A Blogging Opportunity

This doesn’t fit into my plans to get rich slowly, but it is interesting.

The other day I was reading Digg and read about a Blogger who was disposed in a defamation law suit. One of his blog commenter’s was defamed by another commenter. I followed the link to his web site, but he didn’t have any details- on advice from his lawyer.
His blog Shoemoney ranks in the top 100 Blogs- quite a feat. The blog was about how to make money blogging. He mades money hosting Google Ad Sense, Yahoo, and now EBay Ads.
At this point my interest was about zero. I saw he hosted photos, so I looked at that. I liked what he did, but I couldn’t see what he was using. I think it’s something he wrote himself, but I could be wrong. While looking at the photos I ran across his most popular photo. It’s of him holding a check from Google for $132,994.97. I doubt Google writes annual checks, and he didn’t see to make much of it:

“This was the biggest paper check I have ever received. It was way back in August of 2005 and since I have moved to wire transfers so don’t look for anything bigger from me.”

I wonder how often he gets paid! I started thinking about this. First it’s not that much money in the scheme of things- that is advertising. It is a lot of money if you’re just sitting around in your pajamas writing a blog. But Shoemaker put together a popular blog, which isn’t easy, on a topic that seems would have a very high click through rate on the types of ads, which Google would feed on to his site. This means more payments. I’m also guessing the topic would generate search terms, which Google could get a premium price for- again more money for Shoemoney.

I thought, “is this something I could replicate?” It would have to be a topic I know something about, am interested in, and has the same set of features that make Shoemoney successful.

At first I looked at the Search Term rates. I know that some terms have extremely high rates. The highest rate terms deal with personal injury law suits. See List (This may be an urban myth)
So how about creating a blog about all these law practices. First I don’t know anything about it. Second I’m sure I’ll open my big mouth and get sued.

The next topic I thought about was photography. I know a little about it, and it seems to be a popular topic on many blogs about other topics. It’s also true that most people know little about photography or their cameras. It would be a good topic to blog about. You could write an entry about every menu item on a certain digital camera(s). There’s a year worth of topics. You could write about how to take better photos. You could feature favorite photographers- relating this back to your topic. There seems to be much material and a waiting audience. I would think the topics/entries would generate some good Google Ad sense terms. The audience would have a pretty high click through rate.

I talked this over with my photographer friend the next day. He didn’t seem interested.
He is always buying camera gear on EBay. Shoemoney is now hosting EBay Ads because of their better payment rate.
“Image if there was a topic about.. teleconvertors. EBay would generate ads featuring teleconverter ads. I image the click through rate would be really good, so you get paid with every click. Hell, you could check eBay photo auctions for your daily topic/entry ideas.”
He still didn’t have any interest. I already have a full time job, and you would have to treat this as a serious job to be successful. (It doesn’t have to be about photograph, but it would need to have the same set of features: high interest, high click through, and high value search terms.)

Still I thought it was a cool idea.