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Lukewarmer Mug (and other money making ventures.)

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As some of you know, I try to defray the costs of hosting with ppc advertising. So, I thought I’d let you guys know how the advertising is going at this blog. Mind you, making money at a climate blog is next to impossible because it’s not oriented around consumables people are likely to buy. That said, I do take steps to defray costs of my hobby, ask advice and tell people how things are working out.

Here is the report of things that are working:

  1. I have cleared a total of $126.90 at CafePress. Most of the profit is from mugs, some is from coasters and note cards.
  2. Google ads have been doing poorly. I make about $.05 a day from this blog. (I make about $6 / day from the neglected knitting blog. Knitters do buy yarn, needles and “stuff”.)
  3. Visitors do buy stuff from Amazon.com. For example, someone bought a 0.25ctw Diamond & Sterling Silver Infinity Necklace. Very nice.

    Some one else bought Apple iPhone 4gb 8gb Ultra Grip Ribbed Black Silicone Skin kit – 15" Workout Armband . Also very nice.

    However, I don’t know if these were purchased by someone from this blog, or my old, neglected knitting blog. They both run on the same servers, so I guess it really doesn’t matter.

    A few climate change books also sold. Total from both blogs: $26. so far this year.

  4. Some of you may have noticed the inline links on older posts. Those are inserted by Kontera, and the ones running on this blog netted me $4.47 this year. (The knitting blog does much better. It did even better when I actually posted! 🙂 )

New steps today

I joined YieldBuild a service that is supposed to optimize placement of ads from other services, like AdSense. YieldBuild can also fill in from Chitika, Yahoo Publishers and several other services I’d never heard of. I created seven zones, modified my template, and applied to all the other services. I’m now watching to see which ads appear where. With luck the $0.05/ day from the various ads can zoom up to $1/day. (That would cover the costs of the web hosting.)

Right now, I’m seeing newer ads. I’m also seeing some blank boxes when AdSense doesn’t find anything to match my content. But YieldBuild is supposed to collect information, and serve things that pay the most. So, presumably, I’ll see fewer blank boxes over time. We’ll see how this goes!

Things that didn’t work

There were a few services I joined that looked promising, but their scripts were poorly written, and threw errors. Needless to say, I dumped those services. But if you think you know services that might work, let me know. People improve their scripts from time to time. I’m willing to give anyone a second shot.

If you can think of another “hit” like the mug, let me know too. That was sort of fun.

Update

This post is showing lots of ads about business opportunities, pay per click, doubling adSense revenues, working at home and web hosting. I guess that’s not too surprising.

27 thoughts on “Lukewarmer Mug (and other money making ventures.)”

  1. I always thought a simple black tee shirt with a large spotless orange circle (like a spotless sun) on it and a caption like “Climate Driver” (or something else more clever) would sell well to climate skeptics. If it caught on, you could probably lose the caption and just have black T-shirts with an orange circle you could wear to irritate your warminst friends.

  2. Lucia,

    I am driven to the conclusion that you might do better to stick to knitting 🙂

  3. Simon– Bloggging about knitting is not profitable. Blogging about climate change is even less profitable.

    To make money blogging, you need to decide to be “fascinated” with topics associated with marketable products. These can be cameras, jewelry, celebrity weddings etc. With any blog, you can hunt around for affiliate ads that might work– but that takes away time from any other job and/or blogging.

  4. Lucia,

    Maybe insurance is the way to go? You know – flood insurance, sea level rise insurance, invasion by alien people insurance, that sort of thing. Or bottled water products, perhaps? 😉

    How much does it cost to host a blog?

  5. Simon–
    It doesn’t cost much. I spend about $200 a year. You can get cheaper deals though. Long ago, I wanted to be sure to have the ability to run my own scripts, have email addresses etc. I like my host, so I don’t plan to look for cheaper.

    But, I do prefer to cover the out of pocket costs. The defunct knitting blog currently does. But that’s got to erode over time!

    Insurance is a profitable key word. So, if you can be fascinated with insurance and build up links, you can make money both with affiliate ads and paid posting. (There is a catch 22. Google doesn’t like paid posting unless you nofollow links; if you don’t “nofollow” they yank your rankings. Advertisers are often unwilling to pay for an article unless you include links without no follow, and have a good Google page rank. So…. )

  6. The ads tempting me with vacationing at a lovely caribbean island. It’s contextual. Guess which island?

  7. I would buy a mug if you had a UK supplier, but that may be more complex than it’s worth. Simplest of all, I suspect many of us would help fill the tip jar if you had one.

  8. Jonathan,
    I don’t like tip jars as a first alternative. I’m going to go for that if I ever need to cover page charges. . .

  9. Shipping the mugs to the UK works fine – takes a couple of weeks though. I like it because it doesn’t have a clear message, it just helps people think a bit. Not very efficient as a way of supporting the site, but I needed a new mug for work anyway.

  10. Sean– I make about $2 per mug, which is fine by me. But, obviously, people should only buy if they want a mug. I’m glad you enjoy yours!

  11. Based on Sean’s review I have ordered a mug and shall await the ship with interest…

  12. I love my mug, too.

    Christmas is coming, it always is. Can you do a Christmas mug with the temps just for December, going back as far as you can? Or the ice extent? Decorate it with polar bears. I’d buy some for stocking stuffers.

  14. I enjoy my mug as well. Wish T-shirts for people could be had. I would love wearing such a great conversation starter at work or at the beach. Or even with my children. 😉

  15. Hi Lucia,
    I don’t mind tip jars. I think of it as sort of a “soft” subscription charge. I appreciate the time you put in here.

  16. Adsense of 5cents a day is a worry. But really depends on how much traffic this site gets. I think it is about conversion layout rather than adsense that is the problem

    For example, the only ad above the fold of this page is to the top right hand side and I had to search for it before I fund it

    Read http://niche-traffic-sale.blogspot.com

    It is a free site that shares tips pn all things online marketing including adsense and how to make adsense work for you. [Large coffee required as the blog has loads of really useful posts]

  18. Decorate it with polar bears. I’d buy some for stocking stuffers.

    “I CAN HAZ HOT TUBZ?”

  19. I wonder if the category “Learning R” should be “Learning R statistics”. Amazon doesn’t seem to be recognizing what you’re referring to. Or when you mention a particular tool, perhaps the first time you mention it in an article you should be a little more descriptive so humans and bots have a better idea of what you’re talking about.

    It looks like for Amazon you can also show certain kinds of items. I don’t know if WordPress allows you to emit different phrases based upon the Categories which a page is in (so if a page is only in the “Learning R” category you’d show ads for items related to “R statistics”).

  20. Everyone should allow all current scripts on this site, or at least have your script-blocker show which site’s scripts are trying to run. Script blocking tools might only be allowing the older scripts to run, but not showing the current collection of advertising scripts.

  21. “Click to see this month’s global lukewarming mugs!”
    If they were updated monthly then you should offer mug subscriptions. 🙂

  22. Scooter–

    Writing to educate ‘bots is a talent. I sometimes have it; I sometimes don’t. (Yes, saying “learning R statistics” will beat “learning R” every time!)

    But categories can’t be given long names or they break the display. (I do need to add tags to my posts.)

    I can’t do anything about people using ad blockers. If they use them,they use them. If not, then that’s ok too. My goal isn’t to make huge pots of money. But, I do try to organize some stuff. (I know how to code to prevent people from not seeing affiliate ads if I want to create them. It involves creating a link to another page on my own site and redirecting to the affilliate from there. But so far… I don’t particularly want to go to the trouble! People who hate ads, hate ads.

    Readers did tell me “no blinking banners”, so I try to avoid those!

  24. lucia, if you’re going to encourage people throw the mug that fast, they’ll definitely need to buy new ones.

  27. The postcards arrived today. They look good. Might help a wee bit if your URL was printed in the left margin.

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