Dec 13
Fixing Up – Bush Mackel (Part 3)
Hi there true believers! If you’re just joining us…
In Part 1 we looked at the spirit of this site – Where it has come from, and how it evolved into what it is today.
And in Part 2 we looked at what I defined as “success” for this site since I’m a firm believer of aspiring towards very specific goals.
Today in Part 3 of Fixing Up – Bush Mackel, we’ll start to figure out how this site will achieve success by looking at its sources of revenue.
Bush Mackel’s Current Revenue Sources
My November 2007’s Study of Blog Earnings was pretty representative of how this site makes its bucks. And primarily, that’s through sponsored posts, (sponsored review, pay per post, etc) and to a MUCH lesser extent, AdSense. At the beginning of all of this stuff, I said I would work through all of this in the most intelligent way I could, and I think part of that is really analyzing what I’m currently doing… So let’s.
Sponsored Posts
It’s really easy to talk about the same old stuff with sponsored posts so I’m going to try and avoid the normal conversations here about the “true nature of blogging” and the like, and approach this from more of an entrepreneurial/business standpoint.
Even with 0 PR, I could conceivably write a sponsored post every day for $5 to $10 for a total net of say $150 to $300 a month. The problem with that is as many of you know, I treat my sponsored posts like my regular ones which means I work very hard on them. PLUS, even though I’m a bit rusty on my PPP rules, I’m pretty sure every sponsored post has be surrounded by a regular post. So – just looking at this from primarily a PPP view – I currently would have to write 3 posts every single day to make that $5 to $10 a day. To say it another way…
The juice ain’t worth the squeeze!
If you look at it from a hourly rate position – 3 quality posts take me well over an hour. And if I’m to be paid $5-10 for that work, that’s like 10 bucks an hour! Now back in my first job, I’d've been thrilled with that rate! But then again, I was thrilled to be driving a 1986 Volvo that was missing a door too.
…And then there’s Google
You have probably noticed that my site has a PR of 0. And while I stand by the notion of not resting on Page Rank, I do think that this latest slap by Google may be a warning of even worse things to come like being ousted from search engine results. And while I don’t do too much on this site at the moment that is influenced by search engines, I DO get SOME search engine traffic and I really don’t want that to dry up. Refraining from using sites like Pay Per Post and Sponsored Reviews (oh, and Text Link Ads) on here may be enough to get back in the good graces of Google and that’s something I really want to do.
So how will I make my income when I’m essentially going to cut off my primary revenue stream? You probably have a good guess already. But that and other thrilling questions will be answered next time. So stay tuned – Same Bush Time! Same Bush Channel!
December 18th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
[...] the last part of this series I revealed that I was FINALLY going to get away from this site’s main money maker, sponsored [...]
January 8th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Hey Bush!!! Put that hotdog down for a minute will ya? hehe:) Just to make you feel better, think about this. I know several blogs only 2 months old with like 25 posts and hardly any incoming links sporting a PR4. Like you and Baron and Aaron, I have a PR0. That proves PR is not working correctly. The best part is, not a single person on Earth can explain it!!!! Isn’t that great? Anyway, I’m finally back to blogging but I feel better now that I don’t check my stats. Technorati and Alexa are only temporary anyway. Alexa is every 3 months, techno links last 180 days…so it’s tough to keep it going year round. BTW…I have never written a single paid post and don’t have paid links of any kind…so why am I punished. My WGM blog is a PR4 and I haven’t written a post in months…hahahaha:)
January 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am
@Bobby – Hey buddy! Glad to hear from you. Hope everything is going well in your world. Over here, we had a beautiful day! Me and the wife actually went to lunch and ate outside. Gotta love that. (#):)
…Of course, we were in the shade so we were a bit chilly after 5 minutes. Ha ha
So yeah, good notes about the PR. It’s definitely something that I’m not as fixated about as I once was, but I’m certainly leery about Google taking away my search engine traffic which would leave me quite sad. I’ve been getting some hits on some odd posts that really made me smile lately. (#):)