Since I'll be off to university in September, I won't have my great paying job anymore. Hopefully I can get some sort of transfer to a TD Waterhouse branch nearby as a clerk or something.
As an alternative, I want to tackle a dream of mine: monetizing a blog. I keep reading about people making 3000$ a month off AdSense and other various services. Why couldn't I achieve the same?
If you remember the "Psychology of Hope", to set a goal, you need planning and flexibility.
The Plan
- Build the content
- Since I love politics and life development, these will be the focus - niche - of my blog.
- From time to time, I'll probably rant about personal issues I'm facing on the streets or with the news.
- As a sidebar feature, I'll be rating albums I listen to daily so visitors can discover or revisit great artists.
- Attract and retain visitors
- Thorough the years, I've changed the design of my website a lot... read "too much".
- Current theme has potential, hopefully I can tune it to my liking.
- Placing advertisements where visitors won't get fooled into clicking them while making them visible.
- CrazyEgg is a great service to pin point flaws in your layout and move popular blocks to high visibility location.
- Another big plus would be to learn how to write attractive posts!
- Attract advertisers and sales
- Being a fan of user interface design, LukeW is a guy I follow closely and drink his teachings.
- Therefore, everything is designed from a user stand-point: content is king, advertisements are extras.
- While they're on the sideline, properly related advertisements can deliver great leads for sellers.
- Today I signed up for AdSense, Amazon, Feedburner and Technorati. All of which can drive sells.
The Timeframe
As a goal, I'ld like to make at least 20$ a month for September. That would pay the web hosting fees.
By the beginning of 2009, I'ld be thrilled to raise 250$ monthly, and 500$ by July 2009 - a year from now.
For the long run objective, 1500$ monthly wouldn't be too shabby. Since I'll be in school at least until 2011, that amount would cover all my expenses!
Now as stated above, I'll need to be flexible, even if I went soft on the milestones. Any bloggers out there making a buck out of their blog have tips or don'ts? =)
Of course this is a journey. I will keep posting about the steps I've taken or changes made to this site.


.png)
