Bush Mackel

If it’s another month, it’s time for another roundup of Blog Earnings!

Mine were pretty paltry last month, but that’s fine by me. My site was really going through some big changes, both on its physical front, and also the mentality of its author. (That’d be me).

January is shaping up to be better, but that’s really not saying a whole heck of a lot considering how much I made in December.

But as they say, “You have to crawl before you can walk.”

Ha ha ha. I swear I scoured all of your feeds and sites but had a lot of trouble trying to find your earnings! So if you want to add yours (which I hope you do), just drop a comment! (I’ll probably revisit this post this afternoon and see if I can find some more sites) (#):)

In the last part of this series I revealed that I was FINALLY going to get away from this site’s main money maker, sponsored posts, and instead start down a new path of revenue freedom.

And if you hadn’t already guessed, that new path is…
Direct Advertisements!

(Shocker I know).

But how will I start down this road and how can you do the same?

Continue reading to find out!

Why Direct Advertising
In the last part of this series, I explained (and pretty well I thought) my feelings towards sponsored reviews. The recap : Too much work for too little pay… But besides the whole time thing, the fact remains that by having to go through companies to handle the “middle work”, I’m losing money. If you’re able to contact an advertiser directly, you get to keep all the money.

More money makes more sense right?

Direct Advertising Solutions
So I’ve taken a good while to think about it, but I think I’ve finally managed to figure out what advertising solutions I’m going to offer – Not that it’s brain surgery or anything, but I wanted to make sure that I personally was OK with what I was offering and wasn’t just whoring my site out for a few extra bucks that would end up turning away people in the end. So here’s what I’ve come up with:

• 300×250 Inline Post Ads – $100
• 125×125 Sidebar Icons – $20
• Reviews – $50

If you’re wondering where I came up with those prices, I first tried to think about what a “fair” price would be. To do that, I thought about what I’D be willing to pay for similar services on similar sites, what others were charging, threw it in a pot and came up with this! Now I BELIEVE the rule in all of this is to start with a really cheap rate and then see how it performs, but I’m hoping my special offer will be enough to woo potential advertisers over! What special offer you ask?..

The Special Offer
It’s December 18th. The a little more than half over and it’s the holiday season. So IN THE SPIRIT OF GIVING I’m offering the following deal for my advertising slots!

If you purchase a 125×125 sidebar icon spot for $20 by the 25th of December 2007 you get all of the following:

• Of course, a 125×125 icon for December
• BONUS : a 125×125 icon for the ENTIRE month of January
• BONUS : a FREE review of your site in January

I know. Wowee wow wow! Of course the next step with this is putting up an advertising page (which I assure you is coming) but if you would like to sign up, just shoot me an e-mail (bush@bushmackel.com) right now and we can put it all together!

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!

Even though I’m a week late to the party, here’s the roundup for my monthly study of blog earnings!

It was a pretty good month for me both on content, comments and revenue so I’m really looking forward to the next couple of months…

Especially in regards to the “relaunch” of my blog as it were which will almost certainly see some changes to the sources of revenue that I target.

Ok, enough blabbing…

If anyone is interested, here’s how my earnings shook out:

1. $65.00 – Sponsored Reviews
2. $46.00 – Pay Per Post
3. $6.09 – AdSense
4. $2.45 – Text Link Ads

No doubt that the ONE sponsored review I managed to snag last month bumped up my earnings considerably… Certainly a far cry from my $10 Pay Per Posts (not to knock them). Even though I don’t have my mind made up on the subject yet… I think there’s a fair chance that this will be the height of my revenue for a while but we’ll see when I figure out what I’m doing on that front…

Anyone else care to share? If you are so nice to post your earnings and the rest, I’ll go ahead and update this post w/ your information (including a shiny new link for your site/post)!

If you’re a blogger who does sponsored posts, chances are you’re very familiar with Pay Per Post.

And you’re probably also familiar with Google and how they have been pummeling the Page Rank of sites that “sell PR”, by using specific anchor text to link to sites.

Obviously this site has already been hit which is why (as of this writing) your Google toolbar says this site has a PR of 0.

Thanks Google!

How I Feel About PR
Well as I’ve said before, I’m not mad with Google. All they’re doing is trying to make their search engine the best it can be and selling links using specific anchor text we are undermining their efforts is we don’t use nofollow in our tags. But as I’ve said before, the big problem I have with all of this is that Google has not officially ever said, “you can do this, you can’t do that” and with their Webmaster Tools, I don’t think they have a good excuse to not give an official word to all the webmasters who WOULD play by the rules if they knew what they were.

Introducing Real Rank
So getting back to Pay Per Post, they issue posting opportunities to its members based largely on Page Rank and Alexa Rank. When all of their members’ sites started going to PR 0, they (thankfully) did not change the Page Rank of their members’ stats, (likely because they would’ve had a freakin’ hard time trying to fill all their opportunities). So after all of this, it was really only a matter of time before a new ranking system appeared, and it looks like Real Rank is the first one to get its head above water. Here’s a snippet of the description from IZEA (parent company of PPP) :

…gathers REAL traffic information, much like your analytics platform and ranks users based on their standing within the network. The formula is relatively simple.

70% weighted towards visitors per day
20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
10% weighted towards pageviews per day…

Does Real Rank Fix the Problem?
I guess it depends on what you think the problem is and what side of the ball you’re on. The reason why I felt obliged to make this post was because of Court’s post on the subject, where for him it came down to the question,

Can You Survive Without Google?

In his opinion he said that “[.01% of bloggers don't care about Google]“. I would argue that it is probably much higher than that. I think there are a TON of people who have turned away from Google for whatever reason… AdSense doesn’t yield anything for them, and they’re not getting anything for G’s Serps. And I think for these people, Real Rank may provide what they need to make a buck from their site. Now I’m not saying that it will help them make 13K a month, but maybe the “few bucks” they’re looking for that helps them in their everyday lives.

What About For Me?
I don’t know. I’m kind of in the middle of all these things… I’m always working to improve my AdSense earnings, but while that’s going on, I love making some side cash with Pay Per Post. And as Courtney points out, I think it’s a fair bet that Google won’t stop on these penalties and will start banning/de-indexing sites all together. If THAT happens, there will obviously be a drop off for me on visitors, which of course impacts every other stat including my new Real Rank. Maybe this is a time that I should consider changing MY business plan for this site. Of course that would I’d have to have one first…

What about you? Do you care about Real Rank? Is it making you consider doing things differently with your sites?

Yesterday, we got a pretty good dialog going during my “If You Couldn’t Be Paid for Blogging…” post. So before I forget, thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments! And speaking of those…

One comment in particular by Christine brought up the interesting topic of sponsored posts and kinda started a mini conversation in regards to how we should treat those sponsored posts of ours.

My Brief Thoughts on the Matter
As I told you guys yesterday, my thoughts on the whole thing were changed after Opal gave me a talkin’ to on the matter. And where I am now with sponsored posts is I try and do the best job I can with them. I try to make them as good as I can… I try to make them engaging for my readers and I try to provide value for my advertiser not only for the sake of doing a good job but for the sake of attracting future advertisers to the site.

But here I go again blah blah blahing. Look, even though I kinda led us into this conversation, I think it’s now wholly on Christine’s lovely shoulders so make sure you say “hi” to her today by adding your two thoughts to her post on the subject over on her blog!

Thanks guys and again remember, this conversation will continue over there!

A little while ago, while we were discussing this mess with Google penalizing people, Valentin got me thinking about a very important question. For me it boiled down to :

“If you couldn’t receive any kind of financial compensation for your blogging, would you still be at it?”

And I think for a lot of us, it’s a very interesting question to explore.

…So let’s explore.

Your Blog’s Revenue is Now Zero
Of course we’re dealing in the hypothetical, but WHAT IF by an act of God, your blog could no longer generate any revenue? That means no sponsored posts, no direct ad sales, CPM, CPC, no anything! And you’re not allowed to invent another revenue stream either! So just to recap – Your blog can’t make money, PLUS it is not allowed to help another product make money, online or off.

Would Your Content Change?
Most of us are currently in the “thick of things” as it goes with our blogs and the internet, myself included. We forget that quite often, we blog about things only because we think we’ll get paid in someway for it. But if the money incentative went away, how would your blog change?

I can tell you that this site would be quite different. Firstly, it would be much more personal and you’d see me talking every last thing that popped into my head. Some posts would be short, and some would go on for WAY too long. And besides the structure of the posts (which again would be all over the place), the biggest change would probably be in frequency. I don’t know which way it would go either a lot less or a lot more, but it would definietely be different.

Why Do YOU Blog?
I guess that’s really what it all comes down to. And I think this is the reason why sometimes us bloggers have little tiffs with each other. We all have our reasons for blogging, and sometimes those reasons can be very different. I think in the blogosphere you definitely have those that are writers at heart and thus blogging is very personal to them.

Consequently, they can sometimes feel as if advertisements are perverting their craft. And I can understand that. I think for these “purists”, they feel the blogosphere would be much better if advertisements and the lure of money w/blogging went away.

… Now I’m not really trying to say anything with this post, but I thought the whole thing was very interesting to think about. Would you still be blogging if there was no longer any money in it?

You would think that taking off blogging for like two weeks certainly couldn’t've helped me.

Well shocker, it didn’t. Ha ha!

But it’s ok, this month is bound to shape up better than the last with my site now having some ok PR, and more importantly, me working on it consistently.

In any event, here are the numbers for last month!

If anyone is interested, here’s how my earnings shook out:

1. $43.59 – Pay Per Post
2. $9.73 – AdSense
3. $5.00 – Blogvertise

For some reason, I don’t mind looking at these figures this month! I could’ve done a lot better but it would’ve all been done to doing more sponsored reviews and well, you can’t do sponsored posts when you’re not posting on your blog to begin with!

AdSense was interesting this month, just about doubling from last. Maybe I’ll do a post about it later, but I’m really perplexed as to why my earnings increased as much as they did.

Anyone else care to share? If you are so nice to post your earnings and the rest, I’ll go ahead and update this post w/ your information (including a shiny new link for your site/post)!

I’m almost embarrassed to post how much I made last month.

I’m not gonna lie.

But you know what?

No war was ever won in a day and no journey was ever completed with a single step. And with that said another month is behind me and I continue to battle on.

Now onto the good stuff!

If anyone is interested, here’s how my earnings shook out:

1. $20.00 – Review/Me
2. $10.00 – Blogvertise
3. $4.16 – AdSense

*ugh* I hate looking at these crummy figures of mine. And I’ll tell you why. I think my blog is worth more than what it’s pulling in. By far. But then, that’s really an emotional statement based on how hard I think I work on it. … I could go on much longer on this tangent but perhaps I should save that for a post. (#):)

Anyone else care to share? If you are so nice to post your earnings and the rest, I’ll go ahead and update this post w/ your information (including a shiny new link for your site/post)!

Two months ago, I discovered Daily Burger.com’s “make money online blog list” and was inspired to make a list of my own…A study of his list that broke down the revenue totals with Alexa Rank, Page Rank and Revenue Source.

For the past two months, I’ve gone back to Daily Burger but it seems like there hasn’t been a post in quite some time. So I decided to have my own Blog Earning Reports! Apart from names and sites appearing on the list this time around, you’ll also see my pitful numbers… At the bottom of the list!

If anyone is interested, here’s how my earnings shook out:

1. $50.00 – Pay Per Post
2. $35.00 – ReviewMe
3. $10.62 – AdSense
4. $10.00 – Blogsvertise

All in all my profits have gone up quite a bit from last month, but they’re still nothing to write home about. (Just on my blog) Worse yet, since I’m under the cap for Blogsvertise and AdSense, there’s no telling when I’ll actually SEE that money. And of course with PPP I have to wait a freakin’ month to get that money. *ugh* Oh well. I figure though that if I can keep earnings up I won’t care that payments are deferred a month because I’ll constantly have money coming in anyway.

Anyone else care to share? If you are so nice to post your earnings and the rest, I’ll go ahead and update this post w/ your information (including a shiny new link for your site/post)!