You Don’t Need Good PR to Make Money
There’s a lot of talk about Google Toolbar PageRank this week with the New Year’s update causing blogs to show less PR and others gaining it — but on the whole it looks like Google is getting strict for 09. Mine went from 4 to 0 in the last round and I didn’t expect any new year changes, but I’m not too shook up over it. I am living proof that you don’t need good PageRank to make money with your blog! I’d much rather make money at home than have good PageRank, but of course, both at the same time is great! lol Unfortunately, with some of the ways blogs make money your PR will drop within a few months of using them.
Google penalizes blogs PR who use TextLinkAds, sponsored posting, pay per post, and some other proven money makers. As as blogger you have to decide what is most important to you. If you are blogging only to get PageRank then you’d better stay away from those types of money makers. On the other hand, if you want to make money with your blog, then you should look into them. But first, you need to get traffic coming to your site because you can’t make money any of those ways without having a good amount of traffic.
A big mistake some new bloggers make is to focus too much on PR. They think seeing good PR on the toolbar means a site is making money but that’s not always true. Someone who wants good PR can optimize their blog to rank well with Google and still not make any money. You could have a well optimized site with great PR, but if you don’t make money on a steady basis, what good would that be? It might be fine for those who are blogging for the sheer enjoyment of blogging, but most of us want to get a return on our efforts. The fact is most blogs get penalized by Google BECAUSE they make money. So bloggers sometimes have to choose between making money on the Internet and getting good PR. Most will never get both at the same time. Look at John Chow… he makes good money, has a team of professionals, and is only a PR3. If he just had his site optimized for PageRank and didn’t worry about making money, he would be much, much higher.
PageRank has nothing to do with making money and they don’t want it to. It was a mathematical method meant to identify the “importance” of a website with the most credible news organizations being at the top (CNN-PR10, NYTimes-PR9, Yahoo-PR9, etc.), and to keep educational and government sites high in searches in their field of expertise. On the Internet anyone can say anything on a blog or website with no accountability of truthfulness. PageRank was meant to keep the most used, “truthful” sites at the top for credibility purposes.
Make Money blogs are a bit of a nuisance for Google as far as PageRank is concerned because techies keep “cracking the code” of PR and have come up with SEO techniques and strategies to get higher in rank. It has turned into a game of cat and mouse between Google and tech bloggers — sometimes Google is the cat, sometimes they are the mouse. lol
One thing to remember is that PR is outdated as soon as you see it on the toolbar, so if you don’t see good PR on the Toolbar that doesn’t mean your site isn’t searching well. If you want to make money but keep your blog ranking well in searches just make more frequent posts and repeat search phrases or keywords that fit your blog niche. (Some do 3 or 4 times a day to get it going which will get the search engines searching your site several times a day.) Remember it will take about a week for them to catch on and search you regularly. After 2 or 3 weeks of blasting those posts out, do search of your site on your browser and you should see your blog come up in the ranks!
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Comments
Oops! I just read my post and that last sentence should say “do a search of your keywords and you should see your blog coming up in the ranks!” (Not search your “site”)
Great post. As a blogger you need to decide how to measure success. I did check on John Chow and was not too surprised his ranking lowered. Everything you pointed out outlines what he does. Also, I do not see him actively involved in commenting on other sites. He does post 2-3x a day.
If you check Problogger he has a PR 7 and does exactly what you have advised us to do.
Point well made.
Hmm, I was wondering why my site’s PR dropped suddenly! Thanks for explaining. I think you made some valid points!
Pagerank was designed around the New York Times, but you did a good job explaining. Not everyone knows this.
My blog just went to a PR1 status last week when I checked. I was soooo excited about it, but it means very little in the grand scheme of things as you’ve just explained. You just gave me 1 less thing to stress about. LOL
Hey Laura, John probably doesn’t have to worry too much about being searched… the traffic will come to him because of his name. Not everyone is so lucky. lol
Solace, you’ve been penalized for “how” you make money, but what really matters is you’re making money! lol Not everyone can say that.
Amar, I read that it started with NYTimes being the most important because of “truthfulness”. When PR was born the NYTimes was the biggest, most reputable news org. but looks like CNN has surpassed it.
Mominator.. Way to go, girl! you just started and you have PR! I’m proud of you. Keep it up.
PR may not be all it’s cracked up to be, but if you do any type of pay-per-post, it definitely does. A PR of 3 means you get $50 a post job opportunities. A PR of 0 means you get opportunities worth $3-5 dollars and none of them are relevant to your blog. There is a big money making difference.
Also, Google sends more traffic to those who have a higher PR. You show up in their search results quicker. While it’s not an ideal situation, Google is a big dog and needs to be viewed as such.
I think Kristy had a PR of 3 when she was on here, as I followed her closely. There’s a trick to it, wish we knew what it was!!
I have never cared about PR.
One of my sites has a PR of 0, yet it is still on the first pages of Google and I receive about 1500 visitors a month just from search engines for a relative small niche.
Even how long you register your domain name comes into it. Most spam sites only register their domain name for 1 year so Google looks more favorable to those sites who are registered for more than 1 year.
Good PR is not the necessary condition to make money, but if you have good PR website , then it is easy to make money based on that. Logical question…
Mommie… Oh yeah, I know Google is a big dog, it’s THE big dog! And I think PR is very necessary or there would be no way to know the relevance of websites. I just don’t think bloggers should get too shook up about it as you can still make money with low PR. The PPP dilemma you discussed is just what I was talking about with this post. Sometimes we have to decide if we want PageRank OR to make money. Google penalizes blogs that use PayPerPost (but it takes a few months for them to catch up with them). I know when some PPP bloggers lose PR completely they stop doing it until they gain their PR then start back up with PPP. (doing it in cycles along with PR). Another thing is to craft your posts so they don’t look like they are paid posts. They say Google can tell a paid link when it gets casually thrown in to a post. It’s better to come right out and talk about the product or service as if you’re reviewing it for your readers. Yes, I agree, Krysti was good at PR… wish I knew the secrets too!
Hey Steve… You’re right, the age of a blog is a boost to PR! I hear that’s why most bloggers keep their blogs registered even when they stop. They can start posting again a year later and get some easy PR.
Hi Gris… Yeah, It helps with some advertisers too, but so does Alexa traffic and good content. I guess the good thing is we always get another chance and another, and another.. etc.. lol
JJ, I tried to get your RSS the other day and it said “Kaaapow” and still does. Looks like you have a problem, never seen that before. Thought you should know.
Thanks Sandy. I did not know that.
Very informational post! I haven’t been going nuts about trying to raise the PR of my sites… but I do know some that check it every 2-3 days, even though I let them know that Google only does a visible update every quarter or so. Obsessed some?
Hi Sammy, that’s true… and we always get a chance to tweak our sites and bring our PR back up so it ain’t the end of the world. (although it might feel like it to some! lol)
sure, it’s impossible to argue with real-life traffic… as long as you keep getting your hits, then who cares about PR?
Yeah We Don’t Need Good PR to Make Money, but Advertisers also consider a good PR blog!
Good Article JJ!
I think you are right. It has become a game of ‘cat-and-mouse’ while money can still be made with out without PR. However, if we are competing for the same keyword with our competitors, a higher PR ensures that we are in the lead. It’s a good thing to have but it shouldn’t be an obsession.
Yan
Hi,
I am very new to blogging and soaking up as much information as I can. I actually found this site from a post you made on blogcatalog yesterday. I will be visiting here often to keep up to date and to go thru your old articles. I would GREATLY appreciate it if you could visit my site and offer your opinion on what I might tweak.
thanks
Your title says it all! Thanx for this post…
Great minds think alike
On the 10th we did a “The Terrible Truth About Google Page Rank” post ourselves, and now I see yours via BlogCatalog.
There is that problem with the pay to post arenas. The advertiser still thinks a high PR means something, yet an investigation of that same site using the Alexa toolbar might prove zip on traffic.
Anyway, I’m sticking with volumes of traffic. You cannot please everyone all the time, but you can please yourself and your readers.
Great post!
I agree that good PR is not necessary to make money. But it is useful in the seo language. Well it doesn’t matters.. Still…
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
Certainly if you are into the business of buying and selling websites or links than PR is important to you. But you will have to take care of the number of links you sold to others.
If google found it than be ready to get 0 from 4 or 5 or 6.
Well I am quite agree with you but however higher PR is still an add advantage and you should capitalise this.
If you want to make money than selling links is also a good options and can make good money if you have PR 4 or PR 5 in rich niche.
Yeah that’s why people always looking at the PR updates and whenever they got positive PR they become happy.
But however I do believe that general visitors do not understand the meaning of PR. For them one thing is must and that is the content of post. Nothing else.
PR is just a hype created by the Google itself. Without that there is nothing to worry about. Many people are earning very good amount of money even without PR.
You just need good traffic as google is also failed to deliver the right PR to right websites.
I agree with this. You don’t need PR to make money online. The fact that I stumbled across this blog is proof enough of that. I am surprised this blog is a PR 0 though. Google…so mysterious
Great post. Can I use your article on my blog by giving credit to you and a backlink into this article?
Yeah , I am also agree with you , You have to need traffic for making money
Good one !!