Catharsis of the Bogue

Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

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Can MY blog make money too?

May 27, 2014 / / 17 Comments

I have been thinking a lot about money lately. How to monetize my blog so I can stay home and have enough cash to finish my degree. I am still trying to figure out exactly what to do to make this happen. There are so many different opinions about it. Where do we start?

Of course there are affiliate programs and Google AdSense. I have a few of these but I don’t think they do much good right now. I need more traffic to make them a viable source of income. I also have Kontera and Chitika on my site. I have used sponsored tweets as well. As of today, I have earned a grand total of $.85. I should be excited that I have made any money at all online but it is not enough to be successful.

The good news: I don’t care right now. My blog is still in its infancy and just getting started. I had the most visitors to date yesterday and I am very excited. I have topped 1300 visitors and can count on a few visits every day even before I get something posted. Thanks for that. I amnot keeping hard and fast to the three month mark that seems to be when people give up. I started mid December of 2009 but didn’t start pushing it until January. I consider my blog to be a month and a half old right now. I figure by april I should be cruising along quite well. My exposure has been more than I ever expected to this point. My Alexa raking is rising, and while I am not fixated on this number I do want it to go up and not down.

I know some other bloggers who are working on the monetizing thing too. James over at TheInfoPreneur has a ton of great stuff and is now working on compiling some of it for sale.  His experience has got me thinking about my site as well.  James is a wealth of information on how to blog and how to be a better person.  He posts tons of content and his site has skyrocketed since he started it.  He has been a major inspiration for me (no he is NOT paying me to say this.  Yet. 😉 ) and getting my blog going.

Now, I am basically a cheapskate.  I don’t have money to throw around at the latest make money online scheme.  Kidney transplants and dialysis is expensive, even with insurance.  So, being a cheapskate, I am extremely picky with what I buy.  Like with James, is there stuff I would buy from him?  Yes.  Will I actually buy stuff from him?  At this point I honestly don’t know.  If I was making money myself would I? Yes, most definitely.

This brings up another question.  How do I go about monetizing without driving people away.  I know this is the same struggle that many bloggers get to.  I know that it takes selling your own products to make a bunch of cash.  I have seen several places that will give you exclusive resell rights to certain products.  Can I sell other people’s stuff like this and keep the cash?  Sure.  Do I want to?  I am very lukewarm on the idea.  I don’t want to be another one of “those” type blogs.  Many of these give you “300 products you can resell” for like $15.  How do they make any money for these products?  Sure they get the $15 but why are their products so cheap?  Are they outdated? Are they just rehashes from other sites?  Are they plagiarized from other sites?  Too many questions.  I may put some ebooks up for sale in the future and some affiliate programs but not right now.

The next thing I am trying to figure out is what do I have to offer that would be either of use, or entertaining enough to entice fellow cheapskates to part with their money.  My wife and I have a business that we have been working on selling handmade quilts, table runners and some other crafts at Brenda’s Quilt Shop.com.  It has been doing ok in the real world, selling several to friends, neighbors and associates.  We have even sold several things on eBay, but we barely broke even with eBay and PayPal fees and postage.  I am still going to use eBay over the holidays to sell our stuff but I want to sell with the website as well.  On this website I want to focus on selling my writing.

Now, what can I sell of my writing?  I am not an authority on WordPress like Dave Doolin, or on blogging or on content production.  Anything I wrote on the “how to” front would be rehashes from other places.  Is there a market for fiction?  I am going to make an ebook of my Saturday fiction serials when they are finished.  They will be free for a while at least but would anyone want to spend money on them later?  Maybe send them out for free to email subscribers and beg for reviews before selling it.  I have other short stories that I am going to run on Saturday’s as well.  I am looking at revising some of my old stories that I just love so maybe they can stand on their own as an ebook.

I can write ebooks on simple car repair and maintenence, but that is not something I talk about in more than passing on this site.  I can write about kidney failure and taking a 1 year old through 2 years of dialysis and a kidney transplant.  I have written tons of blog posts on that as we were going through it while not calling it an actual blog.  www.carepages.com page: ameliarosematthews.  Would that sell?  Maybe.  I have seen several things about self publishing on Amazon for both Kindle and .pdf ebooks.  That is always in the back of my head.

I just wonder if anyone would buy anything that I can put out like that.  Or is my ego just not big enough yet to say screw it and just do it.  I figure I have until April and the 3 month wannabe blog hurdle crossed before I have to actually decide and just do it.

For now, I will just write and write and hope like hell people come to read!  Don’t forget to check out my Pre-Writing Challenge page that will start on Friday the 19th!  That will be more writing!  I am also going to work on some guest posts for other sites.  All of these things have to be good somewhere right?

Until tomorrow, I have some thinking to do.

Thanks for being here with me.

Justin

Ahh Crap! I have to get the floor wet!

May 27, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday I wrote about perseverance.  How sticking to your plan despite obstacles and time will finally yield results.  Today I have a thought about how sometimes you just have to do what you need to do.

Have you ever finished taking a shower and realized that you forgot to get a towel?  And the linen closet is across the bathroom?  And there is just a small twinkling in the back of your mind that looks at the toilet paper and weighs the option and dismisses it because it would be too messy?

I have.  I have more than once.  I did yesterday morning.  In fact the title of this post is scrawled in the margin of an Outdoor Life magazine in the bathroom.  Luckily there was a pencil in the drawer.  I wonder if I autographed that page if it would ever be worth any money????

Anyway, I forgot to grab a towel.  The first thing that ran through my head when I discovered this was the title of this post.  So what did I do?  I walked to the linen closet and got a towel, getting water on the floor that I had to clean up later.  My initial “Oh crap, I have to get the floor wet” exclamation began to take root in my head as a blog post idea about then.

Here is the metaphor: how many times do we in the blogging world encounter something that may be unpleasant or undesireable?  Whether it is backing up your blog so you don’t get hacked like my friend Heather did, or by writing that post or comment that is going to make people mad, or even just deciding to be yourself on your blog and who the hell cares what anyone else thinks.

In any of those situations you will have those “Oh Crap!” moments that you will realize there is something that may not be the best thing at the time i.e. getting the floor wet, but will be a good thing overall i.e. not standing there and waiting to air dry.  There are things you may have to do while you build your site and your brand that will make people mad.

Your spouse will be pissed off at times, “You spend more time with that damn computer….” but in the end, when the cash is rolling in, it will all have been worth it.  So as the great Naval officer David Farragut so eloquently is paraphrased, “Damn the torpedoes!  Full Speed Ahead!”  And so it shall be with my blog.  Full speed ahead and while there will be things in the way, I will run right over them.

There will be bumps in the road, axles break but can be repaired, things overheat but can be cooled down, and tires pop, so always carry a spare (hence backup your site).  You can overcome anything that is thrown at you if you

  1. Have sight of your future as a blogger and where your business should be.
  2. Never give up your dream no matter the odds
  3. Realize that you will have to make some messes and either walk away from the deposit, or clean it up later.
  4. The ends will justify those means

That is all.

Discuss freely in the comments, or kindly digg, retweet, stumbleupon, or amplify! Thank you!

-Justin

Return of the Bogue…

May 27, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Hey everyone.  Have you heard this before?  Does anyone even care?

No Tears for the Creatures

No Tears for the Creatures (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well I do believe that you will be treated to some new posts.  SAHD Friday, Poetry Tuesday…meanderings from my brain the rest of the week.  Saturday Fiction may even come back.

Today, I wanted to go on about something that I think I have hit before, the amount of input the world gives us.  Right now, there are 2 TV’s showing stuff to the kids and I am listening to a podcast while typing this.  How much is too much?  Where do we draw the line, and how can we manage this whole electronic life that we are or have created.

I for one am trying to figure out how to read all of the things on the internet, read all of the emails (or just delete the things), and listen to all of the podcasts that are keeping me from recording my own.  You see, there are plans, then there are implementation.  Some things you just have to push delete, or shut off.  I unplugged the TV and took the cord the other day, just to get the kids to stop watching the damn thing.

I read an email the other day by the wonderful Johnny B. Truant, where he is trying to help people be “legendary”.  You can click HERE to join his email list and get your own manifesto, “How to Be Legendary.”  It is great but not the focus of this post. Continue reading

A Dream, A Post, A Comment. The New Psychoanalysis.

May 27, 2014 / / 9 Comments

Yesterday, I wrote a post about a strange dream that I had.  At the end, I said, “I am not sure what any of it meant at the time or has to say about my sanity, lack of it, or what can be interpreted by it.”  I also asked for comments.

My new friend Jayne Sherwood (of whom I cannot find a web site or anything but a twitter account of @jayneEsherwood please update me Jayne and I will link it in) Said in a fantastic comment:

It suggests that you will be in receipt of a great amount of something good, which says you are giving much good yourself, the shovel, symbolically may suggest digging up issues you may find difficult to deal with however, this could be supported my a strong feminine presence in the form of a cat! (in the spiritual sense, cats mean strong feminine presence). The old clothes could be that this is not a new situation that is being revisited and that there could be underlying currents that you would like to sort out.The old girlfriend may possibly be where the issue lies and the pet box may be where the strong feminine presence will need to be put and kept out of the way of your moving forward with your great gift. This is not a fact it is merely a suggestion based on spiritual meaning and symbolism.

So here is an interpretation by me of that dream from Jayne’s comment.  The Shovel digging up issues is probably correct.  I have been “digging” up many things from my past and getting rid of them lately.

I have used this business that I am creating to give all of the crap that was dished  up by my parents for the past 35 years the boot.  I am sick and tired of them being able to control me.

Last summer if a psychologist asked me what I felt like my solid answer would have been a 12 year old kid.  I was 34 years old with 3 kids, one with major health problems, 2 cars and a mortgage and I still felt like a 12 year old kid.  Scared to try things, scared to get out and do anything for fear of failure.

I was always told I could do whatever I wanted but I was so scared to fail and disappoint my dad, that I did nothing.  That still continued until I decided that they had no hold on me any more.  I know, that took a long time, but there you are.  Now I am free of my parents, they are Grandparents now, and I am no longer under their control.

I believe the strong female presence of the cat could point to my wife.  She is currently pregnant with our 4th child and I can’t think of anything stronger about a woman than having a child.

Of course I need to get rid of the cat, so that would say strongly that it is not my wife but I would go back to my mother.  The only other females that have anything to do with my life are my daughters, 10 and 4.

So I am going to say my mother would be the cat I need to get rid of, put in a container, and send away.  All for the same reasons I need a shovel.

Old clothes, I thought was just to not ruin something new while disposing of the cat but now it probably means that it is the same old thing that has been going on for 35 years.

As for the old girlfriend, not an issue at all.  I have been married for 12 years and dated my wife for 5 years before that.  All of the old girlfriend stuff is long since gone.  There was never one serious enough to have any residual hangups about.

I can only hope that the great amount of something good relates to my blog and the money that I hope to make from it.  I need the mental presence to keep up with the site and keep it working like it should so it is viable as an income source and I can continue to stay home.

So that was quite the insight into a seemingly silly and inconsequential dream.  I am glad that Jayne found it and left the comment.  Dream interpretations can be very interesting.

I would love to hear what you have to say in the comment section below.  Don’t forget, Saturday Fiction is coming tomorrow!

-Justin

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