My Content Creation Issues

Rarely, a day goes by when I'm not creating a new page of content on one of my sites or blogs, and that's usually swiftly followed by emails from the team correcting all my spelling and grammar errors. It's become part of the culture "Chris Publishes content" followed by "Chris corrects content" and then "Chris corrects content again". Mostly, it's not due to me being awful at spelling, but that typing quickly leads to lots of errors, and sometimes my thoughts get ahead of my fingers.

Copying and pasting to word to spell check, or using web based spell checkers isn't always ideal , especially copying from word as so much hidden junk code is also copied which can cause havoc in a blog. The average spell checker also does only that "spell check" and doesn't add much value beyond doing the job. In today's "value add" Internet I believe we all demand that a product do what it's designed to do and add more value beyond.

On top of my own content issue, the fact is that well written copy is an important factor of any affiliate or bloggers content. Spelling and grammar errors can ruin a well put together pre sales pitch. So investing time, or money into preventing these issues is a good investment.

Anyway, I have for a couple of years come across the name WhiteSmoke here and there and constantly ignored it. Last month I was nudged into grabbing a copy to try out by one the team who decided he better things to do than spell check for me.

So, 3 weeks later, of testing the WhiteSmoke software I've been pretty happy with what I get for my money, a spell checker that can be used on any kind of document, software, web site or blog, pretty much anywhere. Select the copy I want to check (or allow WhiteSmoke to select it all) click F2, check copy and job done! In addition to that there's the value add bits. The system offers recommendations on how to improve the copy, checks the grammar and helps me to put together better content with no errors. It also offers various levels of copy improvement, from general and business through to medical. While primarily built to plug in to IE, the software does work with FireFox.

The only issue I've had with the software is that it when you run the spell check on copy, any formating or links that I've embedded into the content are removed when the copy is reloaded after being corrected. A minor pain, but it just means adding the links and formating after the copy has been corrected and improved.

Wonder what the team will do with all that extra time they've got now they don't need to check my spelling for me :)

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Affiliate (....Blog) Revenue

One of the longest ongoing debates in the affiliate industry is "how much can a person make", and there are lots of sites made by people claiming to have made millions, presenting fake checks while they attempt to suck money and life blood from unfortunate web marketeers who are looking for ways to kick start their revenue. Ask any serious affiliate how much money they make and you'll likely get one of two answers "Not Enough" and "Could be more", no dollar figures. Yes we're all capitalists and looking for ways to get beyond earning "enough". There are also many many ways for people to earn money on line now a days, the advent of blogs making it even easier for more people to try to make money too.

Being as we see a lot of the checks we issue to affiliates we have a good idea of what affiliates of all sizes can and do earn, but no I'm not going to be publishing those numbers. What I did come across and found interesting and something I'm going to follow, was the revenue post by the folks who own General Marketing Blog where they are posting their on going monthly revenue for everyone to see and follow, along with related traffic and ranking reports. Here's a slice of the revenue info :

Blog Income

• Pepperjam: $123.00 (Up $26.00)
• Adsense: $26.51 (Down $10.81)
• Bannermall: $0.00 (Down $20.00)
• Banner ads: $172.00 (Up $40.00)
• Paid Posts: $245.00 (Up $115.00)

The blog has been live 6 months and the owners made just over $550 in April. I don't believe that's a bad number for just 6 months live. They also list their site data, rankings and traffic reports. What I found interesting though is that the revenue has not come from any traditional affiliate networks, other than PJN, or even PPC, but more from the growing business of paid posts.

For people looking to launch a new site and earn some money, this certainly shows, that with effort and focus you can start to get a reasonable income within a few months, and that Pay Per Post Marketing is becoming a large factor in making that possible.

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