In a previous article I showed you my blog stats over a 3 month period. This included money earned, my sources of traffic, and lots more. It has been one of my most popular articles to date. I also went over this post and linked to everything I talk about so you can add the same plugins I have or check out anything I cover. Aren’t I nice?Ok, let’s get to it.
I had quite a few questions come in, but someone on the warrior forum sent me a nice organized list of questions that I answered one by one. Below you will see the questions and answers all about making money online and growing a blog or internet business. Enjoy!
You can read part 1 of this blog post here: Real Blog Stats
Questions About My Blog Stats So Far:
(from a member of the Warrior Forum)
I was reading one of your postings (on the $1000/days), read your blog and it had me a bit intrigued, and I was wondering if you don’t mind me asking a few questions.
a) You said you’ve made ‘thousands’ of dollars on it, from really only 3k visitors (assuming maybe 3k $$, so each visitor ~$1)… Is that just from the advertisement you have for the ‘cash code’ as well as the 3-4 other ads throughout your site? Or are you doing some kind of follow up with them, etc, etc? The ads — did you design them yourself — or were those a part of the clickbank packages (i.e., Michael Jones product)
b) If you don’t mind, what blog template style did you use, and what plugins did you install? I like the overall look/feel of your site (including the optin form), and would like something similar on one of mine. As well, did you design the header graphic yourself or outsource that? (I like the look/feel of that as well, it just ‘feels’ good).
(I also just noticed the little socrates logo at the bottom. I take it that is what you are using? Did it come pre-installed with everything, or did you need to do a lot of customization?) Based on your numbers I believe could be performing much better, so would like to give it a major facelift and see much better results.
My Answers To The Blog Questions:
Let’s see if I can answer your questions here.
A) How do I make money with my blog?
The money I’m made from the blog mainly came from building my list and sending them offers. I also did reviews for a few products. I’ll be doing a review soon of another product in the coming days. The reviews are written to target certain products and I get traffic to those pages about everyday.
To be honest, the ads don’t get a lot of clicks. The Cash Code ad gets decent clicks (maybe an average of 2-3 a day, but remember I’m not getting a lot of traffic there so it would definitely grow. But I’m finding that offer isn’t converting like it used to.
That offer really did me well because it had a lot of upsells on it. That’s one of the things I like to promote, offers that have a lower price upfront sale, then a few higher priced upsells.
I think with only about 5 or 6 people buying Cash Code I made just shy of $500 in one day because of the upsells. All the ads that are on my blog I took from the JV or affiliate pages of the various clickbank products. I did make the big Cash Code header ad at the top of the blog. It definitely gets the most clicks. I am convinced after a few tests that ugly text banner ads work better, at least in what I’ve been doing.
I would NOT rely on banner ads to do too much unless your traffic is really up there. I am working on mine, but it’s still a work in progress. Oh and yeah I do a lot of email follow up. I send content and offers pretty regularly, at least 1 offer each week.
B) What theme, plugins, and designer do I use on my blog?
Yeah you’re right about the theme, I use the Socrates theme which is pretty powerful. I recommend it to all my clients and it’s definitely worth it’s price. As far as plugins, I mainly just installed Jeff Johnsons Traffic Getting SEO plugin. It’s cool because it installs a whole slew of plugins for you.
So, you just install that one plugin and it installs a bunch of different ones. I also installed Contact Form 7 so I have a contact page, WordPress.com Stats as a generic and basic stat keeper, and WP Ezinearticles so with 1 click I can submit my blog posts to EzineArticles.com. It saves time and is nice to have.
B2) How do I make my opt-in Forms/What service do I use to build my list?
The opt-in form I made in Aweber using their built in form builder. I also got a hover ad from aweber too. Just a feature they offer. The header is kinda funny, it’s actually the first header I ever made lol. It sort of just came together and I had a friend over at the time who knows photoshop and he gave me a few tips when I got stuck not knowing how to do something. I am very happy with the header because I’m not really a graphical type person.
As far as Socrates, it comes with a default look and there are options you go through to create the page. There’s a little bit of setup, but it’s mainly just entering data, choosing a header image, and choosing what you want your pages to be, (ie contact, archive, etc). The socrates theme also comes with a ton of support (including videos) and a support forum as well.
You can choose from premade headers and side colors and have a good looking blog pretty fast. You can also make your own or outsource and upload custom images. The new Socrates 2.0 includes sales letter pages but I haven’t tested those out yet.
I have to admit my specialty is in copywriting, marketing, and conversion. I always had all the traffic I wanted from JV partners when I worked in my old business. Since then, I’ve had to do a lot more traffic gen than I like. I know it all from study and teaching it, but I outsourced a lot of it before. Now, I am doing it myself and it can be pretty tedious.
Final Thoughts On Blogging So Far (plus a stats update)
Well, that’s it for this post. I will come back and update stats again in a few months. I do want to add one more quick thing though. Since writing my post showing my blog stats, my blog has had a sort of jump in action. My Alexa ranking seems to have slipped a little bit, which is weird. But my opt-ins and page views have all gone up.
Previously, the weekends were very slow for me. I even had 1 Saturday where I only had 1 visitor! Now, I’ll get at least 15 uniques on the weekends and usually 2-3 optins. I know these aren’t life changing numbers, but over time it all adds up.
That’s why I recommend everyone start small and grow as you go. Don’t wait around till everything is perfect. It never will be. Just last night I sent an email to my list about a cool affiliate product and I brought in $550.99. These tactics and strategies work, as long as you work them.
