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Darren Rowse recently asked bloggers if they sell text links on their blogs. The conversation that ensued is pretty interesting in my opinion, and for those Web writers who are trying to earn through blogging, I’d like to share a few thoughts – namely, that Google is not (or should not be) the be all and end all for your blog!

The Text Link Issue

If you’re not familiar with the supposed problem of selling text links on your blog, I’ll super-summarize for you:

Google doesn’t like it – nope – uh uh – if you do it, you might get a Google slap (they’ll remove your pagerank, which may also lead to lower rankings in Google’s engine for your key search terms). In essense, Big G says if you sell text links, you’re gaming their system (because everything we do is solely about them, right?). Even if your own links are completely valid and natural, and even if your blog is filled with high quality, original, authority content (the stuff Google’s supposed to love and want to show up high in their search engine), they’ll bitch slap your blog into oblivion if you use this advertising method without including the no-follow attribute or using javascript to serve the links (so they won’t influence pagerank).

As far as I’m concerned, Google can bite me, and more bloggers need to be prepared to say the same thing. Why?

First of all, you have the right to earn from your work. You also have the right to maximize your earnings. No one, including Google (who’s pissed because their own algorithm is faulty and they didn’t have the foresight to envision this problem back when they created the boom in this ad market themselves) should tell you how to run your business (which is what your blog is if you’re using it as an income stream). And if you’re serious about your business, you won’t allow someone on the outside to do that.

On top of it, by penalizing sites, they’re making what amounts to a quality judgment call on your site – their pagerank is supposed to be related to the value they place on the site (meaning what it’s offering to visitors). Many folks are naive enough to trust that. To place a quality score against high quality content because they disagree with an advertising model amounts to (in my eyes) misleading their userbase. They also don’t account for a difference between those true spam blogs who will publish any link paid for and those who follow strict guidelines in reviewing, accepting, and rejecting advertisers based on their target audience.

And that’s who you need to please – your audience; not Google.

Google Slave Syndrome

There are other ways your blog can become a slave to Google.

1. You can rely on them for most of your traffic.
2. You can rely on them for most of your income (such as through Adsense).
3. You can rely on them to dictate what you can and cannot do in building your site / blog / community.

I’m of the mind that you shouldn’t allow yourself to fall victim to any of these situations. Am I saying you shouldn’t care at all about getting traffic via search. Of course not. But you should diversify where that traffic is coming from, and you shouldn’t build a blog or other business model solely or primarily around one source like Google.

Am I saying you shouldn’t use Adsense? No to that as well. While I don’t use Adsense on this blog, I do use it on others. However, I’m smart enough not to make it a majority of my income source. You should work it into your mix; not make it your bread and butter.

So let’s get into what’s really important. How can you diversify your income streams and traffic?

Diversifying Income Streams on Your Blog

• Join affiliate networks such as Clickbank or Commission Junction – Promote products or sites that you can honestly feel good about recommending to your visitors.
• Sell private advertising – this may be text links, banner ads, video ads, sponsored posts, audio ads if you also run a podcast, or any type of private ad sales relevant to your site or blog.
• Create your own products – Write and sell an e-book or report, and sell it on your blog (like you see me doing on this blog). You could also sell scripts, software, forms, graphics, Web templates – anything at all that’s (again) relevant to your audience.
• Contextual advertising – Adsense is an example of this, but there are other ad networks. If you opt to steer clear of Google altogether, get turned down for Adsense, or their ads just don’t work in your case, try another until you find a good fit.
• Membership sections – If you run an extremely high quality blog with a lot of content, you may want to add a paid members-only area where people can read premium content.

The most important thing you can do in diversify those income streams, and keep testing different mixes and placements until you learn how to maximize your revenue on your particular blog.

Diversifying Traffic Sources

• Create authority content – this is the most important thing you can do to bring in traffic beyond that from search engines (and it actually increases SE traffic in most cases anyway). Why? Because top notch content is easy for other people to link to, talk about, comment on, share via social bookmarking sites, etc. In other words, the most valuable thing you can do to increase your own traffic is to get other people to spread the word for you. It’s simply a case of good PR (sometimes called word-of-mouth marketing or viral marketing, depending on the method).
• Give something away – this is in line with creating authority content. Put together something more than your typical blog posts. Offer a free short report or something. Not only does this give people an additional reason to spread the word and stop by the blog, but you can use it to build your list if you have one and increase visitors on a more regular basis through that newsletter or email feed subscription.
• Make news – you want other people talking about you, and press releases can help you do that (download my free report on press release writing if you’re new to it – I’m originally a PR pro if you didn’t know that). The key is to truly do something newsworthy before sending them – that’s the only way to get high quality traffic out of them (and increased conversions, depending on what you want that traffic to do).

Those are just three things you can do which are relatively easy, and which can bring in a large amount of traffic. Don’t just choose one – do them all, and then some. Participate in social media tools or social networks, comment on other blogs, write guest posts for authority sites in your niche, do a virtual blog tour, etc.

Look beyond Google in all respects now, and you’ll build yourself a far more stable audience and income source for your blog in the long run.

Related posts:

1. Will Google Adsense Breed Distrust in Your Blog’s Readers?
2. Adsense, MyBlogLog, and Google’s Worthless Response
3. Make Money Writing Online
4. Make Money on Your Blog or Site With WidgetBucks
5. 3 Month Make Money Blogging Challenge – Day 8

About the Author: Jennifer Mattern

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Jenn is a professional blogger and freelance business writer. She has worked as a freelance writer since 1999, and has been an active business and niche blogger since 2004. She owns All Freelance Writing as well as several other sites and blogs covering PR, small business, and related topic areas. She is also currently writing a nonfiction book for freelance writers called The Query-Free Freelancer, and is the author of the Web Writer's Guide e-book series.

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