Writing for Your Wealth

There are a lot of ways to make money from your writing, and as I’ve mentioned before, building sites that display Google Adsense is the way I got started.

I’ve since diversified my income streams a bit and earn money from other advertising programs and independent link sales as well, but Adsense continues to be a cash cow for me. Some people might begrudge Google the cut they take, but since I’m an introvert who hates anything remotely customer service related, I don’t mind at all.

For those who don’t know already, I edged up into the six figures bracket with Adsense income this year. This was accomplished by, as always, working an hour or two a day on my sites. I don’t spend any money on Adwords or buying traffic, so just about all that income is profit (I spend less than $1,000 a year on hosting and domain name registrations).

That said, I’m not a “guru” by any means, and I don’t think you have to be either. I don’t spend a lot of time studying the system or trying to game the search engine results, and if you’ve seen some of my sites, you know they’re pretty simple and not anything spectacular. The biggest thing I have going for me is that I enjoy creating content and I’ve been doing it for four years. As I’ve mentioned before, the “sticking with it” factor is huge.

I’m pretty open to talking about my strategies for making money with Adsense, and that of course leads people to ask questions. I got a slew of them from Glenn at Cool Health Secrets, and I figured it’d make sense to post the answers here instead of just emailing them. If one person asks, there are usually lots of others who are wondering!

So, here we go…

In your experience, does a site have to be fancy looking to get good traffic?

Fancy, no. In fact, a busy site with a lot of widgets and design elements can be detrimental to your Adsense earnings. The more things there are competing for people’s attention, the less likely they’ll notice your ads and click them.

I generally find blogs less lucrative than straight article pages, and I think a lot of that is that you’ve usually got more extensive menus and busier headers and sidebars with blogs. The more options (to click or look at) you give people, the less likely they are to take the action you desire.

I’m a big fan of simple sites. Google is a great example of a site that is simple but useful and efficient. Their search page loads quickly, and there’s nothing confusing about it. Even if it was your first time there, you’d know exactly what you were supposed to do.

I do, however, try to avoid building sites that are straight out ugly or designed to trick users into clicking on ads. There’s a lot of truth to the ugly-sites-get-higher-click-through-ratios saying, but at the same time, people don’t usually link to ugly sites. If you’ve got some good and unique content, you have a shot of attracting free links, but if someone visits your site and rolls their eyes because it’s all in-your-face ads, they’ll probably avoid throwing you that free link.

Do you do any extensive keyword research?

I do some, but I’m probably not as extensive as some folks. I generally use it to select a niche and for writing articles, but don’t worry about it for blog posts. I’ll use the keywords I’ve selected in the headers and body of the article, though not to the extent that non-SEO-studying folks would notice.

Before I pick a new niche, I’ll look up related keywords and see how many people are searching for those terms each month. I’ll also see how much Adwords advertisers are paying for their high bids in that sector. If not many people are researching the topic and/or advertisers are bidding much, then I’ll usually pass on that niche.

I’ve always found the free keyword tools helpful enough for my purposes, and these days, I use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool more than anything else.

How did you select your niches? Personal interest or as there was money there?

Yes.

If there’s something I think I’d be interested in writing about, I’ll spend a bit of time looking up keywords and seeing how much advertisers are paying in that niche. If Adwords users are bidding more than a couple of dollars for clicks, then that’s usually good enough for me.

Next I’ll check out the competition. If there are already comprehensive, well-ranked information-based sites out there, I’ll typically pass unless I can come at things from a unique angle and I’m really interested in the topic. (Competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean you’ll have to work hard to get to the top.)

If, on the other hand, the top ten results in Google are all for e-commerce sites, then I know there’s probably a need for a solid non-biased information site in the niche.

I have confidence in my writing ability. I have a degree in English and have a few sites and have even published a few articles in magazines although I’m not a seasoned pro there. Any tips here, though?

Well, in most cases, this is your “day job” and not an art form. I spend a lot of time varying sentence structure, choosing action verbs, creating compelling action, and editing for concision… when I’m working on my fiction.

For the non-fiction I write for the web, I wouldn’t necessarily say that I put quantity over quality, but I’ve generally do the research, whip out articles, proofread them, and put them up, in a fairly short time. They’re straightforward and informative, but probably not scintillating.

Fortunately, if you are a writer at heart, you can probably construct articles hastily that are a lot better than 95% of what is out there. Most people would rather buy “PLR” articles, blatantly copy and “spin” other people’s articles, or hire someone to write for a penny a word or less. In other words, there’s a lot of crap out there, so it’s possible to do well just by being a solid writer who communicates well through words.

I will admit that you probably have to work a little harder today to stand out. The success of Adsense has spawned millions of article-based sites that are “straightforward and informative, but probably not scintillating.”

So… what was the question again? *pauses to scroll up*

Ah, writing tips. Okay, here we go:

Write content that is informative, but it’ll help a lot if you can also be entertaining or remarkable in some way, because there is a lot of information out there. Ask yourself: how can I make this better or more interesting than what’s already up on the subject at Wikipedia?

Seth Godin’s Purple Cow is worth a read if you haven’t checked it out before.

Also, work on building not just a collection of articles but a community of people who will help promote your work for you. I was slow to jump on that bandwagon, and I wish I’d worked more at it earlier.

Any unique tips on getting links? How much time do you spend on that?

I’ve changed my link-building strategies over the years, as what works and what doesn’t (for getting search engine love) is always evolving.

I started out doing link exchanges and submitting to directories, but that won’t get you far any more. I have written a lot of articles (with links to my sites in the bios) for ezinearticles.com and other article databases and continue to do that today, though so many people do that now that I’ve really seen the returns go down.

I have also experimented a bit with buying links as a means of reinvesting my earnings, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that, since Google frowns upon those who attempt to boost their site rankings this way.

These days, I’m doing some guest blog posts (writing articles for existing blogs in exchange for a link to my site), and if I were starting from scratch, that’s the method I’d put the most effort into. You get free, permanent, one-way links from established sites, and that is one link-building method that has always worked.

Of course, the best links are the ones you get for free through no extra effort of your own. These are the links that I’m always most pleased to get since it means someone found my site useful/informative/entertaining enough to write about without any added incentive to do so.

The main ways I’ve noticed for getting those types of links are:

1. Write the definitive guide for something–create a post or article that wows people with the information and/or insight.
2. Be the first to write about something cool.
3. Be provocative and write what others are afraid to (I’ve never used this strategy, but I’ve seen it work for others).

The Catch-22 is that you usually need to be on someone’s radar before anyone will notice how cool, informative, and insightful you are. It helps to leave comments on the blogs of people you really want to notice you. (And it helps if you want to be noticed by bloggers who don’t already get 100 comments per post–shoot for your “popularity peers” or those slightly above you.)

How many sites do you have?

Somewhere between 10 and 15 with the majority of my income coming from the top 2. One site is updated daily, three or four sites are updated weekly, and the rest I’ve lost interest in and update sporadically if at all.

I’m actually trying to get to the point where I let most of the others go, focus on one or two sites, and turn them into real businesses. With my main home and garden blog, I want to experiment with hiring other writers to expand the content at a more rapid pace. That’s something I’ll probably try in 2009.

Do you prefer your blog(s) over static sites?

For the ease of updating, my vote goes to blogs. That said, my static article sites always have higher CTRs than my blogs. As I mentioned above, I think that has a lot to do with the busier nature of blogs. My article sites don’t usually have pictures or anything except the content, the ad blocks, and a simple menu. My blogs certainly aren’t as busy as some, but when you’ve got comment boxes, blogrolls, etc. there are still more things to distract your readers.

What I’m doing with my biggest site now is going a bit hybrid. I’ve got the blog, which I update daily, and I’ve started adding an article library. The blog posts tend more toward this-is-cool-and-or-helpful-so-check-it-out while the articles are longer and more this-is-what-you-need-to-know-before-you-undertake-this-home-improvement in nature.

Do you plan on building more and more sites and/or blogs?

No.

Yes.

Maybe.

I don’t really believe in building tons of sites or blogs in the hopes that each one makes a few dollars a day (in fact, I wrote about why it’s better to focus on one or a few sites than many), but…

I’m an idea junky, and I have a hard time restraining myself. Just last week, I started up a new site, heh heh.

Okay, that’s it for this blog post. Anyone still reading, or did you fall asleep?

If you have more questions, you’ll always welcome to hit contact and send them in, and of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading!