Everyone can win

The interesting thing about Web 2.0 is that we users have won back part of the power we had before Web 1.0. I mean, in particular, that blogs, wikis and all the other ways of publishing content let everyone contribute content for every taste.

But the other interesting thing is that those who publish can earn some of the money. Google’s business model is interesting because it lets you receive part of the earnings from its advertising system.

The truth is that when I signed up for AdSense my goal was to make enough for the hosting to pay for itself.
But something happened that made me realize you really can make money.

It turns out I have a blog in English, which gets far more traffic than this one. Well, I ran an experiment and submitted an article to Digg.com and Slashdot, and traffic jumped to about 60 times the normal level. In 2 days I made twice as much in AdSense clicks as I had put together in 4 months.

There are 2 lessons here:

1.- It’s good to have a blog in English if you care about making money from advertising, because you have a bigger audience.
Blogs in Spanish, even with high traffic, generate fewer relevant ads, because there are fewer advertisers available. In fact, when I got a large number of visits from Kriptópolis, the effect on clicks was insignificant.

2.- The Slashdot effect and the Digg effect are real. Although the Slashdot effect is much bigger still. And the good part is that it has a reasonable latency period, which means other side effects kick in, like more referrals, a higher PageRank, showing up first in certain searches, and so on. The holy grail of SEO.

A word of advice: don’t try to abuse these effects, because it doesn’t work. Slashdot is quite strict before accepting a story. Same with Digg: even though it has no editors, the system is well designed so that what’s really relevant stands out.

We’re back to the magic word: RELEVANCE.

There are also other tricks for optimizing ads, but the experts have written about that.

In conclusion, I think making a living from a blog is feasible, but it takes effort, full-time dedication, relevance, and aiming at an interesting niche. And that’s one of the beauties of Web 2.0: anyone can start their own small business and earn a little extra cash, because in Web 2.0 the ones who pay are the advertisers, and you as a consumer have the power.

Anyway, don’t get carried away: I’m not making thousands of dollars yet. :)

The two tips for success are the following:

First, never tell everything you know.