Blogging For Dollars Series - Guest Post by Heather from Dollar Store Crafts

If there's one blog that had me by its name, it's the Dollar Store Crafts. This blog is my daily crafting-vitamins because of the inspiring projects simply created from dollar stores items. I had this strong urge last year to contact Heather but I felt like it was such a daunting to ask from an A-list blogger who generates close to a million pageviews a month. I finally got the courage to ask her this month and you know what? Her reply was so quick, and it included this post that you're about to read. Ok, friends, I'm sure you want to read her recipe for blogging success so let's make noise and welcome Heather!

1) Can you please share how you started earning income from your blog?

I started with a love of crafts and writing, and focused on blogging on my topic (Dollar Store Crafts) for more than a year (one post per day) before I even put Google Adsense on my blog. Well, I tried Adsense for a week at the beginning, and I decided to remove the ads because they only made about a dollar, and it wasn't worth it to me to have the ads on the sidebar for $4 a month!

After a year, I had a good amount of monthly pageviews (a good number to shoot for: 50,000 pageviews a month), so I tried Adsense again, as well as signing up with an ad network, BlogHer. I placed two large ads (a banner ad across the top and a 300x250 in the sidebar), and a small ad at the bottom of each blog post. You shouldn't have more than 3 large ads on your page at one time.

The way most traditional online ads calculate pay is by 1000 times the ad is shown - this is called "CPM." If your blog gets a $1 CPM, then you can expect to get about $1 per 1000 times that ad is shown. If you get 50k pageviews a month, you might make $50 from an ad box per month.

For the first couple years, I also used Project Wonderful, which is an ad service that allows advertisers to bid on ad space on your blog. You won't get rich from this, but you will accrue a little money and then you can turn around and advertise on other blogs using Project Wonderful, if you want to use it as a way to promote.

Selling things is the quickest way to make a buck, so consider having an Etsy shop and using your blog to promote it... if you can balance it.

2) Can you give advice on how bloggers can attract advertisers without turning
off readers at the same time?

Everyone has to figure out their own way to monetize, through trial and error. What works for my blog won't necessarily be the golden ticket for your blog.

Being very frank and honest about what you are doing, and how, is a great way to inform and embrace your readers. If you decide to start using advertisers, or hosting paid giveaways, write a dedicated blog post telling your readers what you have decided, and what your thought process was behind your decision. One person who is REALLY good at this is Shannon from MadiganMade.com. She wrote a great post called "Why I Want to Monetize," sharing the inside scoop with her readers.

3) Can you please share other tips you want to impart with us?

Be kind to others, whether they are bloggers or readers. Always assume the best intentions - if someone leaves an unpleasant comment or makes a craft that looks very similar to yours, don't assume the worst. Be yourself, do what you are interested in and ignore the things you aren't interested in. Be generous with your promotion of others, and avoid furthering your own interests at the expense of others.

I host a weekly Twitter chat about all things blogging, so come join us on Mondays at 4pm Eastern using the hashtag #crafterminds. You can also visit Crafterminds.com for more blogging resources. Oh, and if you fail at a craft project, snap a pic and submit it to me for my other site, CraftFail.

Thank you for this meaty and inspiring post, Heather! You've given us so much to think about and we applaud you for it.

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to check out what other A-list bloggers have shared about their money-making ventures through their blogs here.

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