"Don’t worry you won’t need to sell any products or services. Other people will be doing that for you."
- Real Blog Money, Introduction
"…most people go wrong by providing mediocre information."- Real Blog Money, Introduction
Make your information different than other blogs on the same subject. Go at the information from a different angle. A couple of examples are posts on:
Even these, though, can be replicated by others. If, on the other hand, you give the information and then include your methods, your opinions, then your blog content will be different simply because it’s yours. This is a no brainer, I know, but when I reviewed some of my own blog posts I found more than one that only had facts. I will go back and make the content in those posts a lot stronger, a lot more valuable to my readers by adding a description of how I implemented the idea or what I thought about the idea.
"Affiliate or associate programs are the answer."- Real Blog Money, chapter 5
The most used methods for making money on blogs don’t bring in much money and take a really long to time to see results. The method Stables gives is super easy to do and makes money right away (and it’s not a pittance). He says to use affiliate or associate programs. Our company, TRAINING SYSTEMS, is an affiliate for many organization’s products and services but I would never have thought to link them in blog posts. The book suggests that you only put your affiliate links in posts where that product or service is relevant; don’t put affiliate links in every post you publish. Again, give more info than just words when a product/service allows them to do something better. This is what equals value. First give value/quality advice and then the money will follow.
"[These are the] best three ways to get a continuous stream of visitors to your blog. They are easy to do…"- Real Blog Money, chapter 6
There are three simple ways to attract visitors to your blog and they all involve writing. Write:
1. A post on someone else’s blog – one with lots of visitors who’d be interested in the topic of your blog and that are run by authors or other “go to guys”
2. Specific comments (that add value to the content) on popular blogs – same as above
3. Provide answers on Yahoo Answers – answer with a full explanation (if it’s voted by readers as the most helpful it goes to the top of the list of answers)
These are similar to the ideas for getting more readers in My Blog Traffic Sucks. But again there’s a twist, a different angle that Stables’ ideas come from. I’ve never heard anybody suggest the use of Yahoo Answers as a place to provide answers or comment on other answers as a way to attract your own visitors.
And always be sure to include a link to your own blog.
Many short how-to books are poorly written. This one won’t win any writing prizes but his information is solid and easily implementable. If you’ve been trying to figure out how to make money with the blog you love to write I urge you to look past his writing so you can gather his spot-on ideas.
