Awesomeness the blog, more than just ads.

This week Nathan has decided to let aaron from beawesomeinstead.com guest write a blog post. We hope you enjoy and don’t run screaming the other way. Thanks.

I always thought the only way to make any money off of blogging was selling ads. I will totally I agree that I’m no “expert” on the topic of blogging or making money online, but let me give you something to consider. I operate two blogs, one is personal and the the other is for my wife.

When it came to my wife’s blog, I took things a little slower and have tried to be more precise about what I was doing. She is a Realtor in Dickson, TN and I wanted to use blogging as a way of increasing her online visibility. We really didn’t want to make a lot of money by selling ad on her site but instead have tried to drive local customers to use her real estate services because they found her site and/or have been reading her real estate advice online. Her site doesn’t get a ton of traffic but according to Google Analytics we are starting to see the bulk of our results from the TN area. I will keep working on it, but for having her blog for only 3 months we have seen some nice results because this is totally what I want. I could probably sell some ad space there but honestly I felt it was more important to keep the content there relative to Real Estate advice in Tennessee.

My personal blog, beawesomeinstead.com, has been around for about the same amount of time, but I wanted to take a different approach with it. Now I have so far made a killing off of adsense since starting….that was sarcasm people, try to keep up. I know Rome wasn’t built in a day but since starting my site I have made almost 2 whole dollars from Google…woo hoo! (That’s right I have a very impressive eCPM of about $0.51..I know, I’m trying to control myself too.) I try to blog about various topics but am really making an effort to post only about things that are awesome. For example, I try to spend tome time on drumming (a personal hobby of mine), my favorite television shows (How I Met Your Mother and Scrubs), and decent movies and garb such as The Princess Bride or my fabulous Inigo Montoya shirt that I always get compliments on (I choose to think the compliments are more for me and not just because the shirt it great).

Probably my most linked and viewed article so far is about a poster from an episode of How I Met Your Mother. The Awesomeness poster. This poster was mentioned in an earlier season of HIMYM and finally seen in the latest season. All I did was write a few blog posts about the poster and even took the time to make a variation of the poster that I have been selling on Cafepress. It’s not making a ton of cash but I have made enough to pay for the stock photo I bought plus some. Online shops and referrals seem to be a decent addition (or alternative) to adsense, especially if you site focuses on products like movies, television, games or clothing. Cafepress is a great option if you want to make custom clothing, poster, etc. They have base prices and then you can decide how much to mark up on top of that. I prefer to keep my price low so I can sell more rather than make a huge mark-up and sell less… then again I’m no expert, but it’s a nice way to make a little extra cash until my ad cash starts rolling in though.

Thanks to Nate for letting me blog today. If you haven’t found a decent hobby already I would keep looking here, he seems to be pretty good with the hobby ideas.

Cheers,

aaron