Tips on making money though Wordpress sites?

[DomainMagnate]

The best performing spots for WP are above, below the article and left sidebar on top.
Also use link units.

[HarveyJ]

And I'm back.

So, all of you recommending adsense, if your gun isn't already firmly planted over your left foot, please do so now, and pull the trigger. Repeatedly if your gun is the type that uses clips.

Making money on a Wordpress site isn't difficult, but it does take a bit of effort, because you're going to need some satellite sites... aka blog farms.
You're also going to need to learn a bit about Wordpress plugins, specifically Caffeinated Content, and some sort of automatic linking plugin such as aLinks. you're also going to need a few days to set it up, and enjoy boring tedious work.

1) Get yourself a Hosting reseller account. Start splitting it up into chunks large enough for a decent blog.
2) Install wordpress, CC and aLinks onto each. Give each their own particular sub-niche, and set CC rampant on those terms. Make sure you turn off the trackbacks so they don't give away free links.
2a) Don't let CC post every single day. 3-5 times per fortnight is enough. You're making 20+ blogs here, so 50 posts a week on average should keep things rolling).
3) Sign up for a few different affiliate offers (check offervault.com for offers by keyword) that relate to each "niche" that each auto-blog is, as well as the ones for your main blog. Signing up alone will take about a day if you're doing it right.
4) Create spreadsheets (save them as CSVs) with all your links, and the keywords that you want to have as the anchor tags, and feed that into aLinks for each different autoblog you've got.
4a) This is the clever part: remember to create anchors / keywords that link to your other blogs... i.e. Blog1 is about new computer hardware, Blog2 is about webhosting, and Blog3 is about games. There WILL be cross over between all three, so make sure certain keywords will actually link between them. As it won't be reciprocal links (turn off trackbacks!). Between 20-30 blogs, this will actually createa very solid linking structure.
4b) Make sure there are a lot of keywords that trigger linking to the blog you're actually really writing content for. Links from a solidly linked set of sites will rank it hard and fast for those anchors. Try to ensure it's not in EVERY post, but if you're getting about 10 links a day out of your farm, that'll look perfectly natural to an algorithm.
5) Watch as you begin to dominate the SERPs for the anchor you've ensured is in all your blogs.
6) Watch as traffic comes to you, sees real content, and eventually buys crap.
6a) Even if they're not buying crap, if you start getting a couple thousand hits a day, you may want to just install some genericly appealing banners with a CPM payout.

[draggar]

damn, Harvey, that's a lot to digest. I have some of this going - right now I'm building a small network of similar sites in a niche. luckily this niche isn't too popular so it won't be hard (once I really get going) to get high with search engine results.

CC- sounds very interesting, I'll look into that - does that automatically write entries and then aLinks build links between the sites and maybe some other related sites?

There are no affiliate programs in this niche (if there are - there are extremely few) and keywords pay very little in this niche (I rarely get a click over a dime).

I think i still have a lot to do - maybe I should take a vacation from work and just dedicate the entire week to getting the network, or the majority of it, up and running with this. I already have the sites up and I'm adding more to it (one was just soft-launched today - I expect to have it fully up and running by the end of the week).

[KaneCo]

I am still missing something on caffeinated content, I have it and tried to use it many times and it does nothing. Is there a trick to it to get it to pull good content or am I missing the point of it....

[draggar]

I am still missing something on caffeinated content, I have it and tried to use it many times and it does nothing. Is there a trick to it to get it to pull good content or am I missing the point of it....

I was looking at it but I don't think it'll work for me - while you can have automated content niche, it will definitely stand out. :(

[HarveyJ]

KaneCo: It takes a bit of tweaking to get it to pull good content. There are other content scrapers out there, but I'm comfortable with CC.

Draggar: You're welcome.
There are affiliate programs in EVERY niche. If you can't find them, then you just don't know where to look. If you're comfortable with it, you're welcome to PM the niche, and I'll try to find something for you.
In terms of content, if the niche really is that small, then yeah CC may not be for you. You may need to hire someone to create a better scraper that you can customise a bit more fully.

[tphelan]

Try the eBay affiliate program ads in the blog posts. They generate income and also bring traffic because they are rss feeds. The eBay ads can cover probably 99% of the niches.

[Arragon]

the 300 square box and 160x600 skycrapper on the right side seems doing good
but I do need to have more proves on those as well. Anyway will post my results later on.

[draggar]

Draggar: You're welcome.
There are affiliate programs in EVERY niche. If you can't find them, then you just don't know where to look. If you're comfortable with it, you're welcome to PM the niche, and I'll try to find something for you.
In terms of content, if the niche really is that small, then yeah CC may not be for you. You may need to hire someone to create a better scraper that you can customise a bit more fully.

I just got on CJ (yes, I'm a late started) and noticed that there are very few that could go along with my sites and the message I want to get out. Not many, but there are some.

[draggar]

I want to try something - a rotating banner (a banner that changes with each page view). I'm sure there is a way to do this? Maybe have one page / file with all of the ad scripts (maybe separated by DIV's or IDs?) and then a script that pulls a random one out of the bunch?

[Jarrall]

There are a few plugins for WP that do that:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/random-ads/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adrotate/

[draggar]

Cool - that'll make it easier. Thank you.

[draggar]

I have adroate on one of my sites, I added the script into the page:

<center><?php echo adrotate_banner('sidebar'); ?></center>

Where I previously had an ad that showed but the ads do not show.

I did create a group called sitebar (obviously for the sidebar) and I have 3 ads set in the rotation (one of them was in there and did show before adrotate).

I tried it in IE8 with no kind of ad management add-ons running and even FF in XP and Linux. The ad used to show in FF so I know I wasn't blocking them.

Suggestions?

Edit: I did add a simple

<center>test</center>

To make sure that the code is showing, and it is.

Edit: Yes, the ads are active.

Edit#2: OK, I figured it out - the 1 they have in their sample script is NOT an example. :S

Now that I have this running I've noticed that the site is A LOT slower... :(

[HarveyJ]

There are a number of ways to make this work. A plugin is probably the worst way, as you end up calling on calls that make calls to calls that are calling a call in PHP

Hence the slow down.

Hit up google for a rotation script, and then just load the PHP directly into your Wordpress theme, using an HTML editor.
Try to find one that works on number randomization so you only have to rename the banners.

It'd be something like:
value : $rnd
Generate Random (0-9)
$rnd = random
Display "$rnd".jpg
(this is pesudocode, not PHP... There are heaps of ways to do this, and it's best that people find a way they're most comfortable with)

[Biggs101]

Great advice in this thread. Should have looked here sooner.
Anyone know where I should post to find a minisite developper? I am looking to develop my top generics but am not sure where to look.

[seanboy]

Have a look at these plugins:

WP125 - Allows to to sell 125x125 ads directly
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp125/

OIOPublisher - Gives you "complete control of your ad space"
http://www.oiopublisher.com/

WP125 is free, and OIOPublisher costs money. I've used WP125 and I like it. I can't speak for OIOPublisher since I've never used it, but I have read good reviews.

Good luck!
http://www.oiopublisher.com/

[4u-domains]

If you have good content why dont you proactively target other sites within your niche to see if they want to place an Ad on your site.
you can start small and then build up the cost as your site grows.

Just finished on www.seolatestnews.com and it has 7 different areas to make revenue. If you click on the 'Advertising' link at the top you will see what i mean.

[jain_manoj27]

I have lots of blogs with good and huge contents. But the revenue is not much as compared to static sites.

[4u-domains]

I have lots of blogs with good and huge contents. But the revenue is not much as compared to static sites.

Are they typically 'wordpress' looking sites or custom themes that bear no resemblance to the usual wordpress sites?

I am just thinking maybe the issue is one of stagnancy.
People now see so many of these similar designs that they become immune to them and dont bother looking at the non-content areas where the Ads are.

Either way, I suggest just importing a new theme onto your wordpress sites every so often which helps keep it fresh and contemporary.