This is Part 2 of a 2-part series (Here’s Part I) that details the tasks that were critical for me to complete before officially re-launching this site.
If you’re about to launch your first site, or have launched sites in the past–and are hoping to do better this time around, I hope that you find this post helpful.
Signed up for Google AdSense
Webmasters and blog owners can earn a small trickle of income from pay-per-click advertisers like Adsense. The program uses contextual ads, meaning that the ads that are served on a webmaster’s pages should be related to the content published on that particular page.
When an interested reader sees the ad and clicks on it, the webmaster gets a small commission. This is called pay-per-click (“PPC”) advertising.
One of the great things about Adsense is that it’s highly customizable. You can decide exactly where you want it placed and what it looks like. You can choose from image-based ads, text-based ads or both—and they can appear within your content, or on a sidebar or header.
One of the not-so-great things is that webmasters have little say when it comes to what products and services appear in the ads.
What’s worth mentioning when it comes to Adsense, though, is that a lot of new webmasters have unrealistic expectations for it. They feel that they can eventually quit their jobs by just slapping some ads up on a web site, and that’s just not the case—unless, of course, you have an extremely high volume of traffic. And even then, it’s still not very likely. So, please, don’t believe the banner ads that tell you that you can. 
You can, however, make a little money with Adsense.
If you’re interested in finding out more about it or signing up, you can visit www.Google.com/adsense.
Signed Up for Affiliate Programs
Content-driven websites like mine often participate in affiliate programs until they’re able to offer their own products.
Affiliate programs, in a nutshell, are marketing programs where an advertiser enlists webmasters to place ads or buttons on their websites in exchange for a referral fee or commission when someone either clicks on an ad or completes a purchase.
These programs make sense for webmasters because—if chosen correctly—they can offer a decent stream of income and, at the same time, introduce your audience to a product or service that might fill a need.
If you do decide to take part in an affiliate program, make sure that it’s a program that offers a high quality product or service that will be beneficial to your readers. Your readers are your customers and the last thing you want to do is let them down.
A major difference between affiliate and PPC advertising (like Google Adsense) is that you, the webmaster, hand pick the products and services that are advertised. Because of this, often affiliate products are looked upon by the reader as products that you are endorsing.
Once you pick a program or two, you’ll also want to test it. If after a certain period of time—my testing period is 60-90 days—you notice that only a few of your readers are expressing interest in the program, it’s probably time to look into something new.
The affiliate programs I’m currently testing are CreateSpace—which helps authors, filmmakers and musicians bring their products to market through packaging and distribution.
I also participate in Amazon.com’s Associates program. With Amazon, I get a small commission if someone clicks through to their site from an ad on mine and buys product(s).
If you’re interested in finding out more about affiliate advertising, some of the bigger ones are www.comissionjunction.com, www.amazonassociates.com and www.googleadnetwork.com.
Brainstormed & Researched Products
Products are really where webmasters and blog owners make money, so I knew that in order to really succeed at making a decent living with my endeavors online, I’d need to develop my own products.
I’m launching my first product in August (2011). I’ll explain more as the launch gets closer.
Drafted Editorial Calendar
As a webmaster or blog owner who is likely to produce many pages of content, you must have an editorial calendar if you hope to properly manage your content.
I downloaded a free calendar from this site (I have no affiliation with them, but their free product works perfectly for me) because I found that the Gmail calendar I usually use isn’t as customizable as I’d like.
Then, as new content is published (or scheduled to be published) on WritersBreak.com, I list it and use the “yellow” highlight feature. Yellow, for me, means fresh new content.
Whenever I complete a promotional task, I list it and use the green highlighting.
These colors give me a bird’s eye view of what’s happening on the site at any given time.
Designed Weekly Update
I worked with a designer friend to create the XHTML for my Weekly Update.
I wanted something simple, but found that it wasn’t so simple to create it myself.
Created Inventory File
As writers, our inventory is our writing.
If you’re a blogger, freelance writer and/or content marketer, you should have a ton of inventory—and it’s only smart to keep good track of it.
I use Excel worksheets for keeping a running list of my articles and writer interviews, indicating what stage of production they’re in (i.e., concepts, drafts or published) & the places they’ve been made available for syndication.
So, that’s it. These are the major steps I took pre-launch. Hope it helps.
I mentioned several vendors above. Do you have other vendors to recommend?
If so, mention them in the comments section and I’ll include in a future resources roundup!
Now it’s time to move forward! Look for upcoming posts on how I’m promoting the new site and driving traffic.
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