surviving the recession

Many people will be trying to survive the recession by blogging, either on this platform or on others (if you wish to blog on this platform, click this link to join). But the key to doing this successfully is keywords.

Keywords are the method by which search engines marry your content to the searches users are making, and if you add the correct keywords to your content, the engines will drive traffic to your site. It is only when you get traffic that you are able to make money from blogging.

I have been rather lax about picking keywords - usually when I blog, I just blog off the top of my head. However, I have been reading up on choosing keywords, and will aim to carefully apply the principles to this blog. I’ll report back in a few weeks on whether this is making a difference to my blog traffic.

There are strong indications that online advertising rates are falling, whether they are pay per impression advertising or the pay-per-click variety.

This matters because most work-online entrepreneurs rely on advertising on their sites to bring in an income. What can be done to combat this? Increase volume is the short reply. If your earnings per thousand impressions are dropping, you need more traffic just to stay steady. Therefore you need to write more, and in greater variety in order to cast the traffic net more widely. It is hard work increasing output like that, but as long as this recession lasts, there doesn’t appear to be much alternative. 

Many online money-making projects, such as affiliates, get-paid-to-click, sponsored posting etc also pay you to introduce people to their service. Typically, they ask you to introduce a member, and that member has to earn a certain amount before you get your introduction fee. Many bloggers get very excited at this and plaster referral links all over their blogs. But how successful if this as a money-making project?

In my experience, nine out of ten referrals earn you absolutely nothing, as they give up way before they earn enough for you to get your introduction fee. Occasionally you might be able to refer someone who is absolutely great, and you earn a lot from introducing them, but this is very rare. And then you get referral schemes where the scheme owner changes their mind about paying for referrals, so all the work you have done introducing people to their site is for nothing.  

My advice is, sure, put the referral links on your blog, as you never quite know if one of those rare diligent referrals will turn up. But don’t count on the money - it’s a very nice-to-have iceing on the cake, if and when you get paid, nothing more. And don’t be so foolish as to neglect your real sources of online earnings because you are too busy promoting referrals.

I have written a lot of posts on how to earn extra money, both online and offline, and it occured to me that it would be handy to summarise them in a single post, so that people can see what the options are.

Why would you need to earn extra money? Perhaps you’ve lost your job, or need to raise cash to clear your debt, or simply because you are retired and your investments no longer provide an income big enough to live on. Here’s a list of ideas on earning money. Where the idea is only applicable to one country, I have put that country’s name in brackets. Where there is no country named, it is suitable for everyone.

Make money by tutoring online (USA)

Making money from YouTube

Making money from Newsvine

Making money renting out space (UK)

Making money putting ads on your car (UK)

Making money renting your goods out

Making money house-sitting (UK)

Making money participating in clinical trials (UK)

The key to successful blogging is getting traffic. If you don’t get traffic, there is nobody to view the ads and you don’t make any money.

But the key to getting traffic is writing about the things people are searching for information on. I have been looking at the traffic statistics on this blog, and was surprised at what I found. This blog is a mix of advice on debt and budgeting, plus advice on how to make extra money, plus posts on what is happening in the economy, particulary as regards news about the mortgage lenders.

To my surprise I found that most of the hits to the blog came from people searching for infomation on the mortgage lenders. In other words they were searching for news that affected them. It has made me rethink what I write on this blog. Sure, the stuff about how to earn extra money is useful to people - but people don’t search for information they don’t even realise exists! A better way for me to go about things may be to write about news on the lenders, and add reminders at the bottom on the post that readers can find all sorts of helpful information by clicking on the categories listed in the sidebar.