I always liken blogs to real estate. There are several similarities. For example if you choose a good domain name, your location, you can sell your property for a good price. Moreover, if you have curb appeal, the right kind of traffic and valuable content and a steady revenue base, you can sell for a good price. I’ve entertained several offers to sell over the past couple of years, but turned them all down. Usually those offers weren’t enough money to warrant serious consideration. Not when you consider I earn a steady income, have over 6500 subscribers and thousands of [Read more…]

I’ve been thinking about sponsored advertising a lot this week. Many bloggers won’t have anything to do with sponsored post advertising as they feel it’s a sell out and will turn off their readers. I can appreciate that. I think, though, many of us are lying if we say we don’t wish to make good money with our blogs. Make no mistake, FWJ is first and foremost a blog providing a useful service to freelance writers. However, it’s also a business. Blogging is a business. The bloggers at this network expect payment and I hope to turn a profit. With [Read more…]

As the Freelance Writing Jobs community grows in popularity and network, the task of monetizing becomes a lot more difficult. This network of blogs does well  with Adsense and some other clicky type ads, but it’s not enough to keep us running. The good news is that more advertisers are seeking us out for their ads. The bad news is that I’m often torn between my need to pay our bloggers and techie and keep this network going, and my dislike for places that don’t pay writers a livable wage. I’m always asked if I turn away advertisers and, also, [Read more…]

By Laura Spencer Those interested in paid blogging often ask me how I got my start as a blogger. When I think about it, I have to admit that for me the answer is that I took baby steps to get to paid blogging positions. While no doubt there are a few bloggers who become overnight sensations and earn six figure incomes for their very first blog, I tend believe that those bloggers are the exception and that my experience is more typical for most paid bloggers. Before becoming a blogger, I already had a successful freelance writing business (specializing [Read more…]

For the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about this blog network. I sunk a lot of money into a redesign and sometimes I have the pay the bloggers here out of pocket, but I don’t have any regrets. Yeah, I do wish this network was more of a money maker, and I suppose if I left it as a single blog with only me blogging, I’d be making quite the profit. But it’s not about that, at least I didn’t think so. Then I had this conversation with someone after church yesterday,  with a woman who is [Read more…]

Recently I told you about how I had my Adsense account yanked from this blog, resulting in an 80% loss of income. As you can imagine, losing this much income at the same time we had to switch to a new server (a big and unexpected payment) almost devastated us. But I’m not writing this to give depressing news. I’m writing this to offer light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I know of many bloggers who lost Adsense to their blogs for various reasons and thought there was no chance in ever getting back in Google’s good graces. [Read more…]