A Tale of 2 WAHMs

Yup, I’m selling The Scrapbooking Source. The site has a very solid foundation, and could make a whole lot of money to those interested in taking it over. Specifically those who could add a lot of useful content to the site. There currently is quite a bit of content, but still lots of room for growth.

The site is a PR3 and was started in October 2006. The new owner also gets a full optimized message board with over 100 members. (The boards are currently “off”, but can be easily turned back on in the admin).

There are two forms of income on this site - affiliate ads and Adsense income. Neither are really optimized, so a little tweeking might prove to be useful. I just flat out don’t have the time to mess with it.
Asking price is $500 OBO. This appraisal seems to think it’s worth nearly three times that,  so I think this is quite a bargain. A few links for the site are featured on Idea Queen, which will stay in place.

If you are interested just leave a comment here and I’ll get back to you. You can also email me at contact <at> momsmarketonline.com

After playing with Associated Content for a month now, I can’t say I’m as enthused about it as I was from the beginning. Granted my original plans were just to add non-exclusive articles and see how it went, but I got over excited and started posting paid articles too.

Total earnings from just paid views was pretty pathetic. At a glance I can see Idea Queen’s blog made more in Adsense than I made in AC page views. Not a big surprise there though - I know I can get much better than $1.50 per 1,000 views with Adsense. (My averages are usually around $4-5 per 1,000 page views). Well not only that, but IQ’s blog has a whole lot more posts (over 300 blog posts verses only 40-some articles posted on AC). Of course it’s going to perform better.

As far as the exclusive paid articles go, I’ve done14 in all and made around $50 (upfront, does not include page view totals). Not bad I guess, if you figure some of those articles would have never been used for anything. Just something I wanted to write about and threw it to them. Probably better than I’d do in Adsense too.

Now the thing that really irks me is their “right” to change titles. The reason they give is they think they are making it more “search engine friendly”. As someone who is good at both copywriting and SEO, I have to say they REALLY need a lesson in both. I know what makes for an eye catching headline, and they love to rip it apart to make it sound awful. Not only that but the new title is hardly ever “optimized”. For some reason they think they’ll get more exposure in search engines, yet they forget we have other ways of promotion so those eye catching titles ARE needed.

The last article I thought I would let them give me up front payment for they even changed the body AND the title. I mean completely changed the theme of the article to something that it shouldn’t have been. The original article was “5 gifts for girls” which they changed to “gifts for 5 year old girls” and changed my content to toss in “5 year old” here and there………um, NOT what the article was about! That term was not even searched for (yes I check WordTracker). So what was the point of that?

Needless to say I’ve had enough of them tearing up my titles and changing them to something stupid for absolutely no reason. Yes it’s “their site” but it’s MY name attached to those articles. While I enjoyed the extra pocket change the last month, I think I can find more productive ways to earn better money long term. I do plan to toss them some non-exclusive articles (they can’t change those) for page view payment only, but I think that’s it. Guess I’m not ready to sell out just yet.  :razz:

I tipped quite a few of my favorite blogs as well as some that I admit I just found today …
Why? 

Well, where else can you get quality advertising directed right to your target group for such a low price?

I tipped some of my favorite blogs that I learn from as a “thanks” for all the help.

I tipped popular blogs that target the same market that I am.

I’m also thinking about all the exposure I’m getting for such a low price!  I didn’t pay more than $5 for any of the tips I left.  (You can’t beat that.)

What am I talking about you say?  I’m talking about the Scratch Back & Top Spots that you see on almost every blog you visit now, lol!  We have one - you can see it over there on the left hand side.
<< ——

When we put ours up, we decided to keep the price low so anyone can afford to advertise their business.  You can get listed in our top spots for only $2 each.  Your ad stays up until it gets “bumped”.  I absolutely love this concept!  (yes, I’ve become addicted to tipping, lol!)

So, take a closer look at some of your favorite blogs. Chances are they too have a Scratch Back “Top Sites” list on their blog.  Say thanks to your favorite publishers by dropping them a tip and get some great exposure in the meantime.

You’ll be surprised as to how affordable MOST of these unique little tip jars are! No more letting a tip w/ nothing but a little bit of good karma - you actually get something in return

Oh and one of the things that I’ve noticed as I went about tipping … a little “tip” I can share with you.  Find blogs that are related to your niche and use the same ad text for each one.  Remember - it’s been proven that folks need to see your advertisement at least 7 times before they’ll act.  The more visitors see your ad … the more branding exposure you get

Want another tip? If you have your own blog and have the SB list on yours … I’ve also found that scratch back owners often like to return the favor What a great way to network a bunch of like-minded blogs together.

And I’m not ashamed to admit … I sure wish I was the guy who thought of this! (Err … gal!)

I’ve been tipping for quite some time but today I really went on a tipping spree - why? Because I’m seeing results!

I have a problem. For some reason, I have an inability to keep my mouth shut at times. It’s not that everything I say is “bad” or “inappropriate”. Nah, I’m just a rambler. I talk ALL THE TIME, sometimes about nothing at all. I’m also addicted to caffeine (cappuccino and Dr Pepper). I’m almost always “wired”, so this doesn’t help any. Even as a child people use to whisper “does that girl EVER shut up?”.

Fortunately there is a perfect career for me -  blogging. Who knew I’d grow up and be able to cash in on my ability to ramble? Currently there are three different blogs I can ramble on whenever I want that makes a little cash on the side. Each have different topics for me to ramble on so it keeps my friends and family happy to not here me babbling every minute of the day.

Idea Queen’s blog is mostly designed for my every day mom life babbling. You know, things about the house, kids, recipes, gardening, and that sort of thing. Here I’ve talked about issues with my oldest, cool things I did for supper or my bread machine, and household tips I’ve found helpful. I share crafts and activities with the kids here too. Adsense is the main source of income here, although sometimes I’ll pass along a cool site with an affiliate link (I’m addicted to fabric sales, and apparently so are my readers).

Candle Talk is the blog I feel comfortable “spamming” on. Alright so It’s not all advertisements, but mostly where I share what candle I’m burning for the day. Yes it’s a marketing tool, but it gives me a chance to babble about specific scents and things related to our candles. It’s my business to talk about candles, I can say a lot some days. Obviously I make money blogging here because many readers go on to buy candles from us.

2wahms, well I think you know what this blog is about if you are here right now. Mostly business and wahm related stuff. Where I can vent about stuff my family would just completely tune out if I started rambling on because they have NO idea what SEO means (nor do they care). Ya’ll here “get” that random business stuff. It’s main purpose has been an SEO tool for other sites of ours, since we get loads of backward links from here (the more we blog, the more we rack up links, and the better our sites rank).

Now on occasion there comes a topic I want to ramble about that just doesn’t seem to fit any of the other topics. Sure Idea Queen often becomes the “dumping ground” for all things I want to talk about since it’s got that “general parenting” theme (hey I’m a mom, anything I say is by default mom related!). Although sometimes there’s stuff I know an average mom just wouldn’t care about. I know not ever topic I hit on is going to interest every mom, but there’s still some stuff that’s just bit TOO far out there (some of the games I play for example are more targeted to younger, single crowds….it just happens to be MY hobby too). That’s where Associated Content comes in.

Granted I really don’t think general rambling works and I really see it as more of a place for more “formal” articles, but a little personality in them doesn’t hurt. Regardless it’s a nice place to write about topics I want to talk more about and can’t post anywhere else. No one ever said I wasn’t good at organizing my random thoughts and putting them in article form!

So for those of you who can talk for hours about nothing at all, you can actually MAKE MONEY doing just that. All it takes is a little blogging knowledge and an account at AC. It seems the more I ramble the more money I make. Funny how that works, huh?  :grin:

Last week I posted about finally discovering Associated Content and my general thoughts on the idea behind it. After putting up a few articles this week, I thought I would share my results.

First off I realized I had to really bulk up most of my articles because they didn’t meet the 400 word minimum. Oops. I’ve been very use to writing quick articles for those who don’t have a lot of time to sit and read extremely long pieces (we’ve got compliments on how quick some of our articles are to read, and how they like the fact it gets straight to the point).

My original plan was to just add my articles and see what  happens, but this hasn’t been the case. No worries, I really didn’t have any other project that I wanted to work on this past week and it’s been a little crazy around here. So re-writing articles wasn’t that big of deal. I will note the time it took me to do this though later on to see if it’s really worth the time or not.

In all I added 25 articles to the site. Here’s the break down of all those articles:

- 2 are exclusive content and still pending, I just wrote them this morning.

-  3 were exclusive and currently published (took just a few days, even though they say up to 2 weeks).

- 2 were wrote for their “call for content” but are still non-exclusive (meaning I can still use them elsewhere if I want to, even though I wrote them specifically for that site)

- The other 18 were articles I already had sitting that just needed work. The first 3 had to be manually reviewed, but the rest I published instantly. They were of course submitted for PPV payment only and listed as non-exclusive. I’ve used them in other places and can use them again.

So far I’ve been paid $9.47 for the exclusive articles in up front payment. Which I know, it’s pretty low for 3 articles, but I guess I don’t see it as a big deal because they were articles I probably would have NEVER used anywhere else (and trust me, no one else would have bought them either). They were focused on online games and didn’t fit with my sites. So I see those three articles as something I probably would have babbled to someone about at some point that I got paid for. Keep in mind that’s just the UPFRONT payment I got - who knows what they will get in page views.

As for the rest of the articles and the PPV income, well that’s a pretty small figure. Today the page view totals were updated, and I’ve got an estimated page view total of 86 or $0.13. HA! Well for less than a week (actually 4 days, since I had nothing live until Friday), I can’t say that’s too terrible. Plus the idea of the PPV side is more of a “bonus” instead of a main stream of income no matter which way you look at it. AND this was somewhat instant, since I’ve been signed up for less than a week. It took a whole lot of time and effort to get that many page views racked up on my sites.

The funny part is I really haven’t done any promotion. I just sorta threw those articles up to see what would happen, and already have gotten a few page views and a few buck from it. It was kinda nice to have some flat rate pay for a quick article for a change too, instead of “hoping” that maybe it would drive traffic which would produce income. Plus who knows, as my clout goes up the amount per article might too which is fun to think about.

If you are on the fence about spending time on this site, I would say go ahead and give it a shot. Especially if you have a few articles you’ve already submitted to directories - might as well make a few extra bucks off them

For some reason I get a kick out of taking my Google checks to the bank. I always like to see the face of the bank teller when they see my little old name on a check from a very well known company. I guess I feel proud that I’ve “cracked the online code” and am displaying the fact that I work from home successfully.

If you haven’t guessed by now, Adsense is one of my main streams of income. I do have several streams like any good internet marketer, but it’s one of the checks I always count on at a certain time every month. Everything else comes “whenever”.

The other day I got to thinking, what would I do if Adsense disappeared tomorrow? What if Google just decided on day to pull the Adsense program?  Now the chances of that are slim to none, since they would lose a LOT of revenue. I mean seriously, my check is rather small compared to others online marketers. And that’s only a PERCENTAGE of what they got for all those clicks. Don’t doubt for a second they aren’t getting the majority of the share just for the content side. That’s got to be a good chunk of THEIR income, so I don’t see it going away any time soon. Maybe redesigned, but not completely pulled.

Regardless, it’s always good to take a second look at your streams of income. If one disappeared, would you lose the majority of your income? Direct sales reps suffer from this quite often when a company decides to “switch gears” and delete their program. Which is why I’m such an advocate of personal websites - if your company goes belly up, you’ve still got your site and all the hard work you’ve put into it. YOUR site doesn’t go away, and you can always redesign it for a similar company (or affiliate programs).

So take a minute today and look at your different streams of income. Can they be replaced? Is there something that can make MORE money? What else could you put WITH it? Important questions and worth looking into!

I’ve been playing around a bit with the format of Idea Queen, trying to increase it’s bottom line over the last week or so. The most traffic comes from the recipe pages, so when I tweek the ads, I usually start there.

There are three ad spaces within the content of each of the recipe pages. I call them top ad (above all content and just under the title), recipe ads 1 (usually under the intro of the page), and recipe ads 2 (towards the end of the content, but usually not last).

First I tried some banner ads at the top. I know, usually not the best converting, but I figured I’d give them a shot. They were PPL ads (meaning I got paid per lead, or sign up) and for something free (didn’t cost them anything to sign up). I really thought they’d do better than they did, but I guess it just proves that most people are completely blind to banner ads.

That didn’t go well, so I moved my subscription box to the top. Still not bad, but my CTR for the Google Ads (which were near the box and on the bottom ad) was terrible. The sign up wasn’t all THAT great either - less than 10 subscriptions a day. For the amount of traffic those pages has, it really wasn’t that impressive.

So then I switched it to this order - Adsense at the top, banner ad second, then sign up box with another adsense code last. WOW what a difference it made! My subscription rate stayed about the same and still no response to the banner, but my Adsense CTR went from 1-2% back up to 4%.

Granted that’s not the best, but it’s BETTER. Also it’s only been a day since I changed it all, so it’s hard to say what the final stats will be. All I know right now is I got some instant results and improvements by just changing things around a bit. This was actually the way I had it set up before for the most part, and I probably shouldn’t have messed with it.  :oops: But how will we know what works and what doesn’t unless we try?

Over the years I’ve seen some nice looking sites. I’ve seen some pretty bad ones too. In fact, I think I’ve seen more bad than good. Why do you think that is?

Well for one, we know not everyone has an eye for design or has good web designing skills. What one might think is “really cool” may be completely ugly to the next.

But I also believe the reason we don’t see that many well designed sites is because they aren’t search engine friendly. I don’t get to see them because they aren’t ranking well for things I’m searching for. It’s unfortunate really, but Google is just a bot after all. It don’t know what looks good, it only knows what it can read.

Just today I was looking at a site that had a very nice looking navigation. Unfortunately because it was written in javascript, Google couldn’t read it. As a result, her internal pages weren’t even indexed. Nobody will ever see those page in a search result, and they’ll never see the well designed navigation.

So what good is pretty if no one sees it? It’s not really. However, there IS a way to balance “pretty” with “search engine friendly”. With use of style sheets, graphics, and basic SEO practices you CAN have a nice looking site which people will SEE. It just takes a bit of practice and knowledge.

I highly recommend Cricket’s free SEO class to get you started.

This is a plugin that I’ve wanted to add for some time now.  I believe a long time ago when we added a bunch of plugins we added something similar but it didn’t work well :(  This one came highly recommended as well as I use it one someone else’s blog often so cross your fingers!

Now you’re able to check a box before leaving a comment that will give you email notifications of any future comments.  According to the plugin site, this is to be one of the most popular WP plugins available mainly because it “helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commentors to come back and stay engaged in the dialog”.  I can see exactly how this would happen!

The name of the plugin is Tempus Fugit and if you’re interested in seeing the rest of the features or downloading it yourself, click here.

We’re in the process of testing it … please let us know if you have any problems with it!

Yes I’m still keeping up with the Be a Better Blogger series over at Lynn’s blog. Although Monday’s post about brainstorming 20 blog posts has tripped me up a bit.

For this particular challenge I’ve been focusing on Idea Queen’s blog.  I left 2WAHMs up to Anita because I knew she wanted to join in on the challenge too. Plus my other blog needed some attention and improvements.

I thought 20 posts was going to be a snap, because I have several different ways to brainstorm posts. Also the idea about using an editorial calender helped as well (Actually I came up with a similar idea to make this work for me). I do have several posts for two specific days sitting in drafts. It’s the other days that has me stumped.

The problem here is not really lack of ideas for posts, but rather lack of GOOD ideas. Right now I’m thinking of all kinds of money making posts I could do, but nothing free and valuable. I don’t want to spam my visitors on a daily basis. The goal here is to build a relationship, get them coming on a regular basis, THEN spam them (HA! NO, I am SO kidding!). Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with a post designed to make some money - once in awhile. Lately I feel like I’ve been doing way too many spam posts.

I suppose if you look right now you’ll probably think the posts you see are pretty good free information. But my ideas for posts like that are dwindling. About all I have left in drafts of this 20 blog post challenge are for the “special days” (which I have two now - Frugal Friday and Monday Organizing) and posts designed to make money (AND give a little information of course).

What I think I need to do is come up with a few more ways to brainstorm useful posts. Sure I cook almost every day and that’s helped the recipe section, but even those ideas are dwindling. I think I’ve posted just about every meal I’ve ever made at this point. Here I thought I could ramble on forever, but 200 posts later I’m stuck.  :shock:

So the plan for today is to dig a little further into Lynn’s awesome post about brainstorming posts, and come up with 20 (or more) posts I can use on any given day. Once that’s out of the way, I can feel better about slipping in posts with affiliate links attached.  :wink: