Today I was listening to comedy central and found this sweet funny video from Colbert Report and some guy called Andrew Keen!
This guy is nuts! Calling bloggers amature and how we steal the culture.
Colbert makes just fun of him , please watch and if you like it stumble this video on this blog so we can share with others.
I had an opportunity to do few question interview with Chris Garrett who is also author of Problogger Book. I spoke with Chris on many occasions he is very influential blogger.
Bontb: Tell us about your self ?
ChrisG: It’s hard to find something to say that I haven’t already over discussed over the years. Having been online since the early 90’s I kind of run dry talking about myself, so I am much more interested in learning about other people. I guess the basics are I am a British guy, born in Canada, who makes a living advising people how to build their businesses by connecting with audiences through the internet.
Bontb: How did you start blogging and how many blogs do you personally own since you started blogging?
ChrisG: I started blogging before the term was defined so it’s hard to say. Like most people back in the day, I had a personal website, I had a journal and I had a geeky “online magazine”, while also writing articles for other people. Some were written with audiences in mind, others for my own pleasure. Writing has always been a part of me, I’ve always had my nose stuck in a book! There are two subject that I never talk about in detail, one is I never list all of my sites 
To answer your question though, I have had far far too many blogs, many were “good ideas” at the time of registering domains that worked out to be not great ideas the next day!
Bontb: When did you decide to become professional blogger and what or who motivated you the whole time?
ChrisG: The professional part happened to me rather than me seeking it out you could say. I started helping people on discussion groups with programming problems and started getting approached. That’s why I have always been more of an indirect monetizer more than direct.
Bontb: Recently You and Darren Rowse wrote book called Problogger, tell us more about it..
ChrisG: We wanted to write one book that would help someone from square one build a blog that could earn them money. While we make it clear blogging is not a quick or easy road to profits, we do succeed I think in laying the whole A-Z of professional blogging out step by step.
Bontb: Do you have any other plans,maybe to start writing another book or something else ?
ChrisG: Always!
Bontb: My readers want me to write more about “how to make money”. As professional blogger can you provide some tips for them?
ChrisG: The number one tip, and this goes for any business, is to take conscious action NOW. Don’t wait, don’t deliberate, start taking steps. Far too many people think and think and then don’t do anything. Blogging is a journey, not something that has to be perfect right away, so do something and improve every day.
Bontb: Anything you would like to add Chris?
ChrisG: Just I hope everyone enjoys the book, and if you haven’t already, sign up to the list to get a free sample download
Cheers
Chris
Ways to expand your blog income is to do private advertising instead of just adding adsense, kontera, text link ads and other money making advertisings.
That is the most popular question now days from bloggers that want to sell their space slots. For some blogs this is made easy due to their popularity in blogsphere, yet for blogs that don’t receive much traffic is not.
Here are few suggestions I would advise you to try getting your blog space sold.
Go around the blogsphere, visit popular blogs in your niche and observe!
Most likely on the right sidebar you will see 125×125 banners, those banners are sometimes paid $2000-$4000 per week! why wouldn’t they pay you $40-$100-$200 a month ?
Find out who the advertiser is, find their contact information and send them your statistics and sound like you are giving them special offer.
I found out that 10 emails I have sent at least 3 advertisers bough 125×125 or text link add on BONTB.com per month!
There are certain bloggers you should be aware of , my point of this post is going to concentrate more on things you should watch out and who you should help or not.
Bloggers like Michael Arrlington from TechCrunch, Robert from Scobelizer, Jason from Mahalo fall for joke about one particular blogger that I will not mention his/her name.
And I was just in the dark shadow watching and laughing at those bloggers how naive can they be!
What did this blogger do?
Played very high role of “super blogger” with some respect even tho he/she is not. Remember movie Catch Me if you can? Or the guy that pranked few thousands of people stating he is one of the Rockefeller’s ?
I have seen Robert jumping all over him/her and also Jason at first, yet few days later they found out that this blogger/in is actually just some boy/girl like everyone else with mouth full of words that he/she does not know anything about.
If you would say Web 2.0 he/she would say “I am so into web 2.0 I make blogs and also startups from web 2.0 social networks I build”
Or if you would say are you going to Mashable Meeting, he/she would say “Yeah I am so there, I was there last year” …
What do I have to do with this blogger/in?
I felt sorry for this blogger/in he/she wanted help, “how to get better ranking on google”, and also how to get “some traffic”. So I introduced him/her to Ustream , Stumbleupon, Twitter and other social networks. Told him/her to put some more attractive picture of him/her and viola ! That did it! …I told him/her to remove few things from his/hers blog like unnecessary widgets, also how to maximize profit with adsense instead of having google default adsense ads, to blend in Google adsense like his/hers regular links etc…
So what’s wrong with that?
Well to be on twitter, ustream, stumbleupon nothing, but yet to lie to other bloggers and pretending of something you are not , I think that is wrong.
Be aware of bloggers that..
1. …are looking for some mercy
2. …don’t know jack about stuff they talk about
3. …are selfish in other words (they want you to link yet they don’t backlink)
4. …want you to subscribe to different things at all times and play nice everytime..
5. …write about things in their life that is just impossible (lies)
6. ..promote product that might harm others… (example: 100% No.1 link on google for keyword: blog)
Why am I making you aware of this?
Because even if you become or already are professional blogger, you can still fall for things like “fake bloggers” . When other bloggers find out, usually they laught at you for promoting that blogger on your own blog, and blame you for things that “fake blogger” did to them because you “promoted” for him/her.
Just keep in mind….
Whenever you are promoting some product, or link to blog make sure “TWICE” that 6 fact’s above don’t apply.
This will keep you from ruing your reputation as blogger.
I haven’t wrote about my income on this site for ever! It’s been one year and a bit more since Bontb is up and running , with over 700 posts an 4.000 comments I received from that 67.000+ spam comments.
Last night while reading few blogs I also stumbled on blogs that reported Income they generated over time. So I decided to share my income that I received since April /2007.
My Paypal shows that I received $4370.91 in private advertising and TNX which I just recently sold for 82c per 1000 points to TNX.
Adsense has been good to me last year, with Dosh Dosh Theme yet I wanted to have theme that maybe generates less money from Adsense but receives more traffic and it’s more unique. Said that I received $3450.15 from Google Adsense
Kontera was the worst and I discontinued it also last year just because It was annoying but still brought me $877.23
Remember Text Link Ads? I lost PR4-5 because of TLA last year but I loved the service tho!
I got my PR4 back yet I don’t generate any income from it “since last year again!” My ads were running for $10 at the beinning and I sold 56 text link ads, later on TLA bump up my advertising cost to $55 and I sold 28 text link ads.
Widgetbucks was awesome as well at the beginning but one month later after I received $79 the income decreased to $12 yet I was receiving same amount of traffic. I talked to tech support they said “People are just not clicking on ads”. I thought that is so not true! So I discountinued that service as well yet to be honest, if you have technology blog this service was paying (at that time) almost 50-80c per click!
So this brings us to total of $8777.29 I still haven’t checked how much money I got from TLA! I know it was somewhere around $1200.
(income figures are after taxes)
I think blogging is awesome whether you blog because money or not. And there is nothing that will stop me from blogging unless I get hit by a car or Predator stops by and cut’s both of my hands.
If you haven’t noticed but all I am running right now on BONTB is Adsense and Private Advertising.
So that is my Income statement for full year and with that money I paid some of my student loans, lunch at work, few car payments as well as furniture for my new house.
After reading Probloggers Book by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett I think there are some interesting topics that will help me double the amount by 2009!
Well about 4 weeks ago I read about Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett publishing their first book (Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income). Well today I have the hard copy on my desk! But yet more to that, I can’t wait to have it signed by both of authors.
I am very glad for people that have such success in blogging and help others understand blogging and not just “make money over night”
Did you get the book from Darren and Chris?
On few occasions I have been asked how come that people have 2 blogs with almost identical amount of traffic, yet they make less money with technology blogs then with let say celebrity blogs.
Think about it this way, techy people have been online for ever and they know what adsense is and also they know that if they click on it
A. They might land on some crappy website
B. The ads are just not something they click on
C. They are afraid of hitting website that could be harmful or have “not work related stuff”
Said that technology websites include such people therefore adsense might not be the right choice, but instead you could use 125×125 banners or text link ads.
On other hand celebrity blogs will include younger and older generation of people that don’t know much about internet and don’t know what google ads are.
So when they are on celebrity blog and see google adsense, they think that is just another link they might like even more due to “description of advertisers page”.
Just the other day by asking my friend why do you click on such ads?
He said “Well because it interested me and because I thought it’s part of the website”.
I thought this post might be helpful to you to chose if adsense is for your website or not, in case you own different niche blogs.
Make Money Online blogs tend to make also good amount of clicks just because there is so much people that want to start making money online.
