On Blogging and Social Media

Making the decision to 'go commercial' with your blog is a big one. One of the most common dilemmas for educationalists, is 'Will it be worth the money?' This quick tutorial will show you how to add Google AdSense to your blog and should give you some idea of how much money it will help you to make.

How to add Google AdSense

• Inserting AdSense advertisements to blogs made with blogger is very simple. Just log im and go to your blogger dashboard. Here you should see a 'Monetize' link.

• Clicking a the link will take you to a page where you can choose where the ads are inserted into your blog.

• You can change and customize these later so don't worry too much about which you choose. Once you've made your choice click on 'Next'.

• This will take you to the part of the site where you create your AdSense account. This is quite a simple process.

• You just need to add some information about your location and where you would like the payment sent to. You need to enter a physical address and your payments will be sent by cheque.

• Once you have created an account you will see your payment details and how much money your blog has generated each time you click on the 'Monetize' link on your blog.
• It could be a while before your account is approved and your earnings start to show.
  

• Once your daily earnings start displaying you can click on 'AdSense Reports' link to find out more about your earnings and get more data.

In order to get paid, you need to have reached a payment 'threshold'. This varies from currency to currency, but in the UK it's about £60 and in the US $100 dollars.

So now the question that everyone asks.

How much money will Google AdSense make for you

This will vary enormously depending on the type of site you have and the kinds of marketing it can attract, but to use my own blogs as an example, I'm averaging around £0.50 per 1k page impressions. So to make £100 I'll need to get around 200k page impressions.


This of course isn't that great, but it is early days and this isn't the only way you can generate money from your blog.

How about you?

• Have you tried using Google AdSense on your blog?
• Have you tried other ad revenue generation?
• Do you think it is a worthwhile way to generate revenue?
  

I'm sure that every teacher has at some point produced something that they have felt has commercial potential, but trying to earn money from your work through a publisher can be a slow, time consuming and ultimately frustrating experience because:

• Most publishers know what they want to produce and select the people they want to produce it.
  
• It is very unusual for a writer to approach the publisher with a project and get it taken on.
• Many teachers only have time to produce small amounts of material rather than complete books.
  

So, recently I've been asked by a few people about the potential of selling their work directly to customers online and whereas I can see there are some potential obstacles to this, I think it is a possibility.

These are what I see as the obstacles:

• Credibility - In order for people to part with their money and credit card information online, they need to be very sure that you are going to deliver a good quality product and that their credit card information is gong to be secure.
• International payments - Much of the potential market for educational resources is in developing countries and many of the people in these countries don't have access to international hard currency accounts.
• Copyright protection - Once you have sold your work online how do you stop people from making multiple copies of it and giving it away or even reselling it all over the world?

Giving it a try
If you look at these obstacles and decide that you would still like to give it a try, Tagito might be a possible way of testing the waters and seeing if your idea has the potential to earn you a living.

To use Tagito you will need to have a PayPal account and Tagito will take 10% of any money you make, but apart from that it looks quite easy and straight forward. You just sign up and upload your files (You need to create your PayPal account first).

Tagito then guides you through the process of creating a widget / icon which you can add to your site or blog in order to sell your file. You visitor just needs to click on the file image and they are taken to PayPal to enter their account details.

Tagito supports a good wide range of file types so you aren't restricted to single text documents.
You can see a nice widget on the Tagito site FAQ page that tells you about the average earnings of its users, so this could give you some idea of how much you are likely to make, so be sure to have a look at that and the FAQs before you begin.


If you don't sell anything then you don't have to pay anything, so the financial risks are pretty small. There's a more detailed review of Tagito on MakeUseOf if you want to investigate further.

If you do decide to start selling your worksheets and lesson plans on your blog or site here are a few recommendations:

• Don't over price -Try for larger numbers of sales. The world is your market place so selling large numbers for small amounts could get you a much quicker profit than trying to convince people to part with large amounts of money online (where most people expect to find materials for free)
• Don't under price - If you make you materials too low it might not seem worth the hassle of going through the payment process
• Give free samples for download - But make sure these are consistent with the quality of the materials you try to sell.
• Make sure that the materials you sell are completely your own work - Don't include other people's images, texts etc even if they are Creative Commons licensed as a CC license doesn't usually extend to commercial use.
• Make sure the materials you sell are of themselves complete - There's nothing worse than buying something that is unusable unless you to buy something else.
• Don't give up the day job too soon - It can take a long time before you make any serious amount this way (as the Tagito average earnings chart shows) and sales could suddenly drop off.

I haven't tried this yet, but it is something that I'm giving serious consideration as it enables educators to cut out the publisher and so sell their products much more cheaply.

How about you?

• Have you tried to sell you work through Tagito or through a similar service?
• What success / problems have you had?
• What other services have you tried?
• How did you decide on pricing?
• Do you think teachers should be selling their work / buying each other's work?
  

Please leave a comment or question.

Many teachers who write blogs would like to make some money from their blogging to either supplement their income or even just cover the costs of some of their time. This isn't an area I really have any experience in, so I asked Miracel Juanta from A Teacher's Odyssey to write me some tips on this, so what follows is a guest posting with Miracel's advice on how to make your first dollar.


You might ask, “Why $1? I’m not blogging just for a mere $1!” Reality check, my friend. I just don’t want to create false hopes that you can easily make big money from blogging. But what about the A-list bloggers out there? Well, yeah, they became millionaires when there were only few bloggers then. It’s different now that there are plenty of blogs mushrooming here and there. Competition is tougher now.

Can you really make money through blogging? The answer is yes ,however, it will take some time. Here, I will outline the steps which can lead you to earning your first $1 in blogging.

1. Don’t blog for money
   Ironic, isn’t it? If you will blog for money, I guarantee you that you will soon quit. The successful bloggers like Yaro Starak, John Chow, and Darren Rowse didn’t blog just for the money. They blog because they are passionate about what they’re doing. So, choose to blog about your passion.
2. Choose a good blog platform and design
   Choosing a good blog platform and design is crucial in building traffic for your blog. You should make your blog look professional, otherwise, you would turn-off your prospective readers. If you’re a newbie blogger and want a free and user-friendly platform, then Blogger is for you. I started out with the classic Blogger template, however, it wasn’t SEO-friendly. Good thing, I discovered Eblogtemplates which is not only SEO-friendly but it was Adsense-ready. But, if you have the money, go for the Thesis template for Wordpress. It’s the most SEO-friendly of all templates.
   
3. Create quality posts
   It’s becoming a cliché but I will still say it nonetheless: “Content is king”. How can you generate a lot of traffic if you write such crappy stuff? You want your readers to come back and ask for more. You want to have a loyal reader base. Satisfied readers will give you back links and will promote your blog through different social media such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, etc.
4. Build a strong online presence
   Okay, so now you’ve got good content but it will just put into waste if you don’t have readers. Where will you get your readers? Promote your blog through different social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, etc. My number one referrer is Facebook. It’s also good to promote through Twitter because you can be strategic in choosing readers for your blog. Another thing that worked for me is joining blog directories such as MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, etc. Build relationships by participating in forums and commenting on other people’s blogs. Establishing a strong online presence will increase your back links.
5. Learn from the masters
   Managing a blog takes a lot of hard work and research. That’s what I did. I subscribed to the feeds of the top bloggers. I downloaded free e-books about SEO. I learned from the mistakes of other people. There are free unlimited resources and tools that will help you improve your blog and increase your fan base.
   
6. Monetize your blog
   When’s the right time to monetize your blog? A lot of people immediately place ads on their blogs when they only have a couple of posts. Many readers get turned off when they see plenty of ads. Resist the urge to monetize your blog instantly. Focus on building quality content in the first three months of your blogging career.
   
   • One option to monetize your blog is through paid posts. You can join Ehow or Sponsored Reviews. Some people have issues in paid posts that they reduce the integrity of the blogger. To avoid this, make it clear in your post that it is a sponsored review.
   • Another way to monetize your blog is through affiliate marketing. Many people have a lot of success in Google Adsense. Amazon has an affiliate program which allows you to sell their products through your blog. Widgetbucks is similar to Amazon but you have more product options which you can cater to your niche. Furthermore, you can earn money by referring other bloggers. What is most successful for me is Infolinks. Infolinks is a pay per click program which has a large potential of bringing in the bucks based on the impressions gathered from your blog.

• What are the lessons that I have learned in monetizing my blog?
  The bottom line is it is still a trial and error thing. What works for me may not necessarily work for you. Why? It depends on the kind of traffic that you generate. This is where Google Analytics comes in. What I do is analyze where my readers are coming from, what are the most popular posts and when traffic is heaviest. Another lesson that I have learned is on choosing the right affiliate program. I read the reviews first from bloggers of authority. Side by side reviews are extremely helpful.
  

How about you?

• What lessons have you learned from monetizing your blog?
• What mistakes have you made?
  
• Which program works best for you?

Do share your thoughts with us.

Thanks again to Miracel Juanta from A Teacher's Odyssey