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You can still make money off your abandoned blogger blog - a little bit with Google Adsense

noreply@blogger.com (Paula Neal Mooney) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 09:23:53 PDT

I've been creating a spreadsheet and updating it since I'm a "niche website webmaster" now -- with about 30 websites I'm maintaining and hoping to parlay into more profitable ones.

In doing that, I've listed out all the domains I own, and when I bought most of them. Plus, I break out the Google Adsense, Amazon and CJ.com income that each one owns -- when I can figure out which ones are which.

You see, at first I wasn't too great about separating my Adsense channels into things that would help me recognize what ads were earning what on specific websites -- but thank God I think I've figured it out by being able to match my StatCounter impressions with the numbers that Adsense provides.

And I've gotten a lot better about naming my Adsense channels specific things so I know which ads belong to which websites, and the specific type of ad -- whether it be the links at the top or a wide skyscraper on another site or a medium or large rectangle inside the posts.

In doing this process, that's how I discovered that this blog I'm writing on now still gets around 1,200 or more hits per month -- and the Google ads bring in about $5 each month. Sure, not much, but every little bit adds up to much, and since it's a free blogger blog that I don't have to renew the domain name on each year, that's about $60 per year passive income that I don't do much at all to maintain.

So I thought I'd come over here and figure out a way to increase even what it's making now -- this little blog I think I set up way back in 2006 just to hold my pics, hence, the name thisblogisformypics.blogspot.com.

It's a good exercise to see which websites are bringing you the money, and seek for ways to improve them. I hadn't written on this blog since February 2011 -- 5 months ago -- and before that, it'd probably been a year. But I'm glad I have the blog, now it's off to my main money-maker at the moment, PaulaNealMooney.com, to tweak those header links to give them a better click-through-rate.

Will Google algorithm change against content farms affect Examiner.com or AssociatedContent?

noreply@blogger.com (Paula Neal Mooney) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:00:17 PST

Google changes algorithm against content farms, scraper websites

The big news today in the online world is that Google has changed its formula of ranking so-called scraper sites (I like to think of them as news aggregators if they're centered around a specific topic and don't take too much content, but give users a preview like Google's SERPS do.)

Watching videos on Google's Webmaster Youtube channel with Matt Cutts answering questions about their algorithm teaches me so much about what Google does and does not expect and what the giant considers behavior that crosses the line, at least in general terms.

Also, studying successful webmasters like Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income and Wanda and Paula -- writers of Amazonian Profits -- is teaching me so much about ranking in that #1 Google position for popular web terms.

To that end, I'm so excited about this page called Not Your Daughters Jeans - How do I like thee... on one my well-ranking Pagerank 2 (and rising) websites -- and I love how Flynn taught me how to check my SEO rank for free by using the free Firefox rank checker on SEOBook.com.

I'm already up to a rank of 62 for the NYDJ search term, and am racking up the backlinks to see that number increase.

All this time I'd basically followed the edict to just write quality content (sometimes!) and the links would naturally follow.

Well, hooey! Thank God I've hooked up with these guys really ranking well in Google and profiting from it by using the methods I'm learning more and more about each day and actually putting into practice.

But back to Google's algorithm change and Examiner.com and AssociatedContent.com

With all the hullabaloo over some considering sites like eHow.com and Demand Studios content farms and folks fighting against that label, I couldn't help but wonder how the new "Farmer update" and "Scraper update" from Google would affect -- if at all -- Examiner and Associated Content (now Yahoo! Contributor's Network), two sites where I earn money for my writing.

A quick check of my Examiner stats didn't tell me much of a story; after all, I've been focusing on my own websites and starting new successful ones -- and only just put up this article about Steve Harvey on Dr. Phil today after a few days off from writing on Examiner. (Since I just got a sponsor for my Cleveland Pop Culture channel on Examiner.com, I want to see how that affect my pay rate.)

Besides, Examiner looks like they are holding strong with the Google News presence.

And Associated Content views seemed the same as well, with a nice steady line, no dips that I recall.

The next few weeks will tell any fallout from the Google change -- but again, thank the Lord for all going swimmingly well, and for learning new ways of making money online increasingly -- so that none of our online real estate investments are all in one basket of wealth.

The rivers of income flow strong into me and you...