Set and Forget? Not a Chance

Wednesday and Thursday were busy days with both work and school so I thought it would be a good idea to see how my blog fared all on itself. No new posts, no updates, no links and no redesign of any sort. I did check the dashboard for a view and money count at the end of both Wednesday and Thursday and the results were disappointing.

I only landed 10 hits on Wednesday and 7 hits on Thursday. Of those 17 visitors over 2 days nobody clicked any ads so the total income was $0.00.

These last two days removed the fantasy in my mind that a blog is a money tree. You cannot plant a seed and water it once a week to receive the best results. To paraphrase a bit of the info I have read, a successful blog begins with a lot of work and very little monetary return. Some of the top blogs all reported an average of six months of minimal returns before things started to take off.

Do not be discouraged if you are not instantly overwhelmed with visitors and ad clicks galore. Stick with your niche and learn it exclusively. Size up the competition and learn from their strengths and weaknesses.

A full detailed summary of this week's adventures will be posted on Saturday. This summary will cover all the points and tips I have highlighted this week from blog inception to inculcating advertisements and posting.

Clean & Crisp

Ad Overload

I had to delete the Amazon ads. I know I said that I would wait a week and see but I think the lack of color customization on the majority of the ads made the site look overtly tacky. It looked something like this picture to the right.

Side note: I was also a little miffed at the degree of difficulty in getting blogger to coordinate with amazon through the monetize tab. Every time that it would ask me to enter my user name I would plug it in but then it would just reset to the opening screen once I pressed enter.

In a fit I decided to just rip them off of my site, change the background and theme of my site a bit and reword the title of the blog. I did receive the usual amount of traffic (40 unique visitors a day) but hopefully it will pick up in time as I add more content and master the use of key words such as Money, Making Money, Blog, Blogging and Making Money Blogging. (See what I did there?)

I realize that blogger is a starting step for bigger things and does not allow the amount of traffic an independently hosted blog would accommodate, but it is free and easy to use. This experience is a great deal of fun and each day I seem to learn something new.

I am interested in how to effectively market my blog and will spend some time researching that today. Any helpful sites or resources I find will be posted in the Links List section on the right hand side of the page.

Day 3 Summary

The highlight of yesterday was signing up for Amazon affiliates and then being disappointed at the clutter the ads caused. Perhaps I do not know how to customize all of the widgets that house their ads but I am going to continue to let them run for now. I will be sure to post a full summary each week with bullet points as a synopsis of things learned and most outstanding tips and tricks that I have discovered.

Total earnings were around four dollars for clicks and I still think this is from promoting the blog on my Facebook page. Perhaps today I should send out an email to family and friends and see if any would be interested in following. I am not showing up on any Google searches and think that changing the name of my blog might assist in this so I will attempt to do that today. "The Challenge" has turned out to be too generic, especially in a blog connotation. A possible new name could be Making Money Without Spending Any or something. Not too keen on it but I am trying to hit those keywords and march up the search engine results.

All in all this experiment is a lot more enjoyable than I initially thought and money is trickling in. Shameless plug for a Kindle incoming to see how this link + image feature works in the blog composition area. Because honestly, who doesn't like kindles!?!

As always comments, questions and suggestions are encouraged!

Amazon!

So I signed up to be an Amazon affiliate and now have a few more widgets on my site thanks to them! Also if I mention Amazon.com or type in Amazon's Website and someone click's on it then I believe I earn a monetary credit. If someone clicks the product links from my site and actually goes through with the purchasing of the item I am supposed to receive up to 15% commission. The odds of that are low at this point and not really the focus of this blog but I thought it might be worth learning about for other people who may have different goals in mind.

It is beginning to be a little crowded on my blog now and I am a little put off by how I cannot adjust the background color of the two amazon widgets in my footer. However I am going to let them ride for a week or so and see if they generate any hits or traffic before taking them down.

I do not want the blog to become overwhelmed in ads and widgets and the real meat of the information of how to make money blogging to be lost by the reader. A happy medium must be out there and I will be sure to experiment with different layouts and color schemes to attempt to procure it. This is all about experimentation and honestly I am a little overwhelmed with the customization options that this blog offers.

Work Week Day 1 is about halfway through and I will be calling it around 11:00 p.m (PST) to tabulate my results. I will probably do the comparisons tomorrow as my brain does not function well in the mathematics department late at night.

Work Week Comparisons

Yesterday I was fortunate to get a few clicks as it was Super Bowl Sunday (amazing game by the way) and I am curious to see if more traffic is generated on the weekdays as opposed to the weekends. I am also tracking night time traffic vs day time traffic and will post my chart of hits at the end of the week.

My YieldBuild account seems to have kicked in and is now synced up with my Google AdSense. Today I am going to figure out how to add a 4th zone just to understand how. Google AdSense only allows for 3 zones to display ads which is fine because I think that there is a diminishing returns in the amount of ads a person may feature on their page at this level as the reader may be overwhelmed by the clutter of ads. Still I would like to know how in the event that someone else asks.

Ultimately once this site is launched and hosted privately I will attempt to sell specific ads for my page as opposed to letting a computer determine which site will be featured. 

One site that I have come upon in my research that I was thoroughly impressed with was AskShane. It is a website about building an online business and has a plethora of insightful articles on blogging for money. 

Hop over and check out his website.

Day 2 Complete!

Well it was Super Bowl Sunday so I am sure many people had football on their minds. This may not have been the best day to attempt to attract people to my blog but I still was able to rake in $4.48 from ad clicks. I signed up for an account on YieldBuild.com which is supposed to enhance your Google Adsense with High Quality fillers or something. It initially was confusing but it was free and anything that enhances is good right?

Well while trying to implement it I reset my ads on accident so be mindful of that. I was back to cupcakes and the generic Google ads which was frustrating cause my ads were just starting to reflect the content of my posts. In the next 24-48 the Yield Build ads should kick in as well and we will see if it produces higher results as promised on their site. I am still only generating about 50-60 hits a day so I will need much more exposure to get an accurate test anyway.

Tomorrow starts the working week though and we all know corporate America likes to sit at their desks and browse the internet while they should be working and being productive. So hopefully I get more hits and these people click the ads (which should be back to theme appropriate links).

I have to say that this is honestly a very fun process and I am definitely learning a lot. I have been somewhat glued to the computer screen tracking hits and clicks but it really does not need so much babysitting. That is a good thing right?

I am very curious as to what the working week will bring and how the number of hits correlates with my effort in promoting this bad boy. Follow along if you wish and as always tips and critiques are always welcome in the comments section.

First Click!

I have received my first click! Thank you to whoever it was as Google Ad sense does not allow you to click your own links. They track the IP addresses of the people who click the links internally to make sure that you do not have an automated bot program repeatedly clicking your ads and filling your pockets with cash unscrupulously.

So far my favorite part about Google Ad sense is that it automatically scans your blog for repeated and key words and automatically adjusts your ads to the topic you are discussing after a bit of time. I will continue to reiterate words like money, clicks, cash, blogging for money etc etc. That way when people stumble upon my blog they will be shown ads such as how to increase net traffic as opposed to an offer for six cupcakes. Don't get me wrong... cup cakes are awesome but not so much in this context.

As this is an online blog your comments are welcome. To any of my readers who have already been through this and have tips and suggestions whether they be about layout or site design please feel free to contribute your wisdom! I am going to attempt to search similar blogs on this topic today and see what their approach is.