How much did you earn last month

I did a search for "blog net earnings survey" and ended up with this post by Darren Rowse at www.problogger.net announcing the result of a poll they conducted asking their readers how much did they earn from Adsense in November 2005.

In Problogger's poll, they found out that in 2005, around 46% of those who responded earned less than $30 in November of that year, or less than $1 in a day, with the most number (27%) earning only less than $10 for the month. A small number of around 5% said they earned over $10,000. And that's in November of 2005! Around 19% said they were not using Adsense.

How true are the numbers today? Don't miss my next posts on this subject.

5 elementary lessons from search results

One of the most effective way of getting traffic to your blog or website is to land on top, or near the top, of search engine results for the key words most relevant to your blog or site. And, getting there, as you may know already, is fast becoming a science. It is called "search engine optimization" or SEO. People are actually getting paid for that kind of stuff.

For us who can't afford to pay, the only option is learn how. Of course, experts are understandably not very open in teaching us their "trade secrets". Still, there are a lot of information on the net that can guide us in getting better search engine rankings. As for me, I try to learn by observation. One trick I do and that I'm sure a lot of people are also doing is doing searches and finding out what blogs or websites land on top.

One of the most coveted search keyword is "make money online". You may have heard about the drop of the previous perennial holder of the top spot, John Chow. Still, by just peeking in on the present top 2 of the results, you get to learn some very important lessons. These lessons serve as guide as well as inspiration to newbie bloggers who dream of making it big in online money-making.

Age does not matter. The present no. 1 on Google's results for "make money online" is Make Money Online with a 13-Year Old. Carl Ocab began the blog on February 2007 when he was just 13 and has been updating it wonderfully despite being a full-time high school student in the Philippines. Lately, he grabbed the top spot besting many other websites from the Western world. To me, that is an affirmation that search engine optimization is doable.

Some personal touch is powerful. In his blog, Carl Ocab tells us that Make Money Online with a 13-Year Old is not really the first blog he made. A tech blog he did before didn't quite take off. I have no idea what he posted on that blog but chances are they might have been excellent stuff. Still, the online community didn't notice. Now, there is no denying that the key to the popularity Carl's present blog is the title. We all ask, is he really 13 and end up reading his stuff.

It doesn't matter if you are using a free platform like Blogger. The current no. 2 is Money Maker Info which was created through Blogger, a free blogging site of Google where you can create your own own blogs with urls appearing as yourblog.blogspot.com. Understably, there are limits to your flexibility in these free platforms but, guess what, it didn't stop Money Maker Info from reaching the no. 2 spot.

Layout is not important. Look at Money Maker Info. I personally think it is not spectacularly pleasing to the eye. I'm even tempted to say my blog looks better than that. If these guys are doing something better than me, I am pretty sure it is not the layout or the design of their blog. It is not the reason why they are on top.

Content is the key. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that Carl of Make Money Online with a 13-Year Old and the guys behind Money Maker Info employed all the tricks in the world to land on top. Still, without good content, I am pretty sure none of those would have worked. Try browsing the two blogs and you will realize that they have indeed compiled substantial information for their readers.

Net earnings is not net earnings

Unlike the phrase "make money online", if you search for "net earnings" on Google, you don't end up with a blog or blogs on top of the search results. You get www.investorwords.com's definition of net earnings. The site defines the term as:

Gross sales minus taxes, interest, depreciation, and other expenses. Net earnings are one of the most important measures of a company's performance, since the pursuit of earnings is the primary reason companies exist. Sometimes net earnings includes one-time and extraordinary items, and sometimes it does not. Also called net earnings or net income or bottom line.

This is what we will be talking about. Not. Actually, we are more interested about that other "net earnings", or how to derive income from the Internet. How is it done, how do you maximize results, what are the best practices, who are the most the successful in the industry. Our goal is to learn how. That is our targeted net result, our bottomline. Join me in exploring this very interesting topic.