How To Make Money With A Blog… yes, that’s a question…

I have really big plans for this blog.  Someday, I will make enough money with this blog that I can spend all of the time that I now devote to my job doing nothing more than bitching about stuff here all day.  You know what they say, do something you love, and it won’t really be “work”.  Well, bitching is about the only thing I do that I really enjoy, so this has to be the answer to my prayers… at some point… right?  Oh please, let it be so.

Okay, so to make money with a blog, you have to… uh… COME ON!  There has to be a way to make money with a blog! Every once in awhile, I put a link to something on Amazon on here.  I’m an Amazon Associate, which means I can get commission if someone clicks one of those links and actually buys something from Amazon.  I have been an Amazon Associate for about two years, and I have actually made some money doing it.  Of course, I haven’t seen any of that money yet.   Amazon won’t actually pay anything out until you have built up at least $10 in commission… and I haven’t hit that mark yet.  In another three or four years, I should get my first $10 check from Amazon.

$10

I’m stoked!

There is also Google Ads.  I could have a list of stupid links on the side of my blog with Google ads and I would get paid every time someone clicks one of those links.  Happy Stinking Joy doesn’t really have a lot of visitors, and, at this point, I’d rather have you stay and read my thoughts than get distracted by the ads on the side and leave my site.  Also, it would mess up my ultra-professional layout… or something.

I haven’t exactly had an onslaught of individual advertisers approaching me with bids for some of the precious real estate on my site.  I guess rant sites aren’t real popular with traditional advertisers.  Before I’m going to see any real revenue from this site, I’m going to have to get more than a handful of people coming here on a daily basis.

Most popular blogs seem to fall into a couple of categories, the first of which is the “expert” blogger.  You know, these are the Seth Godins of the world who share all kinds of free insight into crap that they are experts about.  Their whole ploy is to give you “free advice” to make you feel like a friend, and then they try to sell their books to you or try to talk you into hiring them to do consulting or speaking engagements.  Well, my forty-one-years of life have not exactly led me to become much of an expert at anything.  I know a little about a lot, but a lot about little.  I have been too busy chasing the next-step-up in middle-class pay to stay with any one company in any given field for more than a couple of years.  If your current promotions and pay increases aren’t getting you where you want to be: quit, and maybe the next job will take you where you want to go.  Of course, the next job never does.  So, I’ve had the opportunity to work with all kinds of interesting people in many different fields, but I haven’t stuck around any of them long enough to actually have become an expert at anything.  I’m an expert bitcher, but companies aren’t going to hire me to give a “bitch seminar” to their workforce… at least not yet.  I figure if I pray about it long enough, God, if nothing else, will get tired of me asking and either give it to me just to shut me up or strike me dead…

Strike me Dead

… either of which would lead to no more Monday mornings dreading work.

The other major category of successful bloggers seems to be those who cover current events.  Whether it be Perez Hilton covering the latest embarrassments of the rich and famous, or any of the slew of Yahoo! bloggers covering the latest in world events; people who get the story first tend to get a following.  I think this may be the route I need to follow.  I need to get the hot stories first.  Of course, I live in Nebraska, so the celebrity fodder may be a little out of my grasp.

Miss America

Ooh… Ooh… Miss America is from my part of Nebraska, so I could dedicate my blog to digging up all of the crap I can to humiliate Miss America I did a little blog about Miss America right after she won and it was actually one of the most visited rants I have posted!  But… I have a pretty strong suspicion that Teresa Scanlan is almost as squeaky clean as you would think a Miss America should be. I bet she actually believes what she says she believes, and I don’t think that “Miss America thought about skipping church once because she was just too tired to go, but then she prayed about it and changed her mind” will draw a lot of visitors to my little site.

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So, I’ve got to find a way to get the latest and greatest news before anybody else.  This is a “must” if I ever want to make this thing my sugar daddy.  Okay, so here it goes:

Breaking news… Charlie Sheen has gone insane!  The impact was devastating.  Damages are estimated… oh, great, my kid just looked over my shoulder and informed me that this is old news.  Okay, I guess I need to find something a little more “hot”.

Alright, I just did a Google search for “breaking news” and I don’t think I’m going to be able to go this route.  It seems that all of the “news” sites already have the breaking news covered.  The news sites and a bunch of Twitter people.  I don’t tweet or chirp or cockadoodledoo… or whatever it is that those people do.  I’m not quite hip enough for that.  Besides, all I’d be able to add to the Twitter conversation would be unique things I’m experiencing.

“It’s windy in Nebraska… again!”

Windy Trees

See, it just doesn’t work.

Hmmm… I gotta figure something out.  Okay, I know, I could just make kind of creative news stories.  No, that wasn’t “make up news stories”, it was “make kind of creative news stories”.  There’s… uh… sort of a difference.

Breaking news…. There is a humongous oil leak in the… uh… Gulf of Istanbul.  Yeah, and it’s causing infertility in the… uh… Great Northern Spike-Backed Whale.  Oh, you should hear the sad song those poor whales are singing at this moment.  It would make you cry.

PETA
Okay... yeah... I don't know what Alicia Silverstone being a Vegetarian has to do with "funny whale oil leaks" either, but a Google image search came up with this. I love Google...

This just in… apparently the oil spill was caused by… uh… Miss America!  Yeah, that’s it!  Apparently Miss America was on a diplomatic mission to Alderan and she and her entourage accidentally knocked over a big oil thingie in the Gulf of Istanbul.  Anti-American sentiment is through the roof in the countries bordering the Gulf… and by Great Northern Spiked-Back Whale lovers around the world!  Check back to this site often for more of the latest…

This just may work 😉

6 thoughts on “How To Make Money With A Blog… yes, that’s a question…”

  1. I think I may become a vegetarian.

    Funny how you mention making money through your blog. I just got the title of PLUMBING EXPERT on a website I have been giving my time to now and then. Along with the title, I can now choose to have an advertisement with every first answer to a question. In this way, I can make between 0 and 100 cents a day, depending on how many people see my advice, and how many people give it a positive rating. Im not all about the money, so I have decided the title is good enough for now, and havent signed up for the big bucks opportunity. Now if it were between 0 and 100 dollars a day, I would definatley give it a second thought. But just getting the title of plumbing expert on a site that has only four plumbing experts (including myself) and is rated the top plumbing advice page on the net (supposedly) makes me feel pretty good. They dont just hand these things out. You get your title merely on your answers and positive rating of those answers. So maybe someday I will be able to make money just giving plumbing advice, and not actually have to deal with, well, plumbing. Oh, now that would be awesome, but, there will be no breath holding happening here.

  2. 100 cents a day… that could be $365 dollars per year… in two years, that’s a pretty nice laptop. I’d say go for it. You could potentially have a new computer every couple of years. You have nothing to lose and everything to win! Well, not everything, but $365 a year is slightly better than a slap in the face 🙂 Besides, I am all about the money!

  3. Good luck with the whole “making money from blogging” thing. I’ve never done google ads, but I do make some money from Amazon and another affiliate program. Part of what you have to do is to network with other bloggers. I run with the mommy blogger crowd. Is there a tech support ranter crowd? Or grumbling middle age dude crowd? When you start mixing things up with folks who link to you, etc… things start to happen.

  4. Thanks, Nancy! Yeah… I have almost no networking skills, so I might be outta luck. There probably is a “tech support ranter crowd”, but they are probably a bunch of guys who talk code and Gnomes and a bunch of other stuff I don’t understand. “Grumbling middle age dude crowd”… I have enough negativity in my life without getting involved with more losers like me 🙂 Damn! Looks like I’m destined to work a job until the day I die… guess I just gotta accept it. Half of the struggle of life is just accepting the fact that certain parts of it are going to suck and there really isn’t anything you can do about it. I think the acceptance stage of life is where the drugs and the alcohol come in, if you’ve got the money for them, which I don’t 🙂

  5. Thanks, 12bet. Didn’t actually realize I wrote any articles, but I’ll take whatever props I can get… even if they are a little spammy…

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