Webby Thoughts

My Google AdSense money went down just a tiny bit in February as compared to January and December when I started making enough to get a check every couple months. Part of that is that there are fewer days in February. But, I also made just a few pennies less per day than those other months.

But, I ended up making more money in February than I have in any other month because I started listening to people like Darren of ProBlogger and his advice fo not relying on one method of income.

I was able to get one of my blogs accepted into Text Link Ads, and they sold 4 of the positions for the second half of the month which more than made up for the ever so little drop in AdSense income.

Since today is the first of a new month, I logged into my Text Link Ads account to see if any of the advertisers stuck around for another month. All 4 of them did. So, already I am locked into making about 50% of what I normally make in a month. On the first day of the month.

Plus, now I’m a little more protected if the price per click of the AdSense clicks drops or something strange happens with my search engine traffic.

Sometimes I end up reading the advice the big money people write and think but what difference does it make for us people making peanuts. Now that I’ve started to see it in action, I can see two important reasons to start diversifying early on.

1. If you happen to get lucky and have a site get huge, you will already be set up to implement multiple income streams.
2. If the plans are complimentary to each other, meaning implementing one doesn’t steal income from the other, then you can see a fairly sizable percentage wise jump literally overnight. After all, I went from peanuts to…well maybe chocolate covered peanuts while barely lifting a finger.

If you are interested in trying it out, please feel free to use this link to Text Link Ads (affiliate link).

There are always a million things been written about online.  Here are a few of my favorite recent tech posts.

Scoble removed Snap previews from his blog…and then wrote about why.  If Scoble can just persuade one user to stop using Snap previews, the world will be a little bit better of a place.

Ryan writes about deciding whether or not it is worth while to move a blog to a single site server and paying the higher cost.  If you regularly talk about Paris Hilton, it appears that the answer is yes.

Brian talks about a new service that helps you determine which MFA site’s ads are showing up on your site and paying you very little for it.  Blocking is fine and the only option right now, but I bet if google let the publishers set the lowest price per click they are willing to receive, that would help fight MFA sites, too.

I’ve been reading a a novel called Dingo by Michael Alan Nelson. I’m a few chapters in and love it so far. The unique part of this novel is that the entire thing is published online. You don’t have to pay one cent to read it.

It is nice to dream of the day when we can read any book online if we want to, but the reality is that very few of the big selling writers are going to do it without a viable business model to bring in some money. Plus, you have to worry about people stealing the story and publishing it on their own site. Tricky issues.

I am going to look into various methods of making money with a book that you publish on your website.

1) Tip jar - Nelson has one of these on his website. It’s way down low on the sidebar where most readers probably never venture. It’s a very polite way to beg for money without actually ever looking like you are really ever begging for money. But, if you are going to beg for money, you might as well hold your cup where people can see it. I would have put the donation button at the top and bottom of each chapter that way people can actually see it. Especially at the bottom. If I had just finished a chapter that I really liked and saw the button right there, I would probably click on it before I started hitting the back button on my browser.

2) Tease them - Publish chapters weekly. Make them drool. Either from the start or about halfway through, announce that you are self-publishing the book and give them a way to buy the paper version. The key to this option is to never put the end of the book online. I’ve actually purchase a book published this way before. I was reading Game Quest by Leopold McGinnis and a few chapters in realized that a paper version was coming out soon. I waited until the order page became available, chased the moths from my wallet and placed my order. Since I had already read a few chapters, I had a good feeling that I would enjoy the book and was not disappointed.

3) Sell some other stuff - People like your book. They like your character. Sell them some other stuff. Dingo has a very cool dog as one of the main characters. Sell t-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee cups, and underwear that have pictures of the dog. If you go to the main Dingo page, there’s a really cool, mean looking dog. Who wouldn’t want that dog on a back pack? If a character has a catch phrase, you’re practically set for retirement.

4) Google Adsense - Bad option for fiction, but probably a fairly decent option for non-fiction. If you wrote a book about how to find a divorce lawyer in Miami and published it online, you’d probably be able to collect a paycheck from Google every now and then.

5) Amazon - Good option for any book. If people are willing to read your book, they would probably be willing to read some other books. If they are reading your book online, they probably know how to buy something from Amazon. Help these people find their way there. Give them a pen to write the check.

6) Affiliate Marketing - I know Amazon is technically affiliate marketing, but they are big enough to be their own entity. People like to listen to books these days. Sign up to be an affiliate of an Audio Book club. People like to read books on their Palm. Sign up to be an affiliate of an eBook club.

I do not think that Stephen King should stop printing books to sell at Borders. His career is obviously doing pretty well. The real area where some of these techniques could be beneficial is for the people going the self-publishing route. Putting up the money to print a book that you don’t know if it will sell is tough. That’s why publishers like to stay with certain authors and certain types of books. Instead of spending your few grand on paper weights for the house, you might consider publishing online using the techniques above.If your dream of seeing paper with your name on it gets the better of you, consider publishing a signigicant amount of the story online, use that to build up a fan base before you publish. Since most self-publishers never break even, I would like to see more of them give up on the paper and try using some of the techniques above instead.

If you do, let me know. I can always use a new t-shirt.