Making Money with Blogs to Build Income. Learning Adsense, Drawing Traffic, and More!

Since things aren't exactly explosive on the Google front for my cell phone site right now compared to a couple of months ago, and since Google really can't be controlled, and can pick you up and drop you as it pleases, I've been working more with the few blogs I own, including this one. Along the way, I've come across blog mogul sites like JohnChow.com and ShoeMoney.com, which are the top dogs who have worked their way to the very top of the online money making world, and their blogs are a major part of that. When I first started blogging, I created a blog for my cell phone site, and it was basically to aid my main site by writing content about cell phones, and linking to the phone order pages on my main site. Since then I've opened a few more blogs and have invited some others to blog on a couple of them, covering various topics like entertainment and reality TV. Then I opened this blog with G.C. basically to record our path to making it in the online business world. So with all this going down, we've picked up so many different aspects of making money online, and doing it with various sources of income. Blogging itself has turned out to be one of the biggest potential money makers out there. Of course, this sounds like the easiest thing in the world, you do blogs, you make money, bam! Of course there is the part about learning adsense and how to maximize it, how to get incoming links to your blog and why, getting your blog seen in the first place, etc. etc. For me it's one of those things where you can see the big picture (that seems to be a trend with most businesses I'm involved with), but you can also see the long long road ahead, and what has to be done. I myself wrote a blog awhile back about doing the work or never making it, and today I ran across a good blog by rkelley on ShoeMoney's site, about getting off your ass and working. The article basically puts the point across of just how hard is it to actually make money with blogs and only the few who actually put major effort in will ever make it. I've spent a descent amount of time between my cell phone site and college classes trying to learn anything I can about making some more money with the blogs to make ends meet. Of course Google Adsense is the most popular way to get some income coming in from your blog. I've recently taken a look at Joel Comm's Adsense-Secrets.com, which has some great tips on learning about placing ads, color schemes, and a lot of other aspects that are big factors in making money with Adsense. I'm really hoping the blogs can bring in some more money with some time and good content, and with all this potential, who knows how big things can get. I know there are bigger programs out there like Kontera and ReviewMe which can also big money makers once blogs get to a certain level of traffic on a monthly basis. Here's hoping that this will be one of the blogs that will one day have floods of traffic and I can sit here and blog about successful blog building, and share my tips on what I've learned in making money with blogs.

Going Back to College to Improve My Online Business...Finally Some Direction in College!

Last week I returned to college (via online courses) for the first time since 2002. I graduated high school in 1999, then took a year off, and started community college in 2000. At the time, I had no clue why I was going other than "college is good," therefore i just went and took basic classes, with 0 actual plan in mind. I surprised myself by getting an A in English 1, (prob the first A I'd gotten in a class since the early 90's) and did pretty average in the other classes like History 1, and a class in Microsoft Excel which I took just because I had a mild knowledge of the program from learning it in high school, so i signed up to take that class online. I took a full 12 hours in the first semester, then dwindled down as time went on, until I took time off again in 2002 due to burnout. I was just going and taking classes, with no degree in mind other than just something general, and I was also involved in the wrestling business at the time as a referee and manager, so weekends had distracted with the travel, doing shows, after parties, etc. My focus was off, and I knew if I kept going, I'd blow more money and get a less than stellar grade in more random classes, nothing really clicked, so i just "took time off" again.

Anyway, looking back to 1999, that was the time i started noticing the idea of "Making Money Online." I've already stated here in past blogs about my experiences with some companies, and I've also talked about my current telecom business, and my various other projects such as making money blogging, etc. I've been fairly successful with these ventures, but after some time, I started thinking about more and more ways to enhance what I already knew and was working with. My fiance began taking classes last summer for the first time, and I'd been helping her learn about all the different financial aid that was out there and ways to obtain it. After seeing how well the financial aid system is set up at our county college, and then stumbling across the E-Commerce certification that the school offers, I finally saw the opportunity to enhance what I was already going with my business online. I could finally take classes that go hand in hand with the things I do daily with my website, blogs, etc. Talk about a difference! 7 years ago I was bored to death with random classes, and now I'm taking Marketing and web page design classes which will enhance, and even teach me totally new things that I can apply, and see results with in my now chosen "Career" of working for myself, on my own time. The schedule for online classes are great, and very laid back, more my style.

For anyone who is working online, or has a certain interest they want to enhance, I'd definitely recommend finding out about financial aid at your closest school. Not only are you enhancing what you're doing or learning something new, but the government will even pay for it as long as your not already banking at a current job. There are even more opportunities out there with loans on top of grants if needed. This was an awesome opportunity for me to jump on in my transitional period of dropping my shitty unreliable day job to totally focusing on my own company, which will now eventually be backed up with a college education. It's an investment I couldn't afford to not take.