You Can Double Your Blogger Cash Payout by Introducing the Background Image

The numbers are in. I wrote about how to double my blogger blog adsense revenue before. Now I doubled my adsense revenue again. Simply by adding a nice background image to the blog.

That was with exactly the SAME amount of traffic to the blog as before. All I needed was a digital camera and an image manipulation program. I used a free gimp for windows. I used gimp just to change the contrast, brightness, and to crop the image appropriately to the screen. That was it!

When you have an image ready, just go to Customize, then Layout, then click Edit in your Header rectangle. You'l have a choice to upload your image from the computer. If needed, play with the resizing and that is it.

Pick a nice header background like this or like this and you'll about double your adsense income vs. just a plain blogger default single color template.

The numbers are in.

P.S.: Please do not copy the background image from the internet. You may get in trouble with licensing. Just take a nice picture of a sunset, skyline, flowers from the nearest gas station island, or anything that makes sense for your blog.

Why Register Your Blog with Google?

The main reason why you want to sign up with Google Webmaster Central is to find out what backlinks are pointing to your blog. Especially which are the backlinks to your blog that Google values.

You will get the most comprehensive list of backlinks to your site through Yahoo by using Yahoo Search  link:yoursite.blogspot.com  feature which takes you to Yahoo site explorer like this: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fdofollowcool.blogspot.com&bwm=i&bwmf=u&bwms=p&fr=moz35&fr2=seo-rd-se .You can see the comprehensive list of backlinks there. However, most of the search traffic comes from Google and you do want to know which of these links are valued by Google. Dofollow is only one of the qualities of a link Google is looking for.

When you try the same link: search at google.com, you will see that Google hides most of the backlinks jealously. You will find many more links through yahoo search.

So to get a bit closer to understanding what backlinks Google appreciates, sign up with Google Webmaster Central. Choose the META TAG authentication for your blog as the file upload version will not work with your blogspot blog. Then check up on your backlinks. Here are the current stats for a site that shows you how your parking ticket pays for itself:

Yahoo Siteexplorer: Pages: 38, Inlinks:174
Google Search Link: 5 sites linking in
Google Webmaster Central: 88 links to your site.

You see, not all links are created equal in Google's mind. Google is a jealous god. Backlinks play an important role with Google. However, you will need to work just a little bit harder to find out which backlinks really count for Google. Sign up for Google Webmaster Central. There is other very useful information there. I'll let you discover it on your own. In my next post I'll tell you my discovery.

Why You Need to Start Multiple Business Blogs?

Leaving a comment on someone's blog the other day I read another commenter write "I need to get back to my blogs now". I was taken aback a bit. A stay at home mom running multiple blogs? Hmmm.

If you are serious about making money with your business blog you need to run multiple business blogs.

There are opposing opinions out in the blogosphere about starting multiple business blogs. Some bloggers cautiously encourage starting several blogs and spreading the start dates out in time.

I'd say, forget cautiously. Forget spreading them out in time. Start a new business blog when you feel inspired. Don't let anyone tell you you'd spread yourself thin. When you start multiple business blogs you will find that, depending on the topic you were inspired to pick, each blog will have a completely different audience. You will be in for surprises. You'll find it easy to drive scores of new targeted visitor to one blog from day one through straight referrals from forums and blog comments. The other blog will do better with search engines, and build up audience over time. You will find that the best marketing approach will depend on the blog.

This is what I found with two of my new blogs. Another big difference was in monetization. Take google adsense's eCPM. eCPM stands for effective cost per thousand impressions. What represents cost to Google represents revenue for your blog. I found eCPM differed by more than a factor of 10, ranging from $0.5 on the low end to $11.00 on the high end. Big difference in eCPM. Big surprise.


You'll learn a lot running multiple blogs.

True, there is more management involved with starting a new blog. You need to tweak with the blog to make it user friendly, navigable. You need to market it to drive targeted traffic. You need to make it dofollow, of course. You need to encourage and reward commenting. These tweaks take some time.

However, learning how to do a certain tweak with one blog will help you do the same tweak for the next blog in half the time. Bringing in startup traffic for blog #2 will take much less time than for blog #1.

Depending on whether you blog one hour a day or 10 hours a day, you won't be able to keep up with all the blogs all the time. You won't be able to keep in touch with your audience for a while.

Don't worry, your blog audience, commentators, subscribers, even new visitors would rather not hear from you than get an uninspired piece of information from you. Writing inspired blog posts beats posting frequently. Plus, neglecting a single blog for a while has unintended advantages. You will see what the long-term residual influx of new visitors from forums, blog posts, and search engines. More on that in a future post on keeping track of your visitors with google analytics or similar services. When you leave a blog alone for a while, make sure you continue collecting the visitor information!

It turns out many successful bloggers run several blogs simultaneously. I'll write sometime about techniques to make operating several blogs more time effective such as Firefox Profiles, separate email accounts and the like.

Do you run multiple blogs? If you do, what were the surprising differences you found in running them? Comment ahead!

Monetize Your Blog is the Next Thing To Do.

As of today, monetizing blogger blog is a matter of a few clicks if you already have adsense set up. Just click on Settings then Monetize then you'll be given a few layout choices. Stick with the default for maximum exposure of ads. Google will select your adsense layout to match the colors of your blog style. There is not much else to do!

I've noticed some bloggers out there  calling for no advertising on blogs. I disagree. The main point is: Most people are ad-blind anyways, and subconsciously filter out the ads and go for the content anyways. However, if they're looking for something already, they hit your blog, they will see an ad that matches what they're looking for. My theory anyways. As google has implemented Double-Click advertising and viewer-centric advertising in addition to content-centric advertising, chances are even higher your reader will find something they are looking for in your ads.


So go ahead monetize your blog now!

Give it a couple of days/weeks depending on how much traffic you get. Check back with Monetize Tab and you will see your earnings right there.