Jeremy from Ensight today announced the launch of a new blog he and a buddy have been working on – its The Wealthy Blogger - a blog about Money Management. Its a good example of a niche topic that aims to provide good helpful advice whilst providing its owners with a growing source of their own income.

Jeremy engaged my services with a little Adsense placement consulting so am interested to see how it will perform. They seem to be off to a good start if the numbers of comments on each post are anything to go by.

Michael Jackson’s late appearance to court today brought a deluge of traffic to the Michael Jackson Trial Watch blog that we’ve been experimenting. It was quite amusing to watch the hits start rolling in as it got closer to him not showing and then especially as the deadline passed before he showed up wearing pajamas.

The experiment has been reasonably successful so far, although we’re only really seeing traffic from MSN search at this point – Google has shunned us thus far but we’re hoping that their next update will remedy this. As you can see from the stats above – the last three days have seen more and more interest in the site as the trial heats up and as the media whip things into more and more of a frenzy. I can’t imagine what it will escalate to if he’s found guilty at the trial’s end in a month or two.

A VC has decided to go public with how much he’s made with the Google Adsense program in a post titled $500 Per Year. I guess the title answers the question of ‘how much’. $500 a year isn’t really a lot when you break it down, less than $2 a day. My guess is that this is perhaps an average sort of level of earnings for a blog using adsense – in fact its probably a bit above average.

Of course I wouldn’t recommend you do what Fred did in revealing his Adsense stats – its probably the fastest way to get banned from the program. I know of many bloggers who have suffered from doing this – especially in the details that Fred has done.

Anyway – his post got me wondering – how could he increase his earnings (which he generously donates to charity)? I took a quick look at his blog and I think I could double his income, if not triple or quadruple it with just a few simple tweaks and changes to his blog.

I’m not writing this because I don’t like what he does – but rather saw it as a little bit of a challenge – and plus I’d love to see his charity benefit a bit more. So here is how I think he could write a $1000 or more cheque to his charity in his second year (if Google doesn’t ban him):

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I was just chatting to Paul on Skype when the conversation wandered to Australia (my home) and the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin (as it tends to when I talk to friends from overseas). Paul suggested the Steve should start a blog. Of course this was the only invitation I needed to shoot over to the Crocodile Hunter’s web page to check out what they currently have as a web presence.

What I saw left me convinced that Steve really could do with a blog. In fact I think a blog would suit what he and many other high profile celebrities are doing down to the ground. Of course it would be called ‘CrikeyBlog.com’.

I can imagine categories for:

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What is the biggest pro blogging operation that you can think of?

If you believed the press it would probably either be Gawker or Weblogs Inc. They certainly know how to get press coverage. But whilst they are successful blogging networks there is another one that is quietly going about its business of building market share in the background with little noise or PR (at least that I’ve seen).

About.com is a site that many of us will have surfed by on numerous occasions after searching on Google for anything from Action Figures to Archaeology to Salt Water Aquariums. Their reach is quite staggering in terms of topic but also traffic. This is a megasite.

Actually it is a Megablog.

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Fortune has a fantastic article on Google that features problogger Jon Gales from Mobile Tracker (a blog about cell phones) which is a fantastic example of a blog which is being used very effectively to earn its owner/editor a decent income. Jon has recently redesigned his blog, taking it to the next level in terms of professionalism. As the article says – the major income stream for Mobile Tracker is Adsense but runs some private banner/affiliate ads also. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

‘Jon Gales loves Google, but not for the reason you might think. It’s a terrific search engine, sure, but what Gales really likes is that Google is making him money. Gales’s website, Mobiletracker.net, is a compendium of news and reviews about cellphones that after a year and a half attracts about 200,000 users a month. Google supplies the ads for the site, visitors click on the ads, and because of the site’s popularity, Google sends Gales monthly checks of $5,000 or more. That’s a decent chunk of change for any sole proprietor. But for Gales, the numbers are eye-popping. He’s only 19 and lives expense-free at home with his parents in Tampa, posting four or five items in the course of the day while parked on the living room couch with his laptop. Says Gales: “If things keep going the way they are going, I’ll be making more money than my dad next year.”’

Well it seems that one of the emerging focuses for blogging is ‘Seduction blogging’. Yep you heard it – blogs with seduction and dating tips. Check out the Seduction Lair’s reflections on Starting Your Own Seduction Blog:



‘Seduction blogging seems to be a growing trend online these days, which I’m more than happy to be a part of. One of the great things about blogging on this topic is that it really does help you keep focused on improving yourself, and it also opens a forum for constructive feedback by the internet audience. I know that my game has improved a great deal because of my association with this site. In just one year, I’ve racked up almost 700 individual posts all about dating and seduction related stuff.’

So far it doesn’t seem to have an income stream so I wouldn’t clasify it as a problogger blog – but it wouldn’t take much to take it in that direction. I can think of a few ways they could monetize this one!

Weblogs Inc have launched yet another blog this time focusing upon health care. It is the Cancer Blog. it is an interesting move by the team at Weblogs Inc to move in this direction.

Leading the charge as the editor of the blog is a medical resident, Leonardo Faoro – so there is someone at the helm who should have at least some good knowledge on the topic which is reassuring – the legal issues of blogging on medical topics are ones to keep in mind when setting out in this direction and I would suspect that they will have to walk a fine line between reporting news and giving advice or endorsing treatments.

I think this is a good move by Weblogs Inc (and it will provide a valuable service) although I do not think that it is being done all because they want to educate people on the topic – it is worth keeping in mind that different forms of cancer are some of the highest paying keywords on Adsense (whose ads this site is heavily using) and that this is a commercial venture also.

Weblogs Inc have just announce their latest blog Luxist – a blog that promotes itself as obsessively covering luxury products. They write about everthing from clothes, to gadgets, to jewelry through to cars.

Their income stream will be much the same as other Weblogs Inc blogs and includes Adsense and private advertising.