Written by Garry Conn

Many people have blogs for a multitude of reasons. Some people enjoy blogging about their family and kids so that other family members out of state can easily view pictures, videos and read about the things going on with immediate family. Other folks really enjoy writing and want to show off their stuff to the world. All in all, there are many reasons why people have blogs.

Really only a small percentage of people have blogs because they want to make money from them. Consequently, even though the percentage of people who want to make money from their blogs is small, it still happens to be one of the most difficult challenges an individual can face.

I see so many amazing and popular blogs in the blogosphere that I know for a fact get tons of traffic, even more than blogs like John Chow dot Com or ShoeMoney.com. Yet, they don’t make a dime. The reason being, is that making money online isn’t really their focus. Their focus is basically expressing their thoughts and views on things without any care if people read their blog or not. These folks would be happy if only their grandmother read their blog or if a million people read their blog.

These folks are in many ways is what I call natural bloggers. Their minds haven’t been tainted by the whole concept of making money online and they don’t worry about keyword packing, proper HTML, or optimized post titles. Amazingly, these natural bloggers defeat the odds that search engine optimization expects preach.

A prefabricated blogger is an individual who has come to the realization that there is a ton of potential to make a lot of money with a blog. That individual then sets out to start a blog strictly for the purpose of making money online.

With that being said, there is nothing wrong with being a prefab blogger; however, in doing so or in being on, you still have to run and maintain your blog as if you were a natural blogger. If you don’t then you’re not going to get very far in your ventures of making money online with a blog.

How do I know this? Simple. I have quite a few blogs myself. I won’t lie, other than this blog, www.garryconn.com, I am a totally full blown prefab blogger. I’ll make a blog out of any niche topic that I think will yield me the most amount of money with the least amount of effort.

However, in my experience, some of my better performing blogs are on topics that aren’t really so “PreFab”. If you take www.opticalblog.com or www.airplaneblog.com for examples. Both of these blogs don’t really look or feel much different than other of my other “PreFab” blogs; however, there is one HUGE difference between these two blogs compared to my million and one other blogs. That difference is the topic.

I have over 10 years experience with eyeglasses and twice as much involvement with airplanes. I know these topics both very well and writing on this blogs comes very natural for me. Same goes with www.garryconn.com.

People who read blogs, don’t like “Prefab” stuff. Blog readers enjoy natural flowing content that is written from the heart. Blog readers enjoy getting to know the author of the blog in slow chunks and also enjoy having the author tie in their content with their personal lives.

So, when you go and seek out a niche topic to create a blog in, consider that people may get turned off if you build a blog that looks like nothing more than a spam house full of ads and links. I am soon discovering that you can do much better with having less on your niche blog rather than having more.

Just because Google AdSense allows you to put up to three ad units on each page, try running only one.

Just because you have found an abundance in affiliate programs that match your niche, try campaigning and promoting only one.

If you place more focus on capturing your readers and place more focus on converting your passer by traffic and converting them into people who will bookmark or save your site to their favorites, you might find that your blog will start to grow quickly.

There is much debate about whether or not a new blog should start out of the gate monetized. I’d say it’s ok to monetize your blog from the start; however, I also suggest that you always keep your readers best interest in mind. People read your content because they like you as the author and like your content.

I am learning that people place much more value in what you say rather than what your blog advertises. Consider that when you’re building and maintaining your blog.

For over a year, I have launched and maintained a ton of blogs that were built for the purpose of making money online with Google AdSense. However, now I am realizing that that might not actually be the best option for me. I am now discovering the power of running and maintaining a mailing list.

A mailing list has an amazing amount of power. Imagine having the ability to send out an email to thousands of people who actually want to receive your email and want to read what you write. This is huge.

So for me, being a AdSense Guru and a “PreFab” blogger, I am now starting to come around and remap all my blogs and do less article publication designed to capture traffic and then send them away through a Google AdSense click. Instead I am now starting to self promote my mailing list forms.

It is to the point of realization now, that I would much rather NOT have a visitor leave my blog off an AdSense click. Instead I would much rather that that visitor just the click towards signing up to my mailing list.

My ultimate suggestion to you would to be more of a natural blogger who blogs regardless of how many people visit or don’t visit your blog. It is very likely that your topic that you blog about also is a shared interest among many other people as well. It is just a matter of time before these people find your blog.

The question you need to ask yourself is this:

When someone does find your blog, what are you going to do with them? How are you going to utilize their visit?

Are you going to:

A.) Make some pocket change off them via an AdSense Click, or…

B.) Are you going to get them to sign up for your RSS Feed or Mailing List so that they can come back to your blog again and again?

My focus is now being more of a natural blogger and less of a “PreFabricated” blogger. I suggest that you do the same.

You still have to promote and market your blog. You still have to make sure that your blog is search engine friendly. You still have to do all the things that you have been doing; however, the only difference is that you now need to take advantage of the traffic that you do have. In doing so, your traffic will begin to increase and expand.

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1. Simply download this article that you just read and publish it on your blog.
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Written by Garry Conn

Time and time again people insist on trying to convince me that StumbleUpon traffic is useless traffic. While I’ll agree to some extent, it can be useless if you’re not properly taking advantage of the exposure. So here’s the deal. The common complaint about StumbleUpon traffic is that it doesn’t convert into money. Typically, bloggers will write something cool or interesting and have it submitted into StumbleUpon resulting in thousands and thousands of visits in a very clustered and quick time frame.

The problem that people face is that the content or the theme of the story being submitted into StumbleUpon isn’t something that generates sales, leads or even Google AdSense clicks. Many people feel like it is utterly useless traffic that does nothing but waste bandwidth. While I’ll agree with you on one side, I am also going to disagree on the other and here’s why.

StumbleUpon Traffic Eventually Leads to PageRank

Of all the things that I have had submitted into StumbleUpon, very commonly I see multiple people turn right around and write a post about what I stumbled on their own blogs. These are backlinks. Backlinks are important towards building up PageRank. The more PageRank an individual page has the more authority and power they have in delivering their own backlinks to other pages that are more important to you (e.g. pages that make you money). You may recall an article I wrote about how you can make money online by editing your old posts? Well there you go, that is the key to the topic in this article.

How To Make Money From StumbleUpon Traffic?

First off you need to get it out of your head that the ACTUAL StumbleUpon traffic will make you money. On that aspect, you are right. StumbleUpon traffic does not convert into leads, sales or even Google AdSense clicks. However, its in the actions of other Stumblers that will eventually lead to you making money. I agree with you, who cares about the “Burst Fire” flood of traffic that you get from StumbleUpon. Only thing that traffic does is suck your server system resources and eats up your bandwidth. However, when you stumble upon a box do you think inside it of outside of it?

Stumbling Upon A Box and Thinking Outside of It!

Thinking out of the box here… If you want to make money, you have to consider the value of StumbleUpon traffic. While it is obvious that many already know that the actual traffic doesn’t convert, its in the upcoming weeks and months that you should be concerned with.

The strategy is in creatively writing content that is geared towards a high concentration among Stumblers while also balancing another strategy in future link building to pages that will make you money. While on the surface most people quickly balk at using StumbleUpon as a means for making money online, I am here to tell you that it can be the best thing since the invention of the wheel.

Write Content For Stumble With A Trojan Horse Inside For Google

When you write content for the purpose of getting Stumbled, write your content in a way that carefully uses keywords and phrases that you can eventually use to link to relevant pages that will make you money. The Stumble traffic wave typically only lasts a few days. By then Google will have already crawled and indexed you page. A day or two later, Google will have also crawled all the pages from the other bloggers who have pointed links to your post that was submitted into Stumble upon.

If you carefully wrote your post to include targetable keywords, after a week when the Stumble traffic dies down to nothing, you can simply go back and plug those few selected keywords with links to other pages that you have created for the purpose of making money. In due time, because so many people pointed links to the original post you submitted into StumbleUpon, that page will eventually earn PageRank.

Pages Submitted To Stumble Are Very Likely To Establish PageRank

Pages that earn PageRank establish authority. Pages that are linked from other pages with PageRank also too will earn PageRank. So when you submit your post into StumbleUpon, do so in a way where you know that in about 7 days you’ll be going back to plug in links that point to the pages that really count in making money. Because you linked to those money making pages from a page that is soon to be established with PageRank, those additional money making pages will go for the ride as well.

The result will be in having pages built for making money online that end up ranking very well in the search engines. Search engine traffic in many ways is perfect traffic for the fact that if you get traffic from a search engine, it is more likely that they are interested in buying what you have to offer for the fact that they came to your page as a result of searching for it.

Win An Apple iPod Nano

One of the newest and most attractive programs that I use to make money online is with a program called Market Leverage. How would you like to win an Apple iPod Nano for free?

1. Simply download this article that you just read and publish it on your blog.
2. Then drop me a comment here so I’ll have your name in the entry pool.
3. Up for grabs is a Apple iPod Nano, a 2GB USB Pen, a flip video camera and even a $50 dollar preloaded American Express Rewards Card. All complimnents of Market Leverage!