I have spent the past 10 performing in rock and roll bands. I have learned how to create a business, optimize it and make it run like a well-oiled machine. This also occurred while sleeping on dressers, in bathtubs, on floors, in vans and well, basically any other place a human can possibly sleep. We achieved our goals with limited resources, even more limited money, and non-stop dedication.

I have spent the last year using those same skills in creating my web business. To this point, it has proven to be a challenging yet exciting endeavor. It hasn’t been easy to learn how to make money online.

Over the next 30 days, I will be posting my personal 15 steps on creating a successful monetized website or blog. I will post one lesson every other day. I will be comparing the two lifestyles, the work ethic needed to be successful in each, and how I related my experiences in the music industry to the web. It should be entertaining and hopefully enlightening to you, the reader.

What are my credentials? From the music end I have been in the music industry 10 years in two rock and roll bands. Those bands placed over 30,000 CD’s in to circulation. I have taken part in over 400 concerts and have played with some of America’s best talent, including Plain White T’s, Treaty of Paris, and Fall Out Boy, among others. My credentials from the monetized website end include two content heavy websites in the top 100,000 for Alexa rankings and three more nearing that level. I also maintain and manage 7 blogs including this one. This has earned me a decent, but not yet self-sufficient income. I continue to work hard to make money blogging.

I do not make any promises. It takes a lot of work to build a successful web business. These are the steps I took while relying heavily on my former career as a full-time musician. These steps will focus more on the business end and putting yourself in line to make money and less on the actual specific monetization techniques. There are millions of blogs (including mine) that has information like that. This is more or less a rundown on how I started my business.

Step one. Finding the correct vision.

Every ‘how to’ blog will tell you that finding that niche to make money is the most important thing you could do. I disagree. What is the point to finding a ‘money making’ niche if it doesn’t agree with your overall vision? When I started my first band, I wanted to artistically convey the emotions that I was feeling. That was the vision. I had no idea on how to make money in music, I didn’t know the rigors of touring, nor the importance of promotion. All I knew was I wanted to make people happy with my music. You should be telling yourself the same thing about your blog. Personally, you shouldn’t be thinking monetization right away. It should be all about the quality of the writing and the desire of the blogger.

Some bloggers set out right away with the vision to make money. They devise their plan, put it into action, and they are making money faster than you can blink.

That is really rare. It is about as rare as a band forming, writing a record, and become extremely popular within a few months. It does happen however. A perfect example of that within the music industry would be Pearl Jam.

What a lot of people don’t know about the Pearl Jam back story is the members of that band came from an already established and popular band. It occurs this way with bloggers. Some of the bloggers that explode on to the scene may already have a readership based on their previous career or experience. You cannot just expect to have built in readers and start making money.

You should look in to your reasons for creating your online presence. Are you doing it for the right reasons? Do you feel you have the time to convey your vision? Is it strictly a ‘money making’ endeavor or are there personal reasons for blogging?

When I first got in to the whole blog game, I spent quite a bit of time reading and reviewing other blogs. Right away, I knew if the person was a talented writer, if they had a good vision for their blog, or if their blog was going to disappear in a few months because it lacked vision and structure.

When you find that vision, you will notice the rest will start to fall in to place.

Step two will be about creating the proper plan. I will be comparing finding the right musicians to finding the right resources. Until next time!

I still search Google for tips. There, I said it.

I am not THE authority on how to make money on the web. Does this shock you? I know, I know. You all come to this blog because I am clearly the next Darren Rowse.

As I was furthering my blog education I came across an article I had somehow not seen to this point. It is by blogger Courtney Tuttle. I was searching for ‘How to increase my RSS count’ when I came across his blog. He was discussing the importance of quality writing as the number one way to increase RSS count.

I agree with him but this in particular post wasn’t the one that caught my attention.

In the post about RSS count, he linked to one of his earliest posts on his website. It is called 5.263 Words to Starting a Profitable Blog. It is a fantastic piece of writing, one of the best I have read about starting a profitable blog. This article will start you on your way in helping you make money online.

Court goes step by step from creation to monetization, and I mean EVERY step. Including picking a domain, how to upload and configure Wordpress, and how to monetize among others. He created this article when his blog was only two weeks old, and you can tell because he has very few comments at the beginning.

I wish I would have had this article a few months ago, but none the less, I spent a long time reading it over today. His tips are wonderful.

It isn’t every bloggers dream to make a ton of money on the web. A lot of people are in it strictly for the writing and release aspect of blogging. That is how I got started. But then, somewhere along the way I discovered you could profit and make a decent income off your opinions and content. By sharing my information and my skills, I have worked hard to create a side business.

That just about came crashing down this past week.

Sometime near the end of January, I was commissioned to do a website. Seemed like a pretty simple proposition. This individual needed a blog/website set up for his personal opinion. His opinion was controversial, which I knew going in, but figured the laws would protect me and my civil liberties. All I was to be doing was designing and maintaining the website.

I also knew going in to this project that the site would do lots of traffic. I thought it could be good for my own monetized blog, and possibly could attract new clients to my side business.

Initially I was correct. I attracted one additional client who wanted me to design and configure a Wordpress blog for him. I also received a spike of traffic from this website as well. Made a few extra pennies on Adsense from my blog, and also added a few extra RSS subscribers.

Eventually a snafu erupted and I was caught in the middle because I was the website administrator and owner of the domain. I had to speak with some detectives regarding the content of the website and basically had my life throw in to a blender for a few days.

It has all settled down now, but in retrospect I came to this conclusion which I consider the hardest and most important lesson someone can learn when it comes to blogging.

You are still as responsible for your actions online as you are off line.

If you attract controversy, you will do damage to your reputation regardless to how above-the-law you are. Even if you do nothing wrong, you should try to steer clear of situations you KNOW could put you in hot water.

People are too quick to sell out their beliefs and morals online for an extra dollar or hit to their website. They also feel they are hidden well behind a computer screen. I am here to tell you that you should stand up for yourself and only do things you would feel comfortable with doing face to face with another human. A website built on legitimate contacts will always build stronger in the long run than a business that was built on quick hits.

Your ulcers will thank you later!

Theme review: Acosmin Monetized Theme

Every week or so, I review a monetized theme I have set up on a blog I either manage or personally contribute to. Today I am review the theme Acosmin. The theme was created initially for the website Acosmin.Com. The author did an excellent job making smooth clean layout that is excellent for monetization purposes. This is a free blog, and you must keep his link in the footer. It is a small link though, and shouldn’t concern many. I have switched to this theme for my personal website. I will be modifying it as I go however.

Right out of the box, this three column theme has in place the code for advertisements. They do a good job within the code of explaining which box is set up for which type of ad. Along the left sidebar column there is placement for up to four 125 x 125px ads. This is excellent for selling those spaces because it is very high profile. On the right side bar is a perfectly placed 300 x 250px space for Google Adsense. It is excellent for CTR and, if you content is crawled correctly, will display excellent ads for your site. In the header, there is a spot dedicated for a 468×60 ad banner. If your website is generating decent traffic, this will be a highly lucrative spot.

The color scheme is very professional, it is a smooth grey and very earth tones. The layout features a lot of nice icons and rounded corners. The blog is highly monetized but it really doesn’t feel like it. When you click on individual blog posts, it keeps the same format without adding any additional Adsense ads. This is a good feel for those who want to have a nice website without looking too Adsense dependent.

There are a several things that bothered me about this layout. I added it to a blog that was receiving a ton of traffic and the users of that blog pointed out several bugs. The first and most glaring one is that when you try to comment a post, you are limited with how long you can make your email. I had to modify this in the PHP code AND the style.css and it took me a few shots. Once I fixed it, I was happy. But if you are creating a blog straight out of the box, this could be a real downside.

Another thing that always bothers me about layouts like this is they leave their logo and make you edit it. In the style.css file, they block the title from displaying in the header. This is fine if you are good with graphics, but if you aren’t, as soon as you switch themes in the Presentation section of Wordpress you’ll notice their logo. You have to remove the JPG and create your own. This is a pain to me.

Overall, this theme is a great solution for those who want to monetize their blog. You do need to have a good feel for editing PHP and using Wordpress, but if you do, you will love this layout.

Theme Review: Blue Columns Monetized Theme

When a new client came to me this week and asked me to configure a blog, I was presented with an interesting dilemma. He is an active participant in a missing person case, who has been on many talk shows and news programs. I was to be creating and maintaining the blog and hosting it on my servers. I would also own the domain name. The first thought that came to mind was HEAVY monetization because this website will be generating up to ten thousand hits a day. The second thought was this is a missing person case, and I don’t want to be seen as capitalizing on someone else’s misfortune. So I compromised and decided I would put enough ads on the blog to cover my overhead and I needed a theme initially that would let me place Adsense ads (I was avoiding any other affiliate ads for this blog) in the spots I felt would generate at least enough money per day to cover the fairly high hosting costs.

The theme I settled on (and changed quickly from) was Blue Columns monetized theme. Initially this seemed like a good fit. Two spots already came pre-configured for AdSense in decent placements. I liked the overall color scheme as well, blue and white. It was very simple and two the point. It also offered nice looking RSS buttons and a newsletter signup.

This theme was highly buggy from the start. I had to do multiple PHP edits just to get individual posts to display properly. The footer had an encrypted code set-up, which usually is ok by me, but this time it pointed to some highly suspect websites. I didn’t want my client to feel I was leading him down a sketchy road by making it look like these people were advertisers for the website. The code to make the newsletter work was a nightmare, it took me about 2 hours and STILL wasn’t working. I just gave up at that point. In addition, every title screen had its own JPG that had to be edited. After two days and countless hours, I gave up on this theme and went to a heavily modified version of the Acosim theme.

Every free theme you find online has its quirks. This one was full of more bugs than any I had used. The first initial feeling I had was it was a slick looking, monetized layout. That is still the case. But it takes more work to get it running correctly than any serious content blogger would like.

Of course, the Gretawire is blowing up because Ric was on the show tonight and had a conversation with Fox News about things that went down today.

Ric doesn’t speak for me. I don’t speak for Ric. I am not a part of any of this. Period.

Welcome to MY blog. This is MY stinking blog. This is MY time now.

I am trying as hard as I can to not be upset about the way I have been treated in general today. But it is very hard given what has happened. I feel let down by police, by my work, by basically everyone. Especially those who don’t know anything about me and have already rushed to judge me hidden behind a first name on a blog.

I design websites. I get paid to do websites. Sometimes, I’ll even do them for free as a family favor. In addition I have a DAY JOB which PAYS MY RENT AND FEEDS MY FAMILY (Which now appears in jeopardy due to today’s events)

I have never had to deal with what I have tonight. I don’t know Drew Peterson. I don’t wanna know Drew Peterson. I don’t even really know Ric. He is a family member of one of my best friends. When someone like that approaches you to do a website, you say sure. I didn’t know anything really about the case except what was on the news. I have known Ric in passing for years and thought it would be a nice website I could add to my SMALL resume in order to attract NEW CLIENTS to help support myself. I knew the site would get hits based on its content and author. I know the case is popular. Isn’t that what shows like Nancy Grace thrive on? Popular news cases? Why am I different because I created a site for someone who had something interesting to say. (whether you agree with him or not)

I posted this on Greta’s blog.

I would like to clarify a few things. One, I was just a webmaster for Ric Mims. I know him through a family friend. He never told me anything except how to design the website. I don’t have any knowledge of anything that he has knowledge of. I just worked and designed this website for him.

I don’t know anything about Drew Peterson except what you all know from the news.

I am transferring the domain to Ric Mims tomorrow because I just created the website for him under my name. Stupid, maybe? But that is just how it played out. He asked me to do a website for him so he could speak his mind. It’s called a BLOG. That’s what it was, a BLOG. I even had a disclaimer to take me out of it completely. In addition the only posts I ever made were the first two indicating that Ric will be along shortly.

The post in-question was not and could not be traced back to me. If it was, do you think I would be speaking to you right now? And secondly, why on earth would I want to jeopardize my job and my well being? I have a family, I have tons of bills, and I have goals I want to accomplish in life. I make very little money from websites. I was at work when all of this went down. And I responded to the detectives throughly.

I was in jail but it had NOTHING to do with this case. They questioned me for a while about the blog and what I do, questioned me pretty intensely about things I had no clue about nor WANT to know about and then I was brought in on an unrelated traffic warrant from missing court a year or so back.

It was an emotional roller coaster today. But I stand by my work. I created a website. That’s what I did. I didn’t talk. I didn’t share opinion.

I share my opinions on my other blogs because they are mine.

God bless
scott

That is my formal statement right now. But inside my soul is on fire. I am so angry at a whole lot of people, I don’t even know where to begin.  So I won’t.

Just know one thing. This is my life we’re talking about. This isn’t a dream. This isn’t a news report. This isn’t a whim followed by Illinois State Police. This is MY life, turned upside down because of a blog I didn’t even write on.

My feelings will be known.

PS. Next post will be back on niche. Sorry about the ranting.

Blogging on the go is a myth.

This week I set out on a fact finding mission. The mission was two fold. One, it was to see if I could time budget enough to actively update my blogs while on vacation. The second was to see if I could create good, solid new content to post to those blogs.

I wanted to see if those ‘beach bum makes 250,000 in one month!’ claims could even remotely be possible. Mind you, I am not making nearly that much money a month. If you remove three zeros, you are probably pretty close to what I will make blogging and maintaining content websites in the month of January.

The first thing I noticed is the feeling of panic and the need to find a wireless connection to do website maintenance. Being away from home, I needed to make sure I could get to the internet at any point and time. I just picked up a new client and his website is pretty active. So I was exchanging emails with him and editing PHP codes wherever I could. Panera Breads, highway rest stops, free airport wi-fi were some of the locations I frequented this week. And when I was there, I always felt the need to buy something. I always feel guilty using free wi-fi services, especially when I am using their services to try to make a living.

The second thing was how uncomfortable it was to be creative in these sorts of environments. Panera Bread is designed to sell food. Not be an office for a part-time blogger. There were a lot of distractions and noisy things such as kid fighting, pans clanking and people talking at ungodly volumes. I really do not know why I felt this would be conducive to successful blogging. Whenever I write songs, I make sure I am in an environment which I felt comfortable in. The same now applies to blogging for me.

Lastly, even though I was able to get over those first two things, having to spend lots of times on the websites proved to make the time off feel more like work. I love to blog, I love to edit my websites and I love to help people and the blogging community. But I don’t think I enjoyed it from other places. I wanted to see things, do things and instead I was stuck inside the confining walls of free wi-fi locations.

I think blogging is a great medium and it gives a lot of flexibility for people to lead the lives they want to lead. But I think you still need to have the structure to work when you need to work and rest when you need to rest.

Being comfortable is the key to success in any business or art medium. This entire week I was not comfortable. I missed MY chair, I missed MY desk, and every one of my personal distractions that I have become accustomed to.

Next time you see the advice you can blog from anywhere, take it with a grain of salt. You still have to feel creative and sometimes, you cannot be that far away from your normal routine.

‘She was getting directions or making connections’ – Chicago rock-band American Taxi

There is an underlying message to the above lyric that I feel can relate to being a blogger. They say that knowledge is the key to success in any business. In the music industry, the biggest thing a person can do (well, besides awesome music of course) is the build up that Rolodex with as many contacts as possible. This way once the music is up to par, and the fan-base has been grown, you can attract the attention you are looking for from record labels. Your blog will make more you more income if you stop reinventing the wheel and just pay attention.

Getting Directions:

When you are trying to secure a record deal, or trying to build up your bands credibility, you need look no further than your fellow bands! While there is no set formula for music success usually you can look at the successful bands and use their overall blueprint. There is nothing in music that hasn’t been done before and there are proven formulas to success. Find a band or artist that is successful and emulate. Maybe not on an artistic level, that should still be your personal vision. But there is no shame in emulation when it comes to a business model.

On the web the same overall rules apply. There are obviously different formulas to success but generally they all follow the same model. Traffic equals revenue. The information you need to succeed is already out there. In fact, it is all over the internet. Tips from professionals who have succeeded in making money can be found with nothing more than a simple Google search. The problem lies in the emulation. Most people who are jumping head first in to blogging have no real idea the time commitment that successful bloggers put in. They read the stories about the people who make substantial income for working only a few hours a week. These people are exceptions, not rules. I personally spend well over 40 hours a week editing, posting, and promoting my blogs and websites and I’m working with a ‘newsmaker’ on a blog who basically has built in traffic. Maybe in the long run it will make me substantial income without any work, but I am not holding my breath. But who is afraid of a little hard work?

Making Connections:

Oh I can picture the days like they were just yesterday. My band mate calls me up and says ‘Scott, guess what! We are opening up for Michelle Branch!’ – These are exciting times to be a rocker. One of the biggest boons for a local band is when you can open up for an emerging national act. When I asked my band mate how we secured the deal, he uttered two simple words; ‘my connections’.

How did he build those connections? By the old fashioned art of networking! You know, going out to other shows, meeting other people in bands, their managers, and their friends. Maintaining those contacts of time and using them when the opportunity presents itself.

In the blogging sense, you can do the exact same thing. In fact, you need to do the exact same thing. Build your contacts but don’t try to be too overbearing. Take advantage of things that you can without being unethical.

One of the biggest mistakes most people make when creating a monetized website is they initially place a ton of ads on the page, start working with a million affiliates, and spend 10 hours a day for a couple weeks thinking they will see huge returns. Had they followed the lead of fellow bloggers, they would know this is virtually impossible. No connections are made because they feel they can do it alone. And poof. There goes the blog.

Look at building traffic as a fun exercise and not a chore. Enjoy the time you spend on forum and commenting other blogs. Read and listen to your fellow bloggers.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, right? Neither were any of the ‘famous’ blogs

While pondering on what to discuss today, I remember when I started my first non-personal blog. It was about chasing after baseballs in professional stadiums. I hosted it on the mlblogs.com website, and I loved everything about blogging. It was exciting that people would be reading my twisted tales of baseball hunting and hot dog eating.

And then one day I stopped writing.

I got stuck on what to write about when the topic had dried up. Baseball season ends in October and I figured no one would come to my blog anyway.

What do you do when the topic is dried up from the get go?

Keeping interest in a dried up or tired topic is a hard thing to do. A lot of new bloggers will start talking about a hot subject and quickly tire of the topic when they aren’t seeing the results they want.

This is especially true when it comes to those who start blogs strictly for profit. They will spend a week figuring out a layout and building content. They hear all about those Alexa rankings and when they look up, next thing you know they are ranked somewhere around 11 million. So they move on to the next idea and another blog bites the dust.

Just because a topic is tired or dried up doesn’t mean you cannot speak intelligently about it and present it in a fresh way.

The challenge of any niche blogger, especially those who are out to make profit, is to care about the topic you are blogging about even if it is tired. If you care about a topic it will allow you to develop a fresh new approach and you will see your blog soar to new heights.

Here are my top five ways to keep a tired blog fresh.

1. Make yourself an expert on the topic. This seems so simple but you will be suprised how many bloggers really have no clue what they are talking about. It is especially true when you are talking about people who are blogging for profit. If you take the time to research your topic you will achieve the success you want with hard work even if the subject matter is tired.

2. Write your own ideas and opinions. With so much out there about a topic, people aren’t looking to read the same article they found on Problogger. In my research I went to at least 200 different websites on how to make money blogging. I can’t even remember how many times I saw a regurgitated article from another blog. Dare to have your own opinions.

3. Use your peers for ideas. Most of us haven’t reinvented the wheel yet and there is no reason to start now. Your peers will give you some of the best inspiration on things to talk about when you are at a loss for words. As a songwriter, I employ this technique all the time.

4. Revisit your content. Over time you may have developed a fresh approach to something you have already blogged about. Revisit previous content and see if it can be recycled with your new approach.

5. Get back to the basics. Remember the reason you started the blog to begin with and refocus your mind. Don’t base everything off Alexa rankings and traffic. If your content is there your profits will not be far behind!

One of my daily reads is the Blogging Experiment. I get lots of great ideas and insight from Ben Cook, the author. Writing a blog about blogging and making money blogging is difficult. Partially because people immediately think you are out for a money grab (which isn’t entirely true, I do have a passion for writing and this isn’t my only blog) and also because the topic is so tired and overdone. It’s kind of like talking about the New England Patriots; eventually people will tune you out. For those reasons, I have always hesitated contributing to forums. I have joined a few, and usually people assume you are being snarky if you are a ‘professional blogger’ who is blogging about ‘making money’. not everyone talking about making money is a scrapper. Some of us actually feel we can contribute something unique to the already tired topic.

Why do I bring up Ben and Blogging Experiment?

I was snooping around his page and stumbled upon his profile on The Authority Blogger forum. So I thought I would sign up and give it a whirl.

I was not disappointed. The wealth of experience and knowledge at that forum is top notch.

But the thing I noticed most, as I scanned from thread to thread, is the general niceness of the people there. There was no real complaining, no attacking the n00bs. They give great advice there and cover basically every topic imaginable when it comes to blogging.

Since my blog is brand new, I have considered posting it there for review.

I anticipate constructive comments and suggestions, but the one thing I know I won’t have to deal with is people flaming me.

Authority Blogger Forum, where everybody knows your name.

*singing*

duh duh duh duhhhhhhhhh