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What To Look For In Content Writers

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Content writers are springing up all over the internet. People are more than willing to call themselves pro writers and begin selling their services. But if you come to rely on contract writers, you might just end up getting hooked on something that isn’t good for your overall well-being. I’ve experimented with low-cost content producers, and most of them just don’t cut the mustard.

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Getting A New Blog Off To A Good Start

If you’re thinking of starting a new blog, my advice is to really get focused and get your blog off to a fast start. If you don’t jump into the action with both feed forward, you may end up with a relatively slow takeoff, and your motivation might lapse. If you have 20 posts after a few weeks, you’ll end up realizing you’ve already put in a good bit of work, and be much less likely to give up.

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WidgetBucks Sucks

I needed to update my WidgetBucks review with some new information. That is, WidgetBucks has been removed from any pages I had it on. The program is weak. At first, it started off relatively like gangbusters, but it died off over time. I personally don’t think any of the “Shopping.com” aggregators are worth a damn anyway, and WidgetBucks is no exception.

Add to that:

1) Delayed stats and broken reporting.
2) The sheer ugliness of the ADs.
3) Slow loads and technical problems

I would say that WidgetBucks is pretty much dead in the water as far as I’m concerned. It’s another one of those “been there done that” type of programs.

Anyone else have anything to add about WidgetBucks?

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Chitika Performance

Chitika has been picking up a bit for me. The “Linx Code” and the “RPU Code” both seem to do okay as far as supplemental income goes. The RPU Code is a strange beast. It doesn’t actually get close to displaying related products, but it earns decent.

Linx is a decent bet for any website that mentions a product for the simple fact that it earns around 21 cents per click from what I can tell. A website with decent traffic will make some bucks with that, even if the CTR is low.

Chitika is experimenting more with CPM style ads, so I expect we’ll see changes in their program shortly. If the CPM product is viable, it would be a quick way of plugging in extra cash.

Chitika isn’t one of my top earners, but it’s growing, which is always a good sign.

What are your opinions of Chitika?

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WordPress 2.5 Initial Observations

The people at WordPress were very excited about the 2.5 version of their popular blogging software, and it’s not hard to understand why. To me, this is an excellent upgrade, because it focuses on area that actually needed improvement. The interface for administration has been tidied up so that the system runs faster, and has better workflow. I noticed that I was able to complete my work faster using WordPress 2.5, so that is delightful.

I still don’t care for the Visual HTML view, but all in all I’d say the core features of WordPress 2.5 and the ease of use make up for any perceived shortcomings. I appreciate the fact they notify us now of every new update, and it makes it very easy to keep things up to speed.

If all open source software was as good as WordPress, the world would be a better place, indeed.

What are your observations about WordPress 2.5?

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2008 Blogging Revenue

2008 is shaping up slightly different than the last few years as it pertains to blogging revenue.

The leaders are: Adsense, TLA, Kontera, Zango, and Amazon.

Adsense continues to perform erratically, but still is a substantial amount of money. TLA has grown every month since I have been in the program.

Zango is a semi-shady revenue solution, but can earn well if your pick your spots. Amazon, again, can work, but only on certain pages.

It appears this year is no different than any other. The main thing is, having a much larger archive of posts is certainly helping.

What is making you money in 2008?

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There Are Millions Of Content Producers On The Web

Everyone and their uncle is a content producer these days. I’m doing it, you’re doing it. You could say we’ve had an explosion in the number of content producers out there. So how can all of these people think they have a legitimate shot at being read? Because for all of the content producers, there are even more content consumers.

Quality differentiates the premium providers from the rest

It’s no different than in the offline world, when all is said and done. People tend to judge online content in the same manner they would any other. Is it well written? Does it contain the facts I need? Are their sufficient references or is the author an expert? Even though there are some differences in online content, such as speed of production being extremely important, there are enough similarities that we can learn a lot from traditional magazines and newspapers.

The endless “social websites” that offer tools for people to publish content assure even more competition than ever before for bloggers. But, again, most “user generated” content is about as insightful as random spew from strangers ought to be. If you maintain a cohesive blog, that is both wide and deep in its’ content, a half-maintained Blogspot won’t be able to compete with you.

I see even more people publishing content in the near future, because to do so is fun and profitable. If we want to stay ahead of them, we’ll have to keep advancing our game.

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Your Needs Versus The Reader’s Needs

I’ve been giving some thought to a basic struggle for any professional blogger. You have to weigh your very real needs of income with the very real needs of your visitors. If you can strike a balance, you have a blog that can earn money and keep coming back for more. That’s really the ideal for anyone. Any how can we find the perfect balance between our needs and our reader’s needs? We have to tweak, experiment, and measure our results.

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Inline Advertising And Blogs

Inline Advertising works on some blogs. I’ve been using inline ads for at least 8 months now, and I have a few observations. The dream of inline ads is that you can continue to earn your normal Google Adsense money, and by adding the inline advertisements (Intellitext, Chitika Linx, Kontera) to your revenue mix, you plan on making additional revenue.

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Creating Original Content Takes Real Effort

It’s not hard to understand why people decide to “spam” the internet. They realize how tough the content creation process is, and they don’t want any part of it. If you’ve attempted to create unique and interesting content for any period of time, you realize it takes real effort. You need to hunker down and put forth a titanic effort to make a page that has is even slightly “worthy” of being read by the mass of online consumers.

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