Genealogists blog for many reasons. Some do it for the pure joy of sharing their research and experiences with others - many would also like to make a few dollars while they are at it. I have to admit that I'm in the 
latter category. I've made a little and get really excited when I see a pending sale in one of my affiliate accounts, but unfortunately it's not enough to quit my day job. Even though I haven't done that well yet, I see the potential for a nice little augmentation to my regular salary...at least enough to keep me in my genealogy subscriptions. Since I've done a lot of research, I thought I'd share some of the online resources I've discovered, and also some of the lessons I've learned along the way.
Birth, Marriage and Death Records
Two sites I really like
I wish I would have thought of it sooner, but I think the best way to make money blogging would be to blog about how to make money blogging. There are tons of these kinds of sites out there, and quite a few appear to have a large readership. Two of my favorite are ProBlogger and Nate Whitehill dot Com. Both of these blogs are jam packed with tips and information that can help you turn your site into an additional source of income.
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger really knows what he's talking about when it comes to blogging. If you look at his RSS feed stats it shows he's got 29,495 readers, and he's only been at it for a couple of years. He's currently running a series called 31 Days to Building a Better Blog, started on 1 August, that will probably incorporate just about all of the good information on his site by the time it's finished. The way he's built this series itself is informative because he's only on day 8 (8 articles) and his readers have contributed 151 tips of their own - it's kind of like compounding interest. Another favorite article of mine is 8 Things to do on your Blog when you're sick. This one is timely because I'm a bit under the weather today and stayed home from work so I'm doing a little blogging. There are many articles on how to use affiliate accounts, AdSense and other methods of developing income streams on your blog. While there are many tips and strategies discussed on this site, it seems the common theme is that consistent quality posting on a topic of interest will grow your readership and develop the potential for earning a little money.
I discovered Nate Whitehill dot Com because an article of his was mentioned at ProBlogger titled Analyzing My RSS Subscriber Growth. The article gives a great account on how Nate increased his number of subscribers over a relatively short time. Most of Nate's articles are so practical in nature that you will probably wonder why you didn't think of it yourself...like this one called 7 Ways To Get Readers to Stick. Another common sense article that all of us bloggers can identify with is The Pressures of Blogging Consistently, but this is one of the most important aspects of being successful and increasing readership. One of Nate's better posts is titled The Successful Bloggers Guide to Blogging. Reading it gave me a real sanity check about my decision to start blogging...I only wish I would have read it before I started rather then 10 months into it.
The great thing about both of these blogs is that they contain many many links to other resources that will help you whether your intent is to make money or not.
My own lessons learned
1. If you think you can just hang advertising on your blog and make money you will be disappointed. You have to work at it, plan your strategies and make good relevant posts (still working on that part).
2. Integrate your affiliate advertising into your posts. I've discovered I get more clicks on ads I put into my posts then those ads in my sidebars.
3. Plain text ads get more clicks then banner ads. I can illustrate this with stats from my World Vital Records affiliate account. Of the total clicks I've received since I joined the affiliate program, 341 were from text ads and only 49 from banner ads. I think some banner ads add character to your blog, but I don't think they provide much else.
4. One of the best ways to increase traffic to your blog is to use guerrilla marketing (sometimes called viral marketing). I read a blog post by Paul Allen, World Vital Records CEO, titled The long term cumulative impact of guerrilla marketing and decided to try it out. His basic premise is that if you work to gain 3 new visitors per day, over time your readership will skyrocket. I modified it a bit and visited 3 new sites per day and left a link to my blog. After that 7 day period my visitors doubled and remained high for a week or so after I stopped the experiment. The problem is this method takes a lot of work, and after awhile it was hard to find new sites to leave my link on...and I was spending more time doing this rather then posting and doing research. The bottom line, however, is the method works.
Like I said at the beginning of the post, I haven't made much money blogging, but I do see some potential. I plan on continuing this subject from time to time as I learn more lessons the hard way.
If you like this post, add my blog to your Technorati favorites and subscribe to my RSS feed:
Hey thanks for the mention. It is quite an honor to be mentioned along with Darren. You have a great blog here! Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Nate Whitehill | August 08, 2007 at 10:24 PM
Jasia - I only count people who I see return regularly AND leave comments. Actually I'm up to 11 now - not counting the guy who left a comment and link to an adult site that I deleted this morning...I think you are right...good content is the theme all those blogging for bucks sites advocate. I also barely have enough time to write let alone do all the things one needs to do to make money. I have to admit though, it's kinda fun fantasizing about it. Thanks for the comment!
Posted by: Tim Agazio | August 08, 2007 at 01:33 PM
What happened to 10 confirmed readers? ;-)
I've played with this idea on and off for over a year now. I've been reading the same "pro-bloggers" blogs you do for about that length of time. My conclusion is that any time I spend on trying to strategize on how to make money on my blog takes away time I can spend actually writing good content. And that seems to be what the pros all advocate as the single best thing you can do to increase readership. Just not enough hours in the day to do it all.
I'm still up in the air about the whole social networking thing too (LinkedIn, StumbledUpon, Delicious, etc.). I know they say it's another good way to get your blog noticed and increase readership but it sounds like another time vaccuum to me.
Posted by: Jasia | August 08, 2007 at 12:59 PM
Becky, Thanks for that link...I haven't seen that one before. You've got a good point about everything leading to a pay site. I need to keep that in mind. While I would like to make a few dollars, I get the most enjoyment out of the community we have. I think the blogging challenges are the same whether we want to make money or share our research. Thanks for the insight and your comment!
Posted by: Tim Agazio | August 08, 2007 at 12:25 PM
Tim, good post. I've been reading ProBlogger since March and started reading Lorelle on Wordpress http://lorelle.wordpress.com/ at about the same time, even though I don't use Wordpress she has some great blogging tips as well as a series of blogging challenges. Since my blog is geared more toward my personal research, with some tips thrown in now and then, I still haven't decided whether or not I want to put advertisements or even affiliate links on my blog. It's not that I can't use the money ;-) but I keep hearing from fellow local researchers that "everything" seems to lead to a pay site and I'm not sure I want to contribute to that on my research blog. I think on a blog like yours, with an emphasis on tips and links to other posts, it makes more sense.
Posted by: Becky Wiseman | August 08, 2007 at 12:03 PM