I haven’t been updating as often as I should be, so I’m going to scrap my posting schedule all together.  There’s just been a lot of stuff to take care of, what with my quarter life crisis and not being a billionaire, so the blog will have to come second.

Now you’ll remember that I said this blog was going to be about more than just making money, so let me tell you what I’ve been up to.

I’ve set up a small niche site as a keyword-sniping and Adsense experiment.  It’s being updated more than this blog.  The layout is all SEO’d out, and I’m pumping each post full of keywords and long-tail keywords.  It’s still sandboxed, but I blame that on the fact that it’s a new blog, with no backlinks, and not even its own domain name.

Basketball hasn’t been going.  At all.  In fact, I’m going to go do a few basketball drills in a while.  I need to lose the weight, besides.

I also finally found the beautiful people.  They’re all over at expatriate parties.  I’m not there to hit on anyone, but it’s nice to be around girls who’re as pretty as I am.

Just Marc, thinking out loud.

I’ll admit it.  I’ve always figured Adsense to be the domain of big time bloggers.  I just haven’t figured out a way to make money from it.  In fact, it’s gotten so bad that I’ve started calling it Adcents.  Get it?  AdCENTS?

That’s why I went the path of sponsored posts and reviews.  Now THIS was really blogging for money.  There are a lot of companies out there that are willing to use and abuse the small-time blogger.. for  a fee.  I’m good with being used and abused, as long as I get paid.  The question is, how far am I willing to go?

I used to handle a couple of blogs that made quite a bit of money from working with –company censored to protect page rank-.  Basically, I wrote reviews for products and services that ranged from mainstream to obscure, depending on the “opportunity”.  I made quite the pretty penny for my efforts too, compared to my non-existent earnings from Adsense.

But recently, I noticed I haven’t been getting many opportunities as I used to, for BOTH those blogs.  I didn’t know what I was doing wrong.  I was updating regularly, and I still had the same number of inbound links I had before.  Both my blogs went from PR3 to PR0.  The cash stopped flowing, and I was left wondering what the hell just happened.

A month or so later, I found out.

Seems the Big G punished the blogs who use  –company censored to protect page rank-, not merely lowering their Page Ranks, but reducing them to PR0.  It hurt the blogs, and it hurt  –company censored to protect page rank-.  Google didn’t like having the integrity of its search system being compromised (read: jerked around) and you don’t mess with the Big G.

I was going to sign up for the same service again for BlogMarc.com, but I’ve decided against it after finding out what really happened.  There’s got to be other ways to make money.  I’m exploring a couple of options right now.. one more promising than the other, but every little bit helps.

Marc, n00b blogger trying to make money online, just thinking out loud.

(This is my not-so-subtle way of saying I’m going to try a keyword sniping experiment.)

It used to be that nobody had any idea what Page Rank was.  Now, even my grandma knows about it.  In today’s MMO (make money online) world, PR counts for a lot.  That’s why the Google (henceforth referred to as the Big G) put into effect some changes in how they determined PR.

Now, you can’t beat the Big G.  To do so would be equivalent to suicide on the web.  The best thing you can do is to play its game, and play it well.  Here are a few things you might not know about Page Rank.

1. One way inbound links are the only relevant links.
2. Links from pages related to your website matter more than links from unrelated pages.
3. Link juice is also an important factor to consider.  If a website with 100 outbound links link to you, it’s not going to be as worth as much as a website with 10 outbound links linking to you.
4. Search engines look at webpages, not websites.  You may have different PRs for different pages in the same site.
5. Reciprocal links carry almost no weight.

So far, BlogMarc.com has a Page Rank of 2.  I’ll be trying to get it as high as possible over the next month.  Hopefully, things work out for you as well.  Good luck to us!

If you’re serious about making money by blogging, then you must be a little loopy.  It’s not your blog that makes you money.  It’s the marketing of your blog that does it for you.

I don’t have an issue with bloggers who just love to blog, and figure that they might make a few extra dollars doing it.  That’s all well and good, and a win-win situation.  But if you want to make some real money online, the way to do it is by internet marketing.  That’s where SEO comes in.

They say the oily wheel gets the grease, and that’s a pretty good metaphor for the issue of blogging v.s. internet marketing.  One thing that no one will argue with, is that for a blog or a site to be a successful money-maker, it has to be noticed.  While I agree that great content and a fancy layout will have your friends telling their friends about your fantastic blog, it simply cannot compare to the millions of people online that you can reach by employing SEO techniques.  The greatest blog in the world is of no value to advertisers if only 50 people read it, while a mediocre blog which generates hundreds and thousands of traffic hits is a gold mine.

This is a business.  There are two paths to take.  You can either make a small profit by putting in a few advertisements in your blog, OR you can slap some internet marketing on your advertisements.  It’s all about priorities, baby.

You’ll notice that I gave the blog an overhaul. My primary reason was to look more professional, which would ideally bring in more traffic, which would bring in more money. In theory: nice layout = more readers = more money.

But will that really make you more money? The Mona Lisa of blog layouts? I’m not so sure.

I think that your online income (specifically from Adsense) is directly related to how much traffic your niche blog gets. Now the question you have to ask yoursef is:

Do I want the hundreds of readers that offering a fancy looking layout with the content to match would offer? Readers you can build a community around?

OR

Do I want the hundreds of thousands of random readers that search engines will be delivering to my website, many of them game to the idea of clicking anything?

(Hint: 100 < 100,000)

To put things as bluntly as possible, if you’re serious about making money online, you’re going to need the big G’s help with generating traffic. That’s where SEO comes in. Here are some facts to consider when designing your blog layout.

Understand how the Google Bot crawls your page:

The bot will crawl your page from the top left corner, then down the left column, then top second column, and will end at the lower right corner. It’s trying to find out just specifically what your page is about.

Make it easy for the Bot to figure it out!

It’s Search Engine Optimization, not search engine confusion. Most blogs have too much fluff in them. They have their header images and their javascripts and their lengthy, fancy welcome notes.

Well the Google bot doesn’t care about that stuff! It doesn’t even recognize javascript and images (unless they have the alt tab). As for the welcome note, the bot doesn’t care how old you are, and what you do for a living or what your hobbies are. You’re just confusing the bot.

Take this as an example. Let’s say somebody wants to rank well for the niche keywords “vintage guitars”. This is what the bot will encounter on most pages:

Welcome to Marc’s Super Guitar World Blog!

I am a law student with a passion for British rock. This is going to be my blog about vintage guitars! Rock with me on my journey!

..or something like that. The bot will read guitar, blog, British rock. This isn’t so bad, because you’re still hitting your targeted keywords. But wouldn’t it be so much better if you nixed the welcome note all together and just structured your page like this:

Blog Title : Vintage Guitars

Blog Description: Gibson Les Paul | Fender Stratocaster | Telecaster | Pro-Martin | Ovation | Rebuilt Guitars | Classic Guitars

Make sure your sidebars have Vintage Guitars in them.

Use the keyword in your Post Title.

Make sure your posts have long-tail keywords (keywords related to your targeted keyword).

So how does this SEO magic work? Imagine the order the bot will crawl your page.

1. URL
2. Blog Title
3. Blog Description
4. Post Title
5. Post itself (with long-tail keywords and comments)

By the time the Google Bot gets to your comments, it should know exactly what your page is about. If it doesn’t, then you should get to work on applying all the SEO you’ve learned here today.

Now if you’re looking to attract social traffic, then by all means, disregard this post. But if you’re serious about getting serious money making online traffic from Google, then follow my advice, and SEO your blog today.

So I’ve been away for a month with some quarter-life crisis issues, but I’m back!  While I was gone, I did a little soul-searching and decided that this blog needs a new direction.  I’ll still be trying to make money online, but BlogMarc.com is going to be so much more from now on.

This isn’t only about making money by blogging and totally whoring out my blog.  This is about BUILDING A LIFE.

If you know what that means, then mad props to you.  If you don’t, I’ll explain it in tomorrow’s post.   Yeah, that’s right, tomorrow.  I’ll be updating daily again, like I said I would.