Can a Million Dollars be Earned from a Website?

Over the last month several online revenue streams have been evaluated as the Million Dollar Experiment Down Under has progressed. Whenever you are attempting to achieve something like the task that has been set, as things progress it is important to evaluate what has been working, what hasn't and change course accordingly.

The revenue streams that have been focused on to date are primarily..

• Sports Betting
• Google AdSense
• Donations
• Trademe (NZ's Version of Ebay)

The traffic building methods we have tried include

• Blog Explosion type sites
• Swapping Links with other Blogs
• Technorati Tags
• Article Writing
• Commenting on other Blogs

Revenue Stream Analysis

Sports Betting - This did not get off to a great start, and I think that you need to be extremely careful if this type of revenue avenue is to be explored, do not spend to much time or money on it would be my advice to date. However maybe more careful research is required on my part.

Google AdSense - I continue to be impressed with the AdSense model, it has been a reliable source of income for this blog, and although a very minor amount of money is involved it has the potential to exponentially increase along with Blog traffic. I highly recommend Google AdSense as a revenue earning tool. If you want to sign up for AdSense, you can do via the image link to the right. (This link will send you to Google AdSense and list this site as the referrer. When you earn your first 100 $ I will also receive a payment)

Donations - To date I have earned nothing from the donations requested on this site. However that does not mean that they are not worthwhile, it would only take 1 decent donation and that could far outweigh Google Money.

Trademe - Unfortunately have not really had anything worthwhile to sell to date, this is definitely worth more focus going forwards, because it is a great way to make money.

Building Traffic

Blog Explosions - Although I was initially quite keen on the idea behind these, I have changed my mind somewhat. For one thing from what I can gather Google AdSense appears to frown upon them, and also most of the visitors that you would gain from such a program are often not really interested in the content of your site. Still probably worth listing your site with them however, a link is a link. I would however rather get my traffic the old fashioned way, through blood, sweat and tears!

Swapping Links - A number of the visitors to this site come from other sites that have linked to this one, another nice feature of linking to others is that it helps your Techorati Ranking. So remember if you are looking to boost your Technorati Ranking, and don't mind helping me out at the same time, please place a link on your site and let me know via a comment on this blog. I will then place a reciprocal link on this site. Thanks to all the great sites that have linked to me in the past, which has also helped me expand the content of this site by linking to them.

Technorati Tags - I cant really say that I get a lot of traffic from Technorati, however it is important to tag your blog appropriately as this makes it a lot easier for people to find it! Hopefully as the site matures more traffic will be fed from the Technorati Portal.

Article Writing - Writing is what this blog is all about really, I look forward to submitting some of the articles to places like ezinearticles in the future. At this stage I have not submitted any from this particular blog, however have received hits from my other blog via articles so realize that it can be a nice solution in the hunt for long term traffic generation ideas.

Commenting - I have found that commenting on other blogs is a good way to get a return visit and often a return comment as well! Most bloggers are interested in the people that comment and read their blogs, so this method of traffic generation is a great one!

Be sure to check back regularly for updates on our Project, it is turning out to be a very interesting journey!

If you found this site to be helpful or inspiring you are welcome to donate to Robs Experiment!

Boosting traffic to your Blog - 5 Methods

Now your blog is all set up, you have written a few articles and are awaiting the onslaught of visitors. Below are 5 methods I have found to help send traffic to your blog.

BlogExplosion and Blogmad
BlogExplosions are sites where you can earn credits by reading other members blogs, then you can spend these credits on advertising your blog.

Links to other Blogs
Find like minded blogsites and see if you can swap links. The more links out there to your site the more popular it will become. Sites like Technorati give you a higher ranking.

Technorati
Claim your blog on the technorati website

Post everyday
Every single day if you can, try and write at least one article, this keeps the content of the site fresh and the blog spiders out there seem to like it.

Click and Comment Monday
Every Monday visit 5 blogs and leave comments, hopefully they will do the same for you!!

These are 5 methods that I have found to help in the search for traffic, I hope they help with your site to!

Day 9 and climbing the Technorati Ladder plus a New Idea comes to light

Well its day 9 of the Million Dollar Experiment Down Under. Thanks to a couple of new linkers we are now starting to climb the Technorati ladder. Remember the deal stands, link to my blog on your website, drop me a comment saying you have done so and voila, I will link back to your site within 24 hours. (Or as soon as practically possible).

Today while visiting some relatives one of them mentioned that a mate of his was having some success with sports betting, basically by backing certain results with low odds. This appears to make some sort of sense and I will look into and maybe give it a shot with a few bucks to see what happens.

Although I have used both blogexplosion and blogmad I am a little reluctant to drive traffic to my site when I may have nothing they want to read about... (for example someone may be very keen on spiders and yet the sites will send them to my site at random.) So in the interest of providing something of value for everyone that is another reason why I am offering the swappa link.

At least that way the time we have both spent viewing other peoples blogs can be productive and we are helping each other, instead of quickly scanning the blog and moving on.

Also I earned 9 cents yesterday off this site, I have not worked out my hourly rate yet, but the good thing is it would be hard for it to decrease!

Grand total to date: $1.76 NZ Dollars

Again the daily chant...

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own
perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my
life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.

Day 8 and the traffic begins to climb

A large increase in traffic has happened in the last few days, One post was submitted to digg.com and have swapped links with a few like minded blogs. Also have had a good blast on BlogExplosion, spent an hour or so surfing blogs, which earned enough credits for 20 or so visitors to be sent to my blog.

One of the sites I have swapped links with is My Quest to make money on the Internet this guy has some interesting techniques that he is using to make some dollars, and appears to be well on track. I would recommend looking at his site for good ideas as he is using 5 or 6 different affiliate type methods.

It looks like blogging is only going to get bigger and better over the next few years so now is the time to hop on the bandwagon and begin to build your empire. I was reading an article on digg about one guy who is reportedly earning $60000 per month in ad revenue! You can read the article here.

No more money to report at this point, however are optimistic of creating some more in the coming week.

Remember the chant, it must be performed daily as part of the experiment....

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its
own perfect time, for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into
my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.