Damien at the Speed of Life

Notice below the movie tickets, restaurants, and Starbucks in the past week? All paid for by blogging. I hope this small section of my PayPal statement gives you an idea of how rewarding getting paid for blogging can be. Notice I didn’t say “how easy.” Not just anybody can do it. I’m getting better at it but I’ve been making websites and blogging collectively since 1997, so I am not just the average young blogspot startup from the “street corner” seeking overnight bucks (the likes of which my inbox seems to attract seeking the golden key). Here’s a peek into my real world.

Which do you prefer: Ads that look bad or ads that pay?  Did you know there is not always a choice? I guess I should be concerned starting a few ad campaigns when I am currently being considered for a 9Rules.com leaf.  They are purists over there as far as I can tell.  Oh well, the leaf doesn’t pay for my favorite restaurant and a movie like blogging did the other night.  No offense Tyme and the gang, I just have to do what I do – would love to have a leaf tho!

I have been experimenting and learning about advertising and sponsored posts on my blogs for well over a year now.  At first, being a purist and making no money was enough, now that I have grown up a lot, it isn’t anymore.  Anyway, I just wanted to bring the topic up here as I know many of you who are bloggers yourselves and others who are curious about how this blog makes money and gets readers.  Both are of prime importance here and I am trying a few experiments.

You will see some 125×125 pixel ad squares in the sidebar on all three of my blogs.  I’m not quite there yet to start monetizing my Podcast “D-Cast.”  To be honest, I wasn’t really that motivated by traffic and comments to record one the past two weeks so not sure if the world likes it or not.  As is true with advertising is also true with testing a new blog idea: “If it doesn’t work, dump it.”

That leads to what I am doing now.  Testing several new income and traffic generating devices has commenced and their effectiveness will be evaluated each month.  I read a LOT of blogs that share their numbers every month but there is only one blogger I know who shares specific links and strategies that make him money.  I want my blog stats updates to start looking more like his. The blogger I am referring to is Derek Semmler. I pulled in about $200 blogging last month, he made over $700.  The gap is significant, but what is more significant is that, even in the months I topped $400, I made my money primarily writing sponsored posts for:

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Payu2Blog and

Derek, on the other hand, made his $700 completely on ads. Wow. Like Huey Lewis says: “I want a new drug!”

I’ll continue to watch Derek’s progress and I will be following his lead more closely in my Blog Stats post. Another couple really interesting bloggers who do this are: Tyler Ingram dot com and Dragon Blogger.

Thank you for your patience as I revamp things and tweak here and there. In the end, I will only have the stuff that is working to make Postcards money. That goes for my blogs DLP, and DATSOL as well. I hope you will subscribe and get the latest that is working all three places. Just an FYI, though I do discuss the topic of income and advertising here at times because it’s relevant to keep the doors open, the monthly Blog Stats updates will continue to be posted as usual at Damien at the Speed of Life

Since I’m over here at Postcards with this, do you have any questions or comments for me about making money with blogs?