This post takes a bit of a divergence from expat, TEFL or Polish related themes and discusses the question: Can expat/travel bloggers make money from their blogs? It's also another one of those questions that I often find in my inbox so here's the brief answer...
A: Yes, definitely a little. But more than a little? no idea? Guess it depends on your definition of 'a little'!
So that's it, I don't really know.
However, I do know, I would like to earn more money from my blog simply because both me and my wife have expensive holiday destinations and we want to go travelling in the Caribbean by the end of the year. Therefore, I've set myself the target of earning €100 contribution to my 'Caribbean beer' fund through this blog.
And here's my current strategy:
Income Target: 10 euros per week - That's right folks, forget hundreds or thousands of euros income, it just won't happen. At the moment, for every 1000 visitors, I earn about 3 euros so even earning 10 euros a week will be an incredible achievement!
Ad Publisher - Google Adsense - I've tried other formats such as Kontera, which place little in-text ads on blogs, or textlinkads but neither worked. After a trial of about a month or so for each I earned the mighty sum of...nothing.
So sticking with Google Adsense is the more profitable and hassle free option since ads can be integrated into your Blogger page and feeds with ease. You won't earn mighty amounts but at least you'll earn something without doing a lot.
Selling Space - Because Google Adsense can only realistically earn me 1 third (3 euros) of my 10 euros target, I've decided to be proactive and get involved in some webmaster forums and try to sell to others a 300x250pixel advert on the top of my side bar.
To sell space on a blog everything depends on two things. Your Google PageRank and your Alexa rank. So before touting space I've tried to improve both of those statistics. Google PR essentially measures the importance of a website and Alexa measures traffic.
My Google PR is currently 3 but I've put in a lot of effort into asking other reputable bloggers for backlinks and so when this figure gets updated, which happens every few months, that statistic should improve. Alexa ranking works differently and is updated every day and so far my ranking is a respectable 1,303,376 global traffic rank and 16,358 Polish traffic rank. My target is to take my global rank to under 1 million and my Polish rank to under 10k.
In theory, based on how those figures are changing, it should happen in the next few days.
So with a good Google PR and Alexa, I hope to be able to sell relevant ads on this site for around 15$ per month. Relevant ads would be something like, 'TEFL certification', 'Expat services' or 'Language courses'. I don't want to put any old ads on the blog because I feel that would be too much of a sell out. I've therefore turned down two ads connected with forex and gold trading. Advertising these two things would be wasting everyone's time.
These are my strategies; I'll let you know if they work! I know it's a popular option amongst bloggers to try and earn a little income and why not? All hard work deserves a little compensation. But always remember, blog to blog not to earn money. There are much easier ways to do it than by blogging!
Any other suggestions or experiences from people out there?
A: Yes, definitely a little. But more than a little? no idea? Guess it depends on your definition of 'a little'!
So that's it, I don't really know.
However, I do know, I would like to earn more money from my blog simply because both me and my wife have expensive holiday destinations and we want to go travelling in the Caribbean by the end of the year. Therefore, I've set myself the target of earning €100 contribution to my 'Caribbean beer' fund through this blog.
And here's my current strategy:
Income Target: 10 euros per week - That's right folks, forget hundreds or thousands of euros income, it just won't happen. At the moment, for every 1000 visitors, I earn about 3 euros so even earning 10 euros a week will be an incredible achievement!
Ad Publisher - Google Adsense - I've tried other formats such as Kontera, which place little in-text ads on blogs, or textlinkads but neither worked. After a trial of about a month or so for each I earned the mighty sum of...nothing.
So sticking with Google Adsense is the more profitable and hassle free option since ads can be integrated into your Blogger page and feeds with ease. You won't earn mighty amounts but at least you'll earn something without doing a lot.
Selling Space - Because Google Adsense can only realistically earn me 1 third (3 euros) of my 10 euros target, I've decided to be proactive and get involved in some webmaster forums and try to sell to others a 300x250pixel advert on the top of my side bar.
To sell space on a blog everything depends on two things. Your Google PageRank and your Alexa rank. So before touting space I've tried to improve both of those statistics. Google PR essentially measures the importance of a website and Alexa measures traffic.My Google PR is currently 3 but I've put in a lot of effort into asking other reputable bloggers for backlinks and so when this figure gets updated, which happens every few months, that statistic should improve. Alexa ranking works differently and is updated every day and so far my ranking is a respectable 1,303,376 global traffic rank and 16,358 Polish traffic rank. My target is to take my global rank to under 1 million and my Polish rank to under 10k.
In theory, based on how those figures are changing, it should happen in the next few days.
So with a good Google PR and Alexa, I hope to be able to sell relevant ads on this site for around 15$ per month. Relevant ads would be something like, 'TEFL certification', 'Expat services' or 'Language courses'. I don't want to put any old ads on the blog because I feel that would be too much of a sell out. I've therefore turned down two ads connected with forex and gold trading. Advertising these two things would be wasting everyone's time.
These are my strategies; I'll let you know if they work! I know it's a popular option amongst bloggers to try and earn a little income and why not? All hard work deserves a little compensation. But always remember, blog to blog not to earn money. There are much easier ways to do it than by blogging!
Any other suggestions or experiences from people out there?
I used to make some decent cash with adsense, but lately the funding has been lacking.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Loneislander, Do you have any plans to do anyhting about that?
ReplyDeleteTry experimenting with the type and placement of your ads, don't just use the standard 125x125 square.
ReplyDeleteThe "decentralization of content" is obviously a good thing, but the bad side -- it's also the decentralization of fucking marketing and advertising.
ReplyDeleteI was recently trying to pimp my book on Facebook; I spent one evening at it and felt like a crack whore.
But did the pimping work?
ReplyDeletenothing wrong with selling yourself as a crack whore every now and then..just as long as it doesn't actually involve crack...or whores
nice blog and also informative.
ReplyDeleteUganda Safaris
It was always my dream when I was an expat to pay for my traveling by blogging. This was first back in 06 and later back in 08 but I could never make the blog work and earned zero income.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's a cliche dream many expats or English teachers which has been done a million times before and never works because internet users have seen it all before and the popularity of blogs is never big enough to make good money.
But then, there are some really good expat travel bloggers who I think deservce to make something from their work here's a good example
http://www.nectareal.com
Thanks for posting your ideas here, I enjoy reading and if I start a blog again i'll be sure to follow the example you have set here.
yeah, that's just what Google WANTS you to think -- whoring yourself out is perfectly natural! It's the world's oldest profession! Just give us one tiny little link!
ReplyDeleteBut did the whoring work X?
ReplyDeleteOh, I sold a few books. I make a lot more money speculating on commodities, but I guess that's more evil, at the base of it.
ReplyDeletethis sounds like an awful lot of effort... im feeling lazy today.. for a low reward. but if it works I will expect you to do all this for me please.
ReplyDeleteI love the country Indochina. I also love to blog ban.toi country indochina.toi'd like people in real writing hay.cam indochina.bai thanked the ban.toi always wanted to share with everyone.
ReplyDelete