though. They all pointed back to my own site. The overall goal of this hack is get you banned from search engines…perhaps so the spammers can rank better for the SERPS you currently hold. They are knocking out the competition. Oh and they added new Adsense info at the bottom of the page, maybe even siphoning my Adsense commissions.

So…..the blogger who emailed me also gave me a link that helped resolve the hack. There is a lot of info there but only some of it applied to my situation. For instance some of these hacks involve code directly implanted into your theme files but my situation was a little different. My hack was disguised as a plugin and not one that you could see in the wordpress dashboard. Sprinkled all throughout my files I found what looked like image files or regular php files:

filenames “*_new.php” , “*_old.php”,. “*.jpgg”, “*_giff”

They were all coded hack files and there was over a dozen of them…back doors to keep open so the spammers could keep accessing my site. They would make a plugin run under the radar that would inject the spam links. I had to check wp_options in my database and see what was listed under active plugins…I found the culprit there, deleted the code and deleted what I thought was all the files. I also deleted all my users and there were a few suspicious ones there and I scrubbed the database. Case closed.

Or so I thought. A couple days ago I checked Webmaster tools again just for the heck of it and guess what…the hack was back. So I just cleaned it up AGAIN…and did an even more thorough search. I only found one file that I think I missed the first time but one is all it takes. Now I have CRON being run to check for spam injection links every hour on the hour and the results are emailed to me. It is a pain but I am not going to let this go unchecked again. Just today I think Google cleared out the last of the badly indexed files although some phantom keywords still show in Webmaster tools…I hope they go away soon.

Soemtimes it is not so fun to be a blogger and Internet Marketer…especially when you are being sabotaged.

Basically it keeps an eye on my visitors and tells me what they search for when they search my blog. It has already given me a lot of insight into the topics my readers want to read about and I have tons of new ideas in my slush pile. Awesome plugin!

Check it out

I did want to back up just a bit and make a comment about the challenge to make friends on social networking sites. I had not really done that before. So I started with Digg and I now have about 125 friends and 14 followers. I used to get 2-3 Diggs on my posts but lately I have been getting a half dozen or more. Baby steps…but still something.

So on to new challenges….

Day 22. Ask someone to guest-post on your own blog. If you’re friendly with another blogger, invite them to write on your own blog. If your blog is more popular than theirs you’ll have a better chance of being accepted. A guest-poster can inject a bit of freshness into your blog and, most importantly, allow you to focus on tasks other than content creation for a day.

I have put out a call for guest bloggers or even regular bloggers and I am even offering to pay them. I got lots of requests for info but no bites and no submitted posts. I am not sure what I am doing wrong there. When I have more time I will have to think about how to fix that. Right now though I am not exceedingly interested…although I am swimming in product reviews and could use some help.

Day 23. Do some SEO on your blog.SEO can be tricky, but if you know a little bit about it, set aside a day to revise and tweak your blog’s SEO. Alternately, you can take the time to learn how to optimize your blog for search engines.

I would say my blog is optimized. It has tags, descriptions, applicable post slugs, keyword rich page titles. I heavily research long tail keyword phrases and my I usually end up ranking in the top 5 (usually top 2) for almost anything I aim for. I have been pretty successful in that area.

Day 24. Buy a $5 StumbleUpon advertising campaign for your best post.$5 buys roughly 300 visitors. If some of those StumbleUpon visitors end up adding more votes to your article, the result could be a traffic snowball much larger than the one you paid for! Before you start, you can read this post at ProBlogger on advertising with StumbleUpon.

I had never heard of this before…but what the heck. Let’s try it out. I created a campaign using one of my biggest money making pages and I spent $5.00 to have it Stumbled. I will let you know how it goes and what I think.

Day 17. Think up 20 post ideas you can use. Once you know what you’ve got to write, starting becomes a lot easier. Set aside a day to brainstorm 20 post ideas you could definitely see yourself using on your blog.

I have a running list of post ideas, and keyword phrases that I collect for all my web sites and blogs. When I am running low on inspiration I just wade through that list and find something to write about. I also have an Outlook file called “Blog Ideas” where I save emails with products tips, leads, and ideas. This is a real time saver.

 Day 18. Thank your readers. Set aside a day to say thank you to your readers — even if it’s just a short sentence at the bottom of your latest post. Of course, if you can be innovative in the way you say thanks to your readers, it’s a lot more likely to leave an impression.

This is a good idea. I have never done and I guess I should eh? I have a post set to go out tomorrow with a thank you!

Day 19. Update your blogging software to its latest version. Out of date blogging software can be vulnerable to bugs and attacks from hackers. Just make sure to back up your previous install (and that you know what you’re doing). You might need to spend some time researching the transition before you actually begin the process.

 I do this regularly. Most of my blogs have a one click update feature which is a lifesaver. Although my NatureMoms blog is heavily hand coded so I always trust my designer to do those upgrades. Right now I am waiting until the new version of WordPress comes out and I test it with a few other blogs but then I will update.

Day 20. Create strong, alpha-neumeric passwords for all your accounts. If any of your blogging related passwords are single, Dictionary words or letters only, it would be quite easy for a determined hacker to break into one of your accounts. Set aside this day to strengthen your passwords by using combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation that exceed 8 characters in length. Make sure to keep your new passwords written down somewhere in a safe place (and write them down carefully).

I have a system for my passwords. They are alpha-numeric and I can remember each and every one for my dozen or so blogs because they have personal significance and blog significance. I used to just store the original passwords that came with the blog but that got old having to look them up all the time.

Day 21. Sit down and analyze your stats for the last month. Statistics can tell you a lot about what worked and what didn’t. Analyzing stats over an extended period can reveal visitor trends, popular posts and which of the promotional activities you undertook were worth doing.

Yes! Analyzing traffic is what tells me what is working really well on my blog. I can see what type of posts get the most searches and traffic and duplicate those “type” of posts. I attract hundreds of people each day looking for BPA free products. Did I set out to be the BPA free queen? No. I wrote a post about the issue and got lots of hits from search engines…so I decided to do reviews of BPA free products and got tons more hits…..rinse and repeat. Analyzing traffic is just as good as doing surveys in my mind…they really give you insight into what your visitors want.

Day 15. Write a 10-page report or mini eBook. A few hours work will result in a free report you can distribute to feed subscribers only, give out to your readers and encourage them to share, or otherwise leverage to bring more traffic back to your blog. If it’s really useful, it might even go viral.

Day 16. Try adding a new income stream to your blog. If it wasn’t clear already, blog advertising programs can be unreliable. You might be on to a sweet thing with one form of advertising at the moment, but what if the service changes, or goes bust — taking your income with it? If you’re monetizing your blog it’s a good idea to have at least two strong income streams in place, so that if something goes wrong with one, you’ve still got backup.

I am working on the report right now. It will be more of an e-book and I am putting it together to meet a previous challenge to give away something free on my blog. It will require and opt-in and it will be full of affiliate links so hopefully it will be a source of income as well.

As for monetizing my blog I think I have that down too. My primary money makers for my NatureMoms blog are Amazon, Adsense, BlogherAds, and various affiliate programs. I also opened up my blog to private banner ads too and have some regular subscribers now. So I am not looking to add any new revenue streams…just keep tweaking and tuning the ones I already have in place.

So I need to do 5 days of challenges to keep up. They were pretty easy.

Day 10. Pitch a link to one of your blog posts to three other blogs in your niche.Take the most popular post on your blog and pass along the link to the bloggers behind three popular blogs in your niche. If they like it, they may link to it in their next link round-up.

Well….I don’t really do this anymore. I don’t need to. I get oodles of backlinks for my most popular posts already but if my blog were newer I would definitely do that.

Day 11. Add social media links to the bottom of your posts and to your feed.While most people will vote for your posts via the toolbar, social media links or icons can remind people to vote for your post if they liked it. It’s even more essential to add these buttons to your feed, because there’s no easy way for people to vote straight out of their feed reader. Using a FeedFlare to put an ‘Add a Comment’ link at the bottom of your feed items is also a good idea. FeedFlares are available under the ‘Publicize’ tab in your Feedburner control panel.

I have the “Share This” plugin on my blog so there are social media buttons on the actual blog posts but NOT in the feed. So I did need to take advantage of that missed opportunity. I added several FeedFlares and I added them to some other blogs too while I was at it.

Day 12. Participate in the comments on one of your own blog posts. Readers will feel as if you’re interested in what they have to say, you might learn something, and you’ll also increase the comment count on your post.

Do this already. 

Day 13. Work out an editorial calendar for your blog. It’s a lot harder to put off writing a post when you know exactly when your blog is due for an update. Working out an editorial calendar can help give your blog a sense of rhythm. It can also make you more productive through setting firm deadlines for new posts.

Generally I post Monday thru Friday for the Naturemoms blog. I take the weekends off. So I think it has a sense of rhythm already.

Day 14. Prune your feed subscriptions.I suspect some bloggers spend as much time reading feeds as they do writing posts. Pruning your feed collection can help you save quite a bit of time. If you find yourself regularly skipping feed items from a particular blog, or if you can’t think of one thing you’ve learned from reading a particular blog’s posts, it’s probably best if you unsubscribe.

LOL. I needed this bit of advice. My feed subscription list has gotten quite massive. So I spent some time today pruning and removing some of the blogs I read as an after thought really. Many of my subscriptions are actually recon work…I am scoping out my niche and some are blogger friends but TONS are political (liberalism, libertarianism, etc), personal interest (frugality, crafting), and faith or faith/politics. I read entirely too many blogs. I pruned…probably 100 blogs from my reader…sorry guys.

Mission accomplished….