Money for Blogging - Rabbi David Sedley

… and your chicks for free.

People have asked me whether it is possible to make any money from blogging, and the easy answer is, for this kind of blog, probably not very much! But that also means, probably a little bit.

Google adsense is the obvious answer for most people. However, the downside of adsense is that they don’t pay you until you have earned over $100 (they carry the balance forward from month to month until you reach that total). In a year of blogging I still haven’t reached that amount (though I am close). I know of people who make that much every month, though, so it very much depends on how many read your blog and who they are (and what ads you get given). The main thing to watch with adsense is whether you approve of the ads on your blog, and you can remove the ones you don’t like with the competitive ad filter.

(for some reason I can’t get this to display on my blog (and I’ve spent well over an hour on it and I’m too tired now). If you want to help me out and yourself a the same time, click on the link on the side bar about google adsense (you may have to scroll down a little bit).

A site that has paid me enough to cover my costs (which are not great) is pay per post. You can choose what to write about, and you earn between $5 and $10 (theoretically up to several hundred dollars) per post. So a couple of months and hey presto, you can buy some bubblegum. They pay straight to paypal, and so far I’ve found them to be good at paying.

Of course, another way to make money is to refer people to these two schemes above, so if you are interested, please click through this blog, and help me at the same time.

If you are still using Internet Explorer, I highly recommend that you switch to firefox. Not only will this earn me a referral fee, but it is so much better that IE (in my opinion), and quicker, and more fun, that it bothers me when I see others still in the dark ages. (there is also a cool addon which shows you how much money you have made with your google adsense, so you can combine two things into one). For the record it is also supposed to be safer than IE, with less hackers trying to put bugs in it.

(same as above – click on the link on the side bar)

I have tried all sorts of other schemes, but haven’t found them to be all that good for me. Amazon has eaned me a tiny bit, but since they don’t pay until you reach a certain total (I don’t remember how much) I haven’t yet got anything from them. Selling products, or links to other websites hasn’t done anything for me, nor has auction ads nor reverse links. But of course your blog is different, so you should experiment.

The main thing in all of this is to get hits. Without viewers you won’t make any money. There are many people who will tell you how to get more hits, but the latest thing I am trying is the social bookmarking thing at the bottom of each blog. I took the main html code from vbstock
and my wife Alit fixed it up the html afterwards. Try this (hopefully it will work for you).

Go to your template and click on edit html. Click ‘expand widgets’. Select all text and copy it to notepad (to make a backup in case you mess things up, though you probably won’t). Fine the line that says this:

and replace it with this:

</p><p class=”post-footer-line post-footer-line-3″><span style=”font-weight: bold;”><p></p><blockquote><div>
<p class=”post-footer-line post-footer-line-3″>
<span class=”bookmark”>
<table align=”left” border=”0″ cellpadding=”0″ width=”100%”>
<tbody><tr>
<td style=”vertical-align: top;” valign=”top”>
<div id=”"sbtxt"+data:post.id”>Bookmark this post:</div><p>

</span></p>
</div></blockquote>
</span>

(I have a feeling that this hasn’t worked either. You can e-mail me directly if you want the code. That will hopefully work better)

Hopefully you will have a little list of bookmarking sites at the bottom of every blog entry.

Good luck. and thanks for clicking on those links for me.