How Would You Like to Make Money Today?

Posted on February 25, 2008

If you’re like me, you’ve started a blog with the intent of making some money, whether that means you have dreams of throwing back a brewsky in your custom-built office, buying a brand new Mercedes, or (like me) you just want to make some extra couple of bucks to pay off your legal bills.

Most bloggers make the mistake that they can only have one or two items on their list. That’s not true! Let me steer you in a very different direction. You want to make multiple streams of income that will generate at least $100 per month for you.

Now, before you begin your blog, you need to stop for a few moments to actually write what those different streams of income will be. This is going to be your business strategy. Feel free to update that strategy whenever you want. In fact, I keep my strategy as an unpublished page so I can access it at any time. This isn’t a full business or marketing plan, either. It’s just a simple list.

When I first began my site (5 Star Blog), this was my list. Take note (at the time of this writing) that I have not implemented any of these items except for the donations. This is my “wish list” as it were.

Google Adsense Ads - one big block ad at the top of my article, and one big block ad at the bottom of my article.
Donations - put a nice little link at the bottom of each article to ask to (a) subscribe to my RSS Feed, (b) subscribe to my Mailing List, and (c) ask for a donation.
Text Link Ads - for a set amount each month, I’ll sell a block of banner ads on my sidebar.
Affiliate Program Links - I’ll recommend books (Amazon) or products that would benefit my readers. I’ve made a vow only to promote products that I believe in, which leads me to -
Joint Venture Prospects - Once my site gets up and running with traffic and subscribers, I will go out and solicit JVs from all those affiliate programs.
Sell My Own Products - I intend to write multiple eCourses, and sell those too.

Your next step is to figure out how much you want to make from your site. This is your income goal. This is an arbitrary figure, but I wanted to make $2000 per month. Along with my web design skills (I occasionally freelance for local companies), I believed that this this amount is what would make me happy.

Every month that you own your site, write down how much money you’ve made until you’ve reached your goal.

This entire process isn’t difficult, and it’s actually tremendously beneficial to your site in the long run. If you take about 15 minutes to create this bulleted, targeted summary of your income-generation strategy, you will stay focused. It will help you stay on track, when dozens of flashy opportunities arise.

Your list may be much different from my list. Decide on which one is the most important to YOU, and design your site around that one, because the way that I’ve designed my site isn’t necessarily good, say, if you want to ask people to donate money to you rather than use ads.

Lastly, don’t reinvent the wheel. Go seek out successful blogs and see what makes them tick. I’m not suggesting that you copy what they’ve written or designed, that’s just illegal (copyright infringement), but do take note on what seems to work for them. I decided that my ultimate goal was to sell my own eCourses after I visited some bloggers who were making a good buck doing it, and the information they offered wasn’t even that good. (I’m not saying that I wanted to create bad eCourses, just that other people’s stuff wasn’t as good as they claimed and they were still making lots of money doing it.)

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What do you think of my blog article? I’d love to hear what you think!

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If you enjoy my site, I would very much appreciate a donation so that I can pay off all these nasty legal bills.

Like my blog? Buy me a cup o' joe. :)

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