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.)

Goog Cash4U - Beware of Money Making Scams!

Goog Cash4U which is also GoogCash4U.com and comes up in browsers as "SundayBikeRides.com" when typed in, is among the latest in potential money making scams. Making money from home is something everyone wants to do, and when they see the attractive advertisements online that make it look so easy, they're immediately lured in. According to GoogCash4U, you too can make money online by simply signing up with them and following their simple advice. You can be your own boss and work on a laptop while you sip drinks on the beach... But beware!

Scams run rampant when it comes to online moneymaking ventures, and this one does not look much different. The Goog Cash 4 U site makes claims that you can make up to $250 to $943 a day online just by using search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. We all wish it were that simple, but it takes a lot of hard work to make money online. Don't be fooled so easily! Don't be fooled by their claims of being on major cable stations either, unless you actually saw them on there. They cite ABC, MSNBC and CNN, but are really referring to the fact that "working from home" has been discussed on those networks.

The product being advertised by the site is an Internet Wealth Builder, which supposedly will teach you the easy path towards passive income and wealth online. They say the product guides you step-by-step to learn how to place online advertisements, target a worldwide audience, make money with every ad click, and then get your paycheck from the search engines...

Of course to get in on this, they want your Full Name, Country, Zip, Email and phone number. I'm sure they won't harass with phone calls or emails right?

Basically take any claim like this about how easy it is to make money online with a grain of salt. I've been in the online moneymaking world for several years now, have read ebooks, studied other successful blogs, websites, and have done a lot of my own research. Most likely, this program wants your money, rather than wants to make you money. Tread with caution and investigate any opportunity fully before you jump in. If you give up your info to them, be prepared to possibly be hounded.

If you want to learn some real secrets to making some money on the internet, I recommend you check out The Rich Jerk's ebook for a one-time price of $10. At least this guy doesn't hide the fact that he's obnoxious, yet loves to make money and shares his secrets..

Content, Competition, Comments & Copycats

Phew...Out of breath, but back again and still going strong! Last month was an extremely busy one for The Monetizer, but to sound like a broken record, it was my best month yet in terms of online moneymaking. Ever since I went on a tear with Hubpages and Infobarrel, I greatly increased my earnings, and have started working on additional income streams beyond just Google Adsense. It's great to generate all that money from Adsense, but it's also good to know there are other ways to make money online besides the big G. I'll discuss a few of those here today as well as some other things on my mind lately about MMO...

Make Money with Amazon Associates vs. EPN

With the recent banning of eBay Partner network links on Hubpages, Squidoo and Blogger, I worked feverishly to pull those down and in many instances replaced them with Amazon Associates. I have to say I'm quite pleased with the results as I focused on a specific product and made more money with Amazon Associates this past month than I ever did with EPN! With the Christmas season coming up, I'd recommend if you want to make money online you consider setting up Hubpages and Squidoo lenses to focus on Amazon. People shope there in droves for the holiday season, as well as eBay. eBay seems to be moving to a earnings per click structure in October though, so it may be best to work on Amazon-based content.

For a well-written, thorough post on how you can bank on AA with the holidays approaching quickly see Tracey Edward's article How to Make Money with Amazon.

Content Writing to Make Money

Don't get me wrong, writing is a passion, but even our passions can cause us to burn out and become drained. I have been doing A LOT of writing over the past several months, but the hard work has payed off. It's like they say if you do what you enjoy, many times the money will follow, and in this case it has. I haven't outsourced anything yet, although I tried to with Entrecard. Its marketplace seems to be full of ads that no longer are any good, as the few I contacted for directory submissions and writing eZine articles never answered their ads. No big deal, as for now I'm doing fine with writing my own stuff. On the recommendation of Ben at Make Money Online with SEO, I joined JetSpinner, which is an article spinning site. Basically you'll write or take your articles and insert special spin notation code into it, then press the button and BAM! It will generate 50 or however many your specify articles of unique content that you can use on various article sites. The paid membership will allow even more cool features such as a thesaurus and article directory submissions.

I'll be honest, it's all new to me, and as much as I love writing, setting up the spin notation can be quite a chore. An article that may take me 20-30 minutes would take an additional 15-20 minutes, but the results you'll get are 50 unique articles you can use for linkbuilding. If you're not outsourcing, you're going to do a lot of work, so consider it. Check out Jetpsinner here

Comments Probably Won't Make you Money

Comments on blogs are always a delicate situation, and I've been finding a lot of spammers lately as well as the "I just found your blog and don't know what to say, but really enjoy reading it and will be back again. - Betty ". I'm sure you've seen that one at least a few times if you have several blogs you run. I also have started getting a lot of link exchange requests on some blogs for subject matter that doesn't even relate to my blog. It's a sign of the times, as you increase your internet properties, you're going to find more and more spam, and lazy commentors looking for a quick fix of traffic. I'm not sure if the people commenting on Blogger blogs understand the concepts of DO FOLLOW and NO FOLLOW yet, but they'll learn. I'd rather spend my time writing articles with DO FOLLOW links then waste money on a program or service just to spit out the same comment on NO FOLLOW blogs. That's just me though.

Clickbank Update

Keeping with the C theme here on this post, I earned my first Clickbank check. Many people out there are great with Clickbank, and it's something I'm aiming to get better with. If I target the right products, I believe I can start earning extra income through that. As it stands now my top earners are Google Adsense, followed by Amazon Associates, then Linkshare, which is an affiliate program. Squidoo comes in here or there with a payment, but as we know their whole system is a mystery, because Seth Godin likes it that way.

Competition & Copycats

I've always enjoyed competition, but not when people become shady with it. I've read on blogs by several of the hard working moneymakers that people on various sites simply stole their niches or ideas. Well recently, I found someone went beyond that and actually stole a bunch of content from a website I run, and just plain pasted it as articles on Hubpages. I was flabbergasted, to use a favorite word, so I alerted the Hubpages staff about the culprit's articles. If you're reading this, shame on you, in the end you'll only lose out from being dishonest and lazy. Competition can be healthy, but online it can get downright dirty, because people just don't play nice. Hiding behind the computer monitor makes it easier for some individuals to be just plain lazy and sheisty. With that said, I won't let one or even a few dishonest individuals stop me from my quest to make money over the internet.

Here's to your success,
The Monetizer

PS: I want to recommend a free e-book I found that is well worth the read. It's called "You were Born Rich" by Bob Proctor. Yes, it's about the law of attraction, but it's extremely interesting and contains other insights into what could help you become a multi-millionaire. If you haven't read it, it's very inspiring and will help you determine just how successful you really can be, whether it be in this moneymaking online, your job, or life in general. To get the book go to www.bobproctor.com, enter your Name and Email, and you'll be able to download a free PDF copy of the great book!