Make Money from Abandoned Blogs
“Hi everybody, my name is Ben, and while it’s a bit difficult
for me to admit, I am a serial blogger.”
I probably shouldn’t mock the recovery process but my point is this: I have a few blogs I post to on a weekly basis. If you count the blogs I update once a month or so, that number doubles. If you then count the number of blogs I’ve started, written for, and have since abandoned, that number makes the space shuttle look like a bottle rocket. The thing is, I know I’m not alone. Technorati released a study earlier this year that said 79% of the 15.5 million blogs out there are no longer active. That’s something like 12.2 million inactive blogs out there. Now I can probably claim 30 or 40 thousand of those but that tells me there are quite a few others out there like me. So, are those poor orphaned blogs worthless and just taking up space? Well, that depends on what you do with ‘em.
I logged into my Text Link Ads (TLA) account today to approve an ad sale and much to my surprise, it was for another ad on one of my all but forgotten blogs! This thing has been sitting there inactive for almost a year now and it only had about 20 posts on it to begin with. However, I had managed to get it up to a PageRank of 4 and today, someone purchased a link from it. For the past three months I’ve been earning about $10 a month from it for one of the Post Level Ads that TLA offers and it looks like that total will more than double for this month. While $30 a month is certainly not something to write home about, it’s not a bad price for doing absolutely nothing. I mean, if I made that off every one of my abandoned blogs, I could pay my house payment every month and then some.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not just telling you this out of the goodness of my own heart. Not only does TLA offer a great way to monetize your blog by selling links, they also have an affiliate program that can be another significant source of income. In fact, last month, John Chow earned more from the affiliate program than he did selling links on his site. That might not blow you away but when you consider the fact that he made over $2,000 from selling links, all of the sudden that affiliate program seems like something worth looking into.
Bottom line, Text Link Ads doesn’t cost a cent to join, their affiliate program pays $25 for every person you refer that signs up and, through their text link ad marketplace, they offer a great way for you to make money off your old abandoned blogs and sites. If you’re interested in joining, I’d appreciate it if you did so by way of my affiliate link (or the new banner over to the right). Thanks!
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I never thought to put ads on an abandoned site before. Thanks for the tip. Although I deleted one of my old sites, I have not deleted them all.
Yeah, like I said, I pretty much never delete old sites, mostly out of laziness. They don’t take up much room on my server so why not right? Anyway, Text Link Ads is one program that doesn’t much depend on the amount of traffic you have, it’s mostly based on PageRank so in my opinion, it’s perfect for old abandoned sites.
Good luck with it FIAR, let us know how it goes for you.
I don’t have any abandoned sites out there- the one I have takes up all my free time…
I still make a little adsense money on some of my abandoned blog. I still have not figured out TLA yet. I have been signed up for sometime for my Passionate America blog, but have not sold a single link. I’m not sure if I am doing something wrong or if people just do not want to buy links for that site. It has a good page rank (5) the Alexa rank is a little low now, but at one time it was 42,000. Not sure what I need to do to start making some more money on that site.
I plan on building up my new site a little before I start to monetize it. I’ll start that one in a few months.
Thanks for the advice Ben
not what I was expecting from this post, but interesting
any blogs you have with a pagerank you want to get rid of?
@ Michael, I can only seem to manage a couple at a time but I’ve unfortunately left more than my fair share by the wayside. That’s actually a big part of this experiment. By giving myself a deadline and a goal that’s constantly staring me in the face, I’ve found it much easier to remain focused and motivated.
@ Wild Bill, without more specifics I’m not sure what the cause would be. You might consider tweaking the description of your site or maybe even the tags you used for it.
@ Blog Tools, I’ve got several but I’ve already added em to TLA and it looks like they’re going to finally earn me some money.
Do you have a list of these sites?
@ “Dad” – which sites? My old abandoned blogs?
P.S. This Dad isn’t actually my dad just for the record
I’ve actually considered approaching the owners of those abandoned blogs and asking if I could buy them from them. One man’s trash is another’s treasure!
lol okay, well let me know if you want to unload any
You know what’s crazy about the whole thing, Ben? I come across great blogs that have been abandoned all the time. But I obviously never go back to them.
If only you’d keep up with a blog, here and there readers will find you, and you’ll build a fanbase.
On that note, I’m actually kind of glad 79% of bloggers quit. It goes to show you that the blogosphere isn’t as saturated as you think.
Jason, you’re exactly right. A big part of being successful is just being a bulldog about it. Posting on a consistent basis and fighting the urge to put off posting etc. I don’t know if there’s a certain time period that you have to break through that blogging then becomes easier or if it’s just a matter of getting more experience but there’s no doubt providing a regular source of solid content is the biggest key to success in blogging.
For me, the abandonment urge sort of comes and goes. In fact, having so many blogs out there contributes to that to some extent as well. I get in the mood to write about sports and viola, I already have a sports blog so I can start working on that one again. Then I get sick of sports and can move on to another one etc etc. That type of cycle really is a waste of time though as you’ll rarely be successful just blogging whenever you feel like it.
I’m kind of rambling at this point but my point is, don’t forget to consider your abandoned blogs when you’re trying to generate blogging income. Maybe decide to keep a blog alive just enough to get into some of the Paid Blogging services like PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and SponsoredReviews etc. If you have multiple blogs on multiple topics you spread a much wider net. Granted those blogs aren’t likely to bring in as much money as your active and more popular blogs but if you have a ton of them like I do, it’s worth considering.
“I don’t know if there’s a certain time period that you have to break through that blogging then becomes easier or if it’s just a matter of getting more experience but there’s no doubt providing a regular source of solid content is the biggest key to success in blogging.”
Ben, the first entire year of blogging for me I had trouble posting even every couple days. Now it’s like I’ve gotten a momentum going that won’t stop. It’s especially easy for me to come up with material on a daily basis because I read so much.
I keep up with a lot of blogs in my reader but also news feeds. I mostly subscribe to a lot of http://news.google.com searches.
See ya.
Jason, I’ve got one blog that I’ve been running for a couple of years and it definitely does get easier, what I was trying to say was that the “breakthrough” time period I would think would be of different length for everyone. Personally I’m still fairly “seasonal” in that I get bored or burned out on topics, but I think the longer you blog for, the better you get at avoiding that or moving past it.
Ah… I see what you’re saying.
…I’ve been really inspired lately hearing about blogs that explode in less than a year. I hope my brand new blog http://www.atomicguitarist.com does that. I think it has a chance.
I read an article the other day about this blog right here: http://galadarling.com/ It’s been around for like 9 months and the writer has already been offered a job as a writer at a fashion magazine. Her blog is insanely popular.
Kind of cool.
Hey what upper Ben. Actually I’ve done the same thing. Gone off and left some of my blogs. But because I didn’t have the time to properly give to them. But then I deleted them because I kept looking at them in the dashboard and it was frustrating me that I didn’ thave the time to work on them.
I guess I should have just gotten TLA to sell some links. Duh… Anyway I’ve just started a new string of blogs. These ones I’m keep’n. I was on Blogger, but now WP baby all the way.
Keep up the great work…
To Your Immediate and Lasting Success,
Kenney
http://themakemoneyfromhomeblog.com
Wow,got to try thsi one out…
I am a comparative newbie to making money off my blogs, and so haven’t even signed up for Text Link Ads as yet.
But I have learned something similar already: That those old blogs just keep on keeping on. I’ve gone back to blogs I’d almost forgotten about and been amazed at how many people have seen them in the meantime.
It seems that blog traffic peters out very slowly, if at all.
Matt, that’s very true. If the old blog was active long enough to attract some links and start ranking for search terms, it can sustain itself pretty well. I’ve got one blog that I have blogged off and on for a few years and it still get’s a decent level of traffic and makes me a couple hundred a month off text links and paid reviews.
After all, a new visitor to the site all of the sudden has a ton of new content to read through etc. You might not have written in a year but depending on the topic, it could all still be relevant and it’s new to them. I mean, just look at this post. I wrote it quite a while ago but you just found it. If you then go and sign up for Text Link Ads (even if they don’t let you in the program as a link publisher, they’ll let you in the affiliate program) via my affiliate link I’ll get paid $25 for work I did several weeks ago. Not too shabby!
Is there any list of abandoned blogs by any chance?
why use abondonned sites. i dont like this idea. i prefer to buy a new domain and start something new.
The advantage of this is that it takes a while for the search engines to really crawl through old content and update it. I can see this as a positive, in that, hey–it’s your content. You can abandon it and do what you want with it.
I think I have read a few places about making money online through niche blogs – what they do is create a niche blog, add content, advertise it – and in many cases abandon it. Other times people keep it going by doing this and that to it, but to those who abandon it they do it so people will go, see that the site in old, then click the add to leave. Simple really, moral wrong I dunno if there is room on the net for complicated morals. So I really do not know if creating tons niche sites to make money from only is moral, but hey..if you legitimately abandoned about a blog, then go monetize it right?
Very nice idea!!! I will appreciste any help in finding a few abandoned blogs!
I will never get rid of any blog that has a page rank. This can be useful way to create back links to other sites or sell links.
I thank for the information! And whence such statistics on blogs? How you have learned it?
I never thought to put ads on an abandoned site before.
are these 2007 things useful in 2011 ?
Howdy would you mind letting me know which web host you’re utilizing? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 different browsers and I must say this blog loads a lot quicker then most. Can you suggest a good web hosting provider at a fair price? Cheers, I appreciate it!
We are using a Site5 VPS server.
Great tip. It can be easy to make money from an old existing blog if you are able to keep the traffic.