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.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 5:47 am and is filed under SEO, make money online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.