I do not want my current readers to suddenly feel that the blog is filled with advertisements top to bottom. I want to prime them from the start that this is the way my blog is going to look now and in the future. Maybe the Wordpress theme might change, since I am a very picky guy, especially in terms of designs and layout of my site.

I look for themes that are ready to publish advertisements with already allocated ad placements on the theme itself.

Google Adsense is a must on my blog. I guess that’s what majority of bloggers who want to monetize their blogs do. But I won’t stop there. I sign up for both Kontera and Adbrite as well to increase the earning potential. Although, I am pretty confident that I won’t make much initially, I want to make sure that these are there when the traffic starts to build up.

Other advertisements I considered for my site are affiliate banners. There are many sources of affiliate networks that one can sign up easily. One of them is of course, Clickbank. There are many others too that do not necessarily belong to an affiliate network. Take Shoemoneytools.com as an example. It pays 50% commission on sign-ups made through your affiliate link.

I am in the midst of creating sub-domain names for these affiliate links so that they look pretty in the address bar when the mouse cursor hovers over it.

There are many other methods to monetize the blog. I will take it one step at a time and explore what works and what not, especially for newcomers like me. Now that some of the monetization are in place…

Let’s look forward to the traffic…

Does that mean I’ll be successful? Well, I hope it’ll happen someday. No more “I hope” or “I wish”. That’s positive thinking.

I would have to agree with John Chow that the first step has to be taken to achieve success. That’s taking action as mentioned in his e-book. And it has to have a time limit. I set to reach my goal in 2 to 3 years, with a posting each day. That’s over 700 posts! Well, maybe the interim success would be to earn the first cent in a few months time. I know it’s possible.

I’ve actually already made my first cent, but not from this blog. I paid for an advertisement space to promote a Clickbank product. I tried affiliate marketing.

My first cheque is USD73.99 and the second cheque at USD19.60.

Not very successful as an affiliate I would say, but at least I know it’s possible. I stopped buying the advertisement space to try other traffic generating methods. Another reason is, the product I’m promoting is really not that very suitable for the kind of content the site is offering.

That’s my mistake. Like John Chow said,

“… failure is required in order to succeed”. – page 5, para 5, Make Money Online with John Chow.

The mistakes I made…

• Too eager to advertise without doing much research.
• The site is offering “free” downloads, so the chances of people wanting to pay for a product are actually very slim.
• Hence, the click-through rate is very low, not to mention very low clicks too.

I did not make any profit from this internet marketing campaign, but I learned a lot along the way. I paid $150 for a month of the advertising space. You do the maths…

So much for the second dissection of John’s e-book. Next post will be more interesting, covering the whole list of John’s Recommended Money Makers, out of 130 advertising networks he posted on his blog.

Chow!