How I Made $121.84 Without Heavy Marketing

• Tweet

• Tweet

Update 12/30/2010: this post’s original title was “How this 600,000 Alexa ranked blog made $121.84 Last month without updating, fancy newsletters and heavy marketing ” I had to change it to make it blend well together with the other post since I’m customizing my Theme right now.  The original article is below. =>

Yesterday I got a very interesting Gtalk conversation with one blog reader (sagar) about my blog’s income. coincidentally, a recent visitor (nhoel from keywordspeak) also emailed me the same day asking me about the same question. for once, I think people are now getting curious about my blog’s earnings. =D and that’s why I decided to write this post.

I told them my blog has earned $150 last month. I looked through my Online records and it turned out I was wrong. I only earned $120 last month.  it’s not much money to brag about since there are bloggers out there like John Chow who makes over $40,000 a month from his blog. But I appreciate what I have and don’t get me wrong here – $120 is better than nothing.

But to consider the fact that my alexa ranking is about 600,000, I rarely update this blog and I don’t even give email updates to my subscribers – I think I made a pretty impressive result.

Here are the Stuffs that gave my blog income:

• Aweber affiliate program – $58.34
• OIO publisher affiliate program – $23.50
• Private ad sale – $15  thanks to João Costa for purchasing a sidebar ad! (we never got the chance to talk dude!)
• Text link ads – $20
• Reviewme Reviews – $5
• Total = $121.84

but of course, I also make money with programs like neobux and clixsense as well. I also have other sites running on other niches but that’s a different story. When the time comes that My blog earnings Reach the $500 mark (maybe within 3-6 months), I will be willing to post my blog’s income report every month. :-)

The blog’s august earning couldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for this guy who Purchased an aweber account for 1 year using my aweber link:

8 days after that, another person signed up under me!

all thanks to them, I will now Receive the Recurring income that aweber offers. if you’re one of the people who signed up using my link, Comment below! it would be totally cool to know you. :-)

Obviously, I have an aweber account for this blog installed. but I only use it for list building purposes (for now) and to tell you honestly,  I Haven’tt even sent a single broadcast message for over 3 months now. (talk about a huge waste LOL) and if it wasn’t for my blog’s PR, I couldn’t have made $20 with text link ads nor will I receive a reviewme order.

So, How the heck did a Low traffic blog made $120 even without heavy marketing?

The first thing that Comes to my mind is Targeted visitors with the help of Ninja affiliate.

Ninja Affiliate is a wordpress plugin by Maxblogpress. it’s a plugin that cloaks affiliate links but with added features. what the plugin does is it automatically Converts Keywords that you use on your blog. this could be any links you want. for example, if I mention “twitter” on one of my blog post, it will automatically convert the keyword “twitter” into a link which looks like this: http://www.elie-palima.com/twitter

The plugin will automatically Convert the keywords on your blog’s comments area as well. so every time one of your readers mentions one of your “ninja keywords” it will automatically be converted into a “ninja link” that you set. to learn more about it’s features, you can visit them here.

I mention Aweber a lot in almost every blog post I make. The same also goes to OIO publisher. these are two products that I highly recommend so I guess that’s one of the factors which triggered the sales.

but of course, if I haven’t got those Targeted visitors visiting my site – I wouldn’t have made a sale at all. so I guess it’s safe to say that “I just Got lucky” but one thing’s for sure…

if only I had heavily marketed my blog, I could have Made even More Money

Let’s not remove the fact that when it comes to every internet business – “The money is in the MARKETING”

I can’t say that I don’t market this site. since in this site, I build an email list which happens to be about 400+ subscribers right now (and growing). I also regularly leave comments on other blogs for added backlinks and traffic. I’m also a Member of different internet marketing forums like the keyword academy. and by schedule, I also Build links to this site.

however, What I’m doing right now is not “the BEST” marketing (yet) if you want to know why I don’t heavily market this site yet is a different story. (I will be writing another post about it)

all I’m trying to point out here is if you learn how to market your blog and use the right tools then Definitely (even at the lowest point) – Your blog is going to make money.