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Not Spending Money To Make Money

Posted by Paul B | November 13, 2007 .

So it’s not making money in the strictest sense of the words but not wasting money is just as important when it comes to making a living online. When I first started this blog, my first real blog, I shot of like a rocket looking for ways of getting those initial visitors. Don’t know why really, I could have relied entirely on good old fashioned SEO techniques to draw in natural search and referral traffic but I was excited and wanted some quick results. I spent quite a lot of money in that first month, some was money well spent, some was just a waste. What it did prove though was the power of affiliate marketing from a blog because I’m pretty sure everything I signed up for was being promoted by at least one of the A list bloggers. Without further a do here’s a quick run down of some of the things I spent money on:-

Million Dollar Wiki
My online money makers page cost me $100 at the million dollar wiki, expensive for a single page but when I saw the number of bloggers promoting it and the fact it was a 15 year investment I decided it was a calculated risk worth taking. In the first few weeks of my page being there it managed to pay for itself (mainly thanks to TLA) and although the traffic it refers has dropped to a trickle it still does send the odd referral this way. Overall I’ve got to say that I am happy with the Million Dollar Wiki but if you’ve only got $100 to spend it might be better going elsewhere, especially now that the initial buzz has died down.

Bloggings Most Wanted
Everybody has seen one of those buy a pixel etc etc websites, well this was just the same but for bloggers. Buy a square for $25, upload a picture and have traffic referred to you for ever more. The problem with these sites is that they are only as good as the person marketing them. In this case after the initial surge of being featured on John Cow nothing seems to have happened since. Like the Wiki, traffic was high with the initial publicity but I’ve just checked and in the last week it has not referred any visitors (and I’m at the top of the most clicked bloggers list). At the end of the day this is $25 that could have been better spent elsewhere (note to self, impulse buying is stupid)

Blogging The Movie
This is probably the craziest thing I got involved with. I’ve even had to go back and look at the details to find out exactly what I’ve signed up for! Anyhoo, for $100 I get to have a permanent link on the Blogging The Movie website (as one of the first sponsors to sign up), a couple of reviews and if the target to buy a car is met my domain name plastered on the side of a car! If they don’t meet their target then I get the $100 back. Blogging The Movie is a project to travel the world videoing 10 bloggers, I prefer guns and scantily clad chicks in my movies but each to their own and all that. Either way I’ve paid $100 to help promote it, in terms of referral traffic it’s been a bit of a shocker but to give them their due it is delivering consistent traffic levels. All I need now is for them to make a mega hit and ride that traffic wave to wealth (or not). I guess time will tell whether this was worth it or not.

TLA
My $135 spend with TLA was money well spent, not only did it draw in some/lots of traffic but it also proved conclusively that buying traffic with TLA was a very viable option. I have considered doing the same again (I only ran the ads for 1 month) to give the blog a boost but at the moment with Christmas fast approaching I’m going to stick with my own rules and be a little conservative.

It seems funny but when most people talk about how much they make from blogging they ignore their expenses. My expenses were quite a lot to start of with but now are next to nothing, I’ve got this blog to a level where it can pay for itself and give some return as long as I don’t do any crazy spending, I almost feel like I’ve found my own little place that I can use to build from. If I carried on like I was then it would have been a lot longer before I could say I was making a profit, sure I was making money, it’s just I was spending it before I got it!

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1 Comment so far
  1. knupNET UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.9  November 13, 2007 7:08 pm

    Thanks for the post. I never bought a million dollar wiki page although I considered it many times. I think i’ll pass at this point.