There are ways to make serious money online.  I went the not-so-serious route for a while as a kid (as many kids do); starting low quality free Wordpress blogs and selling reviews/advertising spots to anyone who wanted for nominal sums of cash.  The good thing about that approach was that it required zero-to-no investment on my part, other than about half an hour a month to post something.  The bad thing was that the return on (no) investment yielded me very minor funds.  Also, more and more people are picking up on the fact that any links on a free Wordpress blog are automatically nofollow unless otherwise stipulated, and thus virtually useless from an SEO perspective.  AND that advertising on free Wordpress blogs that have zero visibility won’t really generate many views on their sites, and almost definitely won’t lead to conversions.  Such being the case, I decided to move into deeper and more lucrative waters and to try one of two options:

• PPC campaigns
• Actual advertising

(Please bear in mind that you actually have to have a hosted and somewhat decent site in order to achieve either one of these – NOT a Wordpress.com blog, which is entirely different from Wordpress.org blogs.)

PPC campaigns are excellent in that they produce tangible results. You can easily track any conversions made via a PPC campaign; you can track PPC traffic; all of the data is there.  That having been said, I know very few people who actually click on PPC ads.  They look, for lack of a better word, remarkably spammy, and overtly paid-for.  They’re great for huge companies that have many methods of advertising; if that’s the case, PPC should definitely be integrated into the advertising strategy.  But for smaller companies…not so great.  Smaller companies would see very few clicks and/or conversions from a PPC campaign.  Since publishers get paid on a per-click basis, that didn’t make a lot of financial sense to me.  I mean, sure, do it, it doesn’t cost you anything, but just bear in mind unless you’re a recognized brand advertising another recognized brand, you won’t see much money.

Now for advertising…  Advertising makes a lot more sense to me as a publisher.  I can set my own rates, for starters.  And I get paid regardless of how many people click on the ads on my site.  The drawback is that for people to advertise on my site, I have to have proven my value to them first – it’s not like joining a PPC network and automatically getting ads placed.

Keep in mind that either one of these options requries that you build a somewhat decent site, with content, that fits a niche that is popular amongst the online community – fashion or technology, for example.  And that contrary to popular belief, it does take work on your part.  It may not require manual labor, but it does require investment, both financially and in terms of time.

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