Category Archives: Ebiz

Cashing In On Celebrity Gossip

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If you’re tired of trying to get a few clicks from Adsense blind tech readers, perhaps you should start dishing the dirt on celebs like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsey Lohan.

A celeb blogger that goes by the name “CalGuy” on Digital Point did just that and has earned over 1000 dollars a month in just three months. The amazing part is that CalGuy is making nearly every penny from Adsense ads.

Making a success in such a competitive field isn’t easy and CalGuy is posting nearly six times a day to feed the rabid readers. The traffic stats are pretty high and most of it is through organic searches (~1000 a day from Google) and link exchanges.

Here’s the site: http://www.celebslam.com/

Analyzing the site, on the main page he’s using:

  1. 1 Google Leaderboard 728×90
  2. 1 Google Sidebar 300×250
  3. A few blogads and Commission Junction Affiliates

The Google ads are showing stuff like “shopzilla” and lots of “celebrity gossip” links. While he did admit the the CTR isn’t “great” the ads are in a competitive field.

Running some numbers through the Adwords keyword estimation tool, the keywords with “celebrity” all top out at 5.00 – 5.02 dollars a click for #1-3 position. So if Adsense is paying 50% on clicks you’re making 2.50 a click. You don’t need a high CTR with that kind of click cash.

Another celeb blogger site named “Perez Hilton” claims over 2 million unique visitors a day. It’s a safe bet that he’s making some decent cash. If you’re going to give celeb gossip blogging a shot, you’ll need lots of pictures, above-average snarky commentary, link exchanges, and decent placement of Adsense ads.

Learn How To Make Money As A Writer

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If you’re wondering if you can make a living as a writer, you can soon learn from a group of five freelance writers (Denise, Jenn, Rebecca, Rob, and Zainie).

They have an ambitious goal: each will try to earn over 100,000 dollars in one year from writing or editing work.

You can follow their progress on their website: www.sixfigurewriters.com

This is no insignificant challenge. Many writers face a bleak market that suffers from a glut of “talent” that is willing to work for a poverty wage of 0.01 – 0.03 cents a word.

Even respected writers are struggling. Well known author, Bob Bly, recently announced his retirement from book writing saying:

The shelves are too crowded, and it’s harder for worthy titles to stand out. Advanced for midlist and backlist authors, meanwhile, have declined to a new level of poverty. And publishers are having authors turn out formula books like machines.

A major publisher recently asked me to write a complex 120,000-word book — in 3 months — and for a lousy $10,000!

So while it isn’t an easy market, this group is out to prove what can be done with some dedication and hard work.

If you are at all curious about making money from freelance writing, this is one site you will not want to miss.

Selling An Ebook on eBay

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Always one for adventure in ebiz ideas, I recently have tried selling an ebook on eBay. Admittedly, ebooks are a dime a dozen on eBay, but this ebook is a quality product and I think has great value to aspiring webmasters.

I first tried the suggested category: Everything Else > Information Products > Other

The listing had sales copy but no pictures. All listings in this area failed to sell. Ebook priced at $9.99.

I then tried listing it in: Business & Industrial > Other Industries > Websites & Businesses for Sale > Internet Businesses, Websites > Other Internet Businesses

The first listing had text only sales copy and again no sales. I had someone make me an ebook cover and relisted the ad. This time the ebook cover version sold (same ad copy and still priced at $9.99). The amount of interest judged by page views is quite low (< 20 views).

I am still going to try experiments with sales copy to see if I can boost page views. Overall, I think that eBay is saturated with ebooks. I can also try pricing changes but I don’t have much interest in selling ebooks for 99 cents.

As a side note, when I do research on completed auctions, the only ebooks that are selling well and for lots of money are the ebooks for police auctions that say things like “Xbox 360 90% Off Police Auction Ebook”. It appears people aren’t paying attention and somehow think they are buying an Xbox 360 at 90% off. Some of those ebooks are selling upwards of 100 dollars! Scratching my head on that one.