How to Make Money with SEO Traffic & Leveraging

It's been a while but I'm back again...As usual other projects have consumed me, but I wanted to share something I started thinking about more in the recent weeks. Once you're earning with Adsense on several sites, and maybe earning with some other moneymakers like Amazon, eBay, Clickbank, you might want to expand your efforts. You might produce several blogs or sites, and find that some work really well to make you money, while others fail.

Sometimes you discover that no matter how much traffic you might get on a particular blog site, it's incredibly tough to make money off that traffic. One example may be music or entertainment blogs, which are popular, but it's hard to say how profitable they are. These can be tough to monetize in my experiences. You try the Google Adsense route, but learn that the ads just don't get the clicks, or the ads just don't pay you jack for them. In some cases they even lead to smart pricing. So you swap out Google and try something else. If you're on blogger, you can't use eBay Partner Network, but can go with Shopping Ads or Amazon Associates. You continue to see that it's even tougher to convert, however there are some tricks, tips and other things you can keep in mind. Don't go hitting the "Delete" button for that particular blog, or decide to give up on the site. Here's some food for thought and ideas of ways to make money online with your content that brings the big traffic but doesn't seem to make you any money.

Leverage your Traffic to other Sites

Consider using a blog that gets big bursts of traffic as powerful leverage to bring traffic somewhere else. Why waste the efforts right? Let's say you've got a blog that you make no money with, but would like to, and it's getting a few thousand visitors a day based on some specific posts you did. Consider using that blog to bring the traffic to another site that converts. One example is Associated Content, where you can make money for writing online.. Over there you'll make $1.50 for every 1,000 page views. Doesn't sound like a lot but it all adds up, and that kinda money could pay for hosting charges or help you buy a domain. Maybe consider writing a general article that really sparks attention, that will get people clicking to it on AC. Most celebrity scandal topics could do pretty well on AC, so why write it about on the blog if you can do a 400-500 word article on AC that makes you some extra dinero? Another good example is to send them over to a good Squidoo lens, where the more traffic your lens gets, the better rank it achieves, and in some strange, mysterious formula, that could possibly give you a nicer payout.

Another consideration is using Widgetbucks which also pays for clicks and impressions. I used Widgetbucks in this form months ago until I earned a payout, and have re-introduced it in a few places that were scoring high traffic. Widgetbucks pays you for both clicks and then impressions, so the more impressions you get on your blog or site, the closer you'll get towards a payout. The minimum for Widgetbucks is $50, which again is not going to help you retire, but it will help you squeeze money out of that blog that's not performing.

Chitika is yet another one to try, and in their case the payment is just $10 minimum, so you can earn a bit of extra money to invest into your online moneymaking, buy yourself lunch, go see a movie, or whatever else the money can do for you.

From there, I just recommend testing to find what works. Consider trying related affiliate programs that Pay-Per-Lead on your blog. Back to our hard-to-monetize blog examples, a friend recently asked me about making money with a blog, saying he'd like to start a music blog. He specifically mentioned making money with Google Adsense, and based on experience, music blogs are tough to monetize. That's when you really need to put your thinking cap on though. Can you refer people to buying sheet music, musical instruments, artist albums, or joining some sort of subscription site? Consider using programs from Linkshare, Amazon Associates and Shareasale as well as Commission Junction.

Always think of Monetization

If all else fails, consider creating a catchy, clickable advertisement banner to go up at the top of your highly trafficked blog (or hire someone to make a simple one). Use it to grab those viewers and direct them to another site that you can make money with, or even to a Clickbank product. It will be indirectly making you money if you have your traffic sent to the right place (including AC or Squidoo). My overall point here is you need the mindset to make money online, to keep finding ways to monetize all your content, even the stuff that doesn't seem worth it. That's not to say put all your effort in, but keep it in the back of your head.

You need to try new things with the under-performing blogs until you can determine what works best with them. And yes, in some cases you'll try 5-10 ideas and nothing seems to work. Give them a chance though, maybe several thousand impressions before you swap them out though. Do your best to track the stats using what the various programs allow you to. There's no sense in letting any traffic go to waste these days, so always be thinking of ways to monetize it if you really want to profit at this online moneymaking game...

(As for Adsense, there's a really interesting, informative forum post over at Warrior Forums, you may or may not have seen from a guy that makes $300-500 a day using about 30 websites he built with Adsense. Check it out here.)

Weigh Your Moneymaking Options

In the world of online moneymaking, the Monetizer has learned a very valuable lesson we all should heed: "if it doesn't seem worth the money being made, then forget it". Case in point would be paid survey sites and those paid blogging sites. Both are nice opportunities to get a "bit" of extra money, but let's be realistic, if a site asks you to blog about a dry topic you just can't get a feel for, is it worth $10 or $20? Also, if a survey is taking you over 30 minutes to do and paying under a dollar, is it worth it? Most likely not. In either case you might be better off working a half hour extra at a real job :)

The best sources of online income seem to be the one everyone loves, passive income. The type where you've set up a site, it gets search engine love and visits keep on coming. Affiliate marketing and sales would rank as numero uno for this, where you build sites designed just to promote a product and receive a percent commission of its sale. Other examples of some small passive income would be two sites the Monetizer has mentioned, Squidoo and Associated Ccontent. Both can earn you moeny while you're away from them. Squidoo will give you a share of their Adsense revenue, if your lens page happens to be doing well. Associated Content will give you $1.50 for every 1,000 page views one of your submitted articles gets. It's not a ton of money, but if you did a timeless article on AC, you may benefit from long term income sources there. Submitting a ton of articles and making a ton of Squidoo sites could add up though. These are also both ways to promote your site as well. On each you can place links back, and on Squidoo you can go as far as to include your RSS feeds.

Deciding whether you want to put more effort into aggressive income like blogging versus setting up sites for passive income such as affiliate sales should be a major moneymaking consideration.

You also have to weigh the following when starting a moneymaking blog:

1) Do you start off with a free blog site from the get go, gauge how well it is performing, and then move to a hosted domain?

2) Do you partner up and find people to help make your site even better? Do you pay for site design and how much should you spend?

3) Do you eventually sell your site once it's built up a big following and traffic levels? How much is realistic to even ask for?

Almost every major blogger will tell you with question #1 to make sure you get that self-hosted domain from the start. Trust me it's something I'm learning the hard way about with another blog that has built up a decent following. Sometimes you may want to start from the ground up though, and maybe going with Wordpress from the start before hosting makes most sense. With #2 above, you usually can do well just finding free templates for your blog and waiting until you're making the money to afford a better site design. And with #3 selling your blog, sure who wouldn't want to pull some cash off a blog or site? The problem with #3 though is you usually will become attached to a blog or site you've done. It's your brainchild and your creation, so it will be a tough decision to wrestle with. Blogging Fingers recently was sold for $6000 though and quite honestly most of us would take an extra $6000 for a site we created. However, figuring out what your blog is worth can be a bit complex too.

So when you first start up any blog, you may way to consider the 3 questions above. If you're looking to make money from the project, you'll want to weigh the risks and rewards and consider the best strategy for your particular blog topic.

Make Money With Associated Content

Hey folks, I'm back with yet another moneymaker to add to your income stream. Associated Content is "The People's Media Company", a site which publishes high quality content such as member-submitted articles and pictures. The Monetizer had heard rumblings about it from various members of other sites here or there, but never really gave it a second thought. At first, Monetizer hadn't done the homework to check this site out and figured it only payed you money for page views of your content. Then, Monetizer read about it over on DayJobNuker.com and decided to give it a try. What a pleasant surprise this site has been so far!

The Monetizer decided to submit eight old blog entries that seemed high quality enough to present for "upfront payment". This means if the editor approves the article they will make you an immediate offer for it. Six of the eight entries were approved within several days with a payment of about $3.50 each or over $20! Knowing the Monetizer has other blogs with different topics and around 1,000 entries total, it looks like a great idea for a continual money maker.

The best parts of the Associated Content site are:

1) Your published content can be used elsewhere. Therefore, you can take an older blog entry you've done, submit it for approval at Associated Content and profit from it. You will need to select this option when you publish an article (you can choose between articles "exclusive to AC" or articles you "may have published or will publish elsewhere").

2) Payment is alot faster than other moneymakers online. There's no waiting for the following month or for a buildup of your money to a minimum threshold. PayPal payment is typically done within 3-6 business day to your PayPal account. Not a bad deal at all. Fast, easy money straight to your PayPal.

3) Once you accept an offer on the site, the payment doesn't stop there. For every 1,000 views your article gets (by others, not just your IP), you will receive $1.50. It keeps going on and on. Theoretically if you had 100,000 page views of your article, you'd receive $150.

4) Other offers will be presented to you for the taking. For example you may have submitted gardening articles that were accepted. AC may display relevant opportunities for articles with upfront payment. They may want an article about specific gardening practices and will present those opportunities to you for payment should your new article be approved.

5) You don't need a website or blog to make money. You don't need to be a blogger or own a website to qualify for this free site. Perhaps you enjoy writing or have some material already prepared on your computer. This site is suitable for just joining and providing freshly written content to.

Aside from these benefits, AC offers templates to make your publishing of content even easier. For example there are "How To" and "Town tour" type templates which allow you to publish articles very specific in nature. The site will take a little getting used to and you will need to make sure to provide articles with no spelling errors or poor grammar. Once your articles get accepted though it's money in the bank!

Surely you can see the benefits with using Associated Content's site if you're a blogger. You're using material that you either have blogged about, or will blog about in the future. It's a win-win for you, because you may have 20-100 plus blog entries to choose your article material from. You may need to tailor the piece slightly for the site, but once several of your articles are accepted, you will see new article opportunities. Yet another win for you because many of the opportunities may match your blog topic, giving you new material. The Monetizer quickly took 5 new opportunities worth $4 each and figures why not earn some extra money here? So if you like to write, need blog ideas, or have plenty of past blog entries to choose articles from, give Associated Content a try. A little extra work might provide you a nice extra income!

Head over and check out www.associatedcontent.com to get started.