Jerry D. Russell dot Com

I hear it all the time.  People who are otherwise very successful bloggers saying that they can’t make any real money with sponsored posts.  I hear cries of “there aren’t enough high paying posts” or “None of the opportunities fits my niche, there’s just nothing there for me.”

If I hear you say any of the above or any variant, then I can tell you the reason that you aren’t making any money with paid posting opportunities, and it has nothing to do with the companies offering the ads.

It’s all you.  You’re shutting yourself out of the market.

You’re shooting yourself in the foot.  Remember what these posts are for.  They are paid advertising spots designed to make your client money, improve search engine rankings or to bring in more traffic.  These ads are generally pretty broad spectrum.  They aren’t designed to really fit into any given niche in most cases, they’re based on broad appeal.

If you have any intention of making money in this manner, you have to broaden the way you think.  Ten to one your readers aren’t interested soleley in your niche.  They’re people, they have other interests as well as the one for which they are reading your words in the virtual ether.  It’s also a good bet that if it seems even mildly interesting to you, it will appeal to one or more of your readers.  At the very least it won’t put them off too badly.

Think about your readership.  Even though you’re in a niche, your readers actually come from a much larger demographic.  If you blog about business there is a good chance that your readers are either already business owners and managers or are aspiring to become one.  Ads for POS systems, card readers or any other item that can remotely be thought of as “business related” is a good candidate.  So are vacation posts, since most business owners try to get away from the stresses of business every once in a while.

Let’s take my primary blog as an example.  It’s a blog on cooking and recipes, but there are relatively few opportunities available for that niche. When they are there I grab them as soon as I can, but I’m not about to let a lack of kitchen related opps stop me from making money.

The readership at that blog is either going to be foodies looking for a certain new twist or the family cook looking for a new recipe to get him or her through the week. That sets my primary demographic at between 30 ad 60, most probably housewives (OR House Hubby’s).  I could base my choices on that alone, but there are better ways to get a close insight…

I take the time to get into a conversation with as many readers as possible through twitter, blogCatalog and any other social media outlet I can find.  Over time I’ve gotten to understand a larger percentage of what their interests are. (I pay very close attention to my comments as well.)

Using that information, I know that many of my readers are very much environmentally conscious. Many are also business owners or fellow food writers and photographers. Almost all have families with kids.  And now I’ve got a base for what I can smoothly slip into the context of my posts.

Ads for household products, cameras, tech gadgets, anything green, coupons and coupon codes, deals, shoppin alerts…  All of these are very likely going to interest someone.  I also almost never pass up a Holiday themed opportunity, it’s just perfect timing and I always have something seasonal to say…

If you want to make money, you can’t be too picky.

Obviously your PageRank has a lot to do with the opportunities you can take and the amount that you’ll earn for them, but that concept is too broad to fit in here.  But even with lower paying opportunities, you should still be able to make a couple hundred a month if you’re dedicated to doing it.  There are a lot of services out there that will pay you to blog for them in one way or another.

But do remember the old saw.  Content really is king.  Your regular posts need to be thoughtfully written and there needs to be a lot of them.  Your paid posts need to be written equally well.  You can’t skimp on quality just because it was something you were tossing in to make ten bucks.  do the advertisers proud and they will remember you and you might just get requests for opps directly.  These usually pay better than the standard marketplace opportunities and are better tailored to your specific blog topic.

Wrapping up.

The short of it is this.

• If you want to make real money taking paid opportunities, you have to take the opps.  You can’t wait for “That perfect Ad.”  It’s out there, but it doesn’t come in often.
• Write quality posts.  Nobody pays for hacks.
• Have some morals and ethics.  Don’t promote things you would never use yourself, or that you are morally or ethically opposed to, unless you have the option of writing something that fits your actual beliefs.
• Keep the broader spectrum of your readership in mind.  Knowing your readers is key.

This article only covers paid posting opportunities. There are a lot of other ways to make money from your blog or website, but paid opportunities are a good way to get income rolling in while you build other methods.  I’ll cover those soon.

In my next post I plan to cover some methods that might make paid posts more appealing to you as a blog owner, such as methods for keeping sponsored posts from showing up in your RSS feed, ways to make sure that the sponsored post isn’t the first thing your readers see and so on.  Until then

Get out and take a few opportunities! Knowing there’s a few bucks coming to your paypal account in the near future will make you more willing to work a little harder.

Jerry Monetizing, Paid Blogging ethics, Izea, Monetizing, PageRank, paid posts, PPP, writing

The single most common question I get asked is where I find paid post opportunities. The answer is fairly simple.  All over the place.  I look at myself as a freelancer, and as a freelancer, having a lot of different clients to choose from is the key to staying productive and keeping the money rolling in.  Without a wide base of posts to choose from, there would be no way that I could accomplish my two main objectives, which are:

1. Make $1,000.00 per month at the very least
2. Have at least 30% of that roll in throughout the course of the month, preferably on a daily basis.

Before I get to the list of sites I scan regularly for paid post opportunities, let me tell you why the second point makes a difference to me:

Not only does the “every day income” tend to hold off days where there aren’t two pennies to rub together, it gives me motivation to get in there and do it again so that I see another “you’ve been paid” message in my inbox in the next week, two weeks or 30 days.  It’s a good motivator.  It validates the sometimes very difficult work of hunting down and posting opportunities every workday (or weekend, if I haven’t made my weekly or monthly goals.) It gives me a reason each and every day to say “I love my job”, because it is a job and i absolutely love what I do.  The fact that other people are willing to pay me to do it just makes it more fun.

Another advantage to every day income (again, aside from the fact that you’ll never worry about grabbing that latte in the morning) is that on the days when you’re struggling through a bunch of sites and finding absolutely nothing you want to touch, seeing that payment notice can give you the boost you need to take something you might have overlooked before and get something, anything out there.  The only way to make money at this game is to go for it.  There is no time to take time off.  A day off is a day you didn’t get paid for.

And now for that list.  These are the places I currently spend my time looking for ways to get paid opportunities.  It is not all inclusive, but these have been good to me and keep the dollars rolling in.

Paid Posting Providers:

• PayPerPost: The Mac daddy of them all as far as constant opportunities. PPP nearly always has something you can make a buck or two on on any given day.  payout is Net 30 (or 30 days from the date of the post)
• SocialSpark: From the same folks that brought you PayPerPost.  SocialSpark focuses on a community marketplace atmosphere and I assume that the more you make yourself a part of it, the more you’re likely to make.  They just began offering affiliate advertising opportunities as well, and “sparks” (or free posts that others can opt to make for you) might help in raising your page rank or RealRank.  Not as many high paying opps and very competitive.  payout is net 30, based on a “cash out” system.  Once you’ve earned the money, you get to choose when to cash out.
• Loudlaunch: LoudLaunch does’t have the amount of opportunities that PPP or Social Spark provide, but when they do have opportunities they tend to pay fairly well.  Payout on the 5th business day of the month (roughly)
• SponsoredReviews: One of the first in the field.  Sponsored reviews is basically a freelancer’s marketplace.  You bid on offers you would like to take, or their advertisers can choose you directly.  It’s a hit and miss proposition, but you set your own price. Payout is Bi-weekly.
• Blogsvertise: They choose the opps for you. I don’t get many that are remotely relevant very often.  The posts I have accepted have paid on time.  payout is Net 30.
• Smorty: Fairly new and not a lot going on yet for the most part.  Opps paid promptly. Payout is weekly.
• SnapBomb: Snapbomb is also pretty new but is offering several ways to make some money, including store widgets.  for sponsored reviews, they pick what categories and posts you can take.  Payout is fair, payments made on the 5th of each month.
• ReviewMe: Not the least of the services, but one I seem to forget to check often enough.  payments are fair, there are usually opportunities available.  Payout on first of each month like clockwork, which is very nice.

As I said, this list is not exhaustive.  There are surely more paid blog services out there that I am unaware of.  If you happen to know of any, let us know in the comments.  If you run a paid posting or sponsored blog service, let me know via the contact form and I’ll add you to the list.

As for how to make more money that you think you can using these services…  That will have to wait for aother post.

Jerry Monetizing, Paid Blogging

I’m finally getting settled in to the new theme here.  It’s a bit more daunting of a task than I’d thought trying to blend three different blogs togaether, but so far it has been going fairly smoothly.  I’m almost ready to dive in and answer a slew of questions that have been posed to me over the past few days regarding Paid Advertising and other monetizing strategies.

It sometimes amazes me just how many people seem to hav the same questions.  It amazes me more that I find it difficult to remember that I had the same questions once myself.  I suppose that comes with having done something for a significant lenght of time, but I really thought that I knew better.  Ah well, live and learn.

In the works are articles on paid advertising, several tools you just have to use if you want to make your development chores easier and a smattering of wisdom adn a bit of ire on other topics.  I have a list.  somewhere.  I think it’s under the candy wrappers and christmas CD cases on my desk.  I’ll try to find it tomorrow.

For now it is extremely late and I should probably turn my attention to a bit of rest.  Stay tuned!

Jerry Announcements Announcements, site updates

Will you have any of this during the slow times?

Mastering the discipline of restraint may just be the most important tool in your arsenal as a budding pro blogger, freelancer or internet mogul. If you are generating any income at all from sponsored posts, paid reviews or even paid writing gigs, then you’ve probably seen it.  For a few days there will be well paid opportunities available everywhere, so many that you can’t fit them all in.  It’s like a money making heaven.  Then, a few days later you find yourself looking at a screen full of just about nothing, with no way to make your daily goal for income and no real chance of making that goal for the next few days.  This is the life of a freelancer, it’s the way things go.  It’s called feast or famine, and how you deal with it can make the difference between being successful as a pro blogger or freelancer and having to go back to the Evil Day Job.

Why am I mentioning freelancers and bloggers that do paid posts in the same paragraph?  Because by definition, they are the same thing.  There is no distinction between a person who accepts a job to write a 500 word article for $40.00 and a blogger that accepts a 300 word post for $20.00.  Both are freelancing.  Also, by definition all bloggers (with the exception of photo-bloggers, perhaps) are writers.  If anything the definition between the two only blurs in the editing department, since most bloggers are not the world’s best editors!

Now that we’ve got the definitions out of the way, what is a freelancer to do when there is a ton of work one week and no work the next?  For me the short answer is always to tackle as many projects as I can, when I can, especially if they present themselves early in the month.  If you can whip out double or triple your weekly income for the first week of a given month, a slow space in the middle isn’t going to cause you undue stress.  But if there’s a boom at the end and you’ve managed to keep up with your goals, just take what you can get and if possible, allow the extra to roll over into the following month.

In this way you start building yourself a slush fund for those slower times.  Think of what you do as a business.  If you owned a company that suddenly made a few extra million one month, chances are you wouldn’t just give all of your employees a raise, or pay them the next three month’s salary at once.  That money would go into the bank and pe paid out as usual.  If you can master the discipline to do this in your writing or blogging career, you’re well on your way to never being worried about a slump.

Of course, if you are consistantly going over the mark and find that you’ve got over two months worth of slush fund, it might just be time to consider giving yourself a raise.

Jerry Business Sense Business Sense, Freelancing, Monetizing, Paid Posting

If you’re running a WordPress powered blog and like the functionality of the flash image uploader, you might just want to wait to upgrade your Flash Player.  Flash Player 10, which is shipping now causes the flash uploader to break.  There are no fixes at this time.

On the other hand, if you’ve suddenly lost the use of your flash based uploader and the symptom is that when you click the button nothing happens at all… Then you’ve probably already got Flash 10 installed.  Don’t worry, you didn’t break anything, just sit back, use the browser based uploader for a bit and wait for WordPress 2.7, which should be shipping in a few weeks.  From what I hear, they’ve got a fix going in that will get your nice pretty multiple file upload capability back for you.

At least I hope so, because I’m tired of having to upload them manually.

Jerry WordPress Blogging, Blogging Tips, Productivity, WordPress