Pictographs, and such...

At my core, I'm a marketer who likes to see results in simple formats, like graphs and charts.  It makes the world more simple to understand.  It's amazing what can be understood through visual representations.  The most basic of these is the pie chart.

Blogging for Dollars, Part 2

Direct marketing is another popular method for bloggers to make money off of their blogs. This requires more work than just setting up an account with Google and smiling, or frowning, at whatever ads show up.

In this case, you need to either accept - assuming someone's offered - or look for a company to partner with. Then that company or individual pays you to place their ads directly on your blog. For the advertiser, they get to specifically target an audience - YOUR audience. For you, this option is great because you have a sure source of income from your blog that you've hand-picked. You no longer need to hope for the best with AdSense, although it IS pretty good about matching ads to fit your content.

Blogging for Dollars, Part 1

Fifteen years ago, no one could have guessed that people would have FREE space on the Internet to write WHATEVER they wanted to write. And now, to top it off, people can make money off of these personal records on the web, called "weblogs" (now just called "blogs")! There are more ways than ever to make money off of the Internet. The plethora of companies that sell their products via electronic stores has grow exponentially, even in the past five years. Web 2.0 and it's usability have turned the web into a money making machine.

In addition to web carts, Google has enabled advertisers of all sizes through its service, AdSense. If you're unfamiliar with the products, it works like this:
- Bloggers sign up for free accounts.
- These authors choose where and how ads are displayed on their sites.
- Google uses its analytical tools to match up random ads with content found on sites.
- If visitors to these blogs click on ads, the authors get paid by the advertisers.
- Genius, no?

Granted, the money that most bloggers receive is pretty paltry, and to actually get a check, a blog has to have $100 worth of ad revenue. Considering that you need 100 or more hits on your blog to receive anywhere from 1 penny or more means that it could take a while. But still, it's an interesting idea that has paid off for people.