Setting Goals for Making Money With My Blogs

The first blog advertising network that I decided to advertise my blogs on BlogExplosion.  BlogExplosion was quite effective.  It used a credit system in which you could earn credits through different onsite activities then use the credits to display banner ads within the system and participate in onsite activities like Battle of the Blogs.  While the site remains open it has been dying a very slow and painful death but there are still a few loyal members including myself that participate.  The next was Entrecard.  At that time paid advertising was not available so it was brute force, mindless click until you drop type of advertising in order to earn enough credits to exchange for advertising.  It was adequate but a huge time waster that while it brought in traffic, it did not bring quality traffic.  In the end I decided Entrecard was not for me and moved onto other methods of blog advertising.  Buying advertising made a lot of sense to me because it would free up my time to concentrate on actual blogging.

It takes money to buy advertising so I decided on a plan of attack.  By this time my blogs were making a bit of trickle in money from advertising networks.  It wasn't much just enough to wet the whistle so to speak.  I joined CMFAds and Adgitize.  Both of these blog advertising networks offer opportunities to earn money as a publisher by displaying the widget on your blog as well as participating.  Both offer opportunities as an advertiser to purchase ads.  So the goal was simple, make enough money online to pay for the advertising I wanted to do.   Here's a few ways I'm paying for my blog advertising:

• CMFAds - CMFAds allows advertisers to set their own price for displaying campaign ads on their blog.  Blogs with higher traffic tend to charge a bit more than blogs with lower traffic.  At the same time members can earn $0.002 for each spike clicked and for displaying network ads.  In general I don't make much money off of CMFAds because what I earn tends to go back into onsite advertising.   I actually end up spending an additional $5 to $10 each month advertising on CMFAds but that is because I have 6 blogs to promote.  It would not cost this much if I were only promoting one blog.  Campaign ad prices are determined by the publisher so range anywhere from 1¢ to $2.00 per 30 day ad on the publisher's blog.  Network ads give a set number of impressions with the lowest being $1.50 for 50,000 impressions.  Spikes give a guaranteed number of hits to your blog with the lowest being 20¢ for 50 visits.
• Adgitize - Adgitize uses a credit system that is then converted into actual money.  It pays out usually around the 7th of each month.  You can earn credits for posting daily to your blog, clicking 100 blog ads for publishers or 51 for advertisers, participating daily in the forum and you get advertiser points for advertising.  A one month ad costs $14 although you can get a one week.  Currently I am running one ad, earning 510 points per day which works out to 70¢ per day.  At this rate I stand to make $21 this month for a net of $7 once I pay for my next month's advertising.
• Project Wonderful - I use Project Wonderful mainly to earn a little money rather than advertise although I do advertise occasionally.  I don't make much money off of Project Wonderful but it is a little extra.  So far I've cashed out $19 this year.
• Miscellaneous - Combined income from other online sources (Adsense, Foodbuzz, Epionions, private ad sales, CafePress) works out to $111.20 per month with that covering my ISP costs and the rest banked.  I'm trying out a few new online money making sites that at the moment should bring in about $30 per month but I want to be sure they pay out before mentioning them.  In fairness Epinions is loosely affiliated with my blogs in that I give a link to my epinions review if the review is of interest to the blog topic and my blogs are listed on Epinions so I get a little traffic from them.  Also, at least one of the new sites I'm testing has nothing to do with my blogs but if it pays off there will be a referral link on my blogs.  For the most part the blogs become involved in some respect as far as earning that income.

I have my blogs to the point where they are paying for advertising and my ISP while still padding the bank account.  I think setting the goal of the blogs paying for any advertising by earning a bit was a good one.  It snowballed enough to pay for my ISP which is really nice since it is expensive.  Padding the bank account was unexpected but welcomed.  So I have set a new target of doubling my blog income in the next 6 months.  I don't think that is an unreason goal and I already have an interesting spin on how to do this.  I'll go into greater detail once I've implimented that plan.

Garden Gnome
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