Babysitting is passe in a world where a kid can earn money from Google Ads. Just ask Chloe Spencer. With help of her blogger dad, Stephan Spencer, 15-year old Chloe launched a blog about Neopets Cheats. With over 5000 daily page views and posts that get hundreds of comments Chloe's next venture may be pro blogger at a Fortune 100 company!
Blogger Story Teller: Chloe Spencer, The Ultimate Neopets Cheats Site
My Dad came up with the idea of starting a blog as a way to earn money and I've been blogging since February this year (2006). My blog and website is about Neopets cheats, because I know that neopets are very popular with kids all around the world and because I know lots about the topic.
There are lots of sites out there about Neopets. Some of them focus on graphics, others focus on hints. Mine is a mixture of both but, because my site is fairly new, it has been catching a lot of interest.
My aim is to blog about twice a week. Sometimes I blog about new cheats I’ve discovered, or new content I’ve added, like layouts that kids can use to customize their Neopets shop.
Traffic to my blog used to be up to 9000 pageviews per day, and is now holding at around 5000-6000 per day, which is pretty good. I make about $5 to $10 dollars per day from the Google ads, and I make that money whether I work or not. The money is in U.S. dollars, and since I live in New Zealand, that turns into $7 to $16 New Zealand dollars per day! I don't have a lot of options for part time jobs since I'm only 15. But having a blog to earn money sure beats doing a paper route!
I was on page 1 in Google for over 3 months for "neopets cheats". My rankings have dropped so I need to do some more work. My Dad showed me how to optimize the title tags and that helped. He also told me how I need to get more links so that my PageRank would go up and I would be back on page 1 on Google.
We did some research on keywords before deciding on the name of the site. A lot of people search for "Neopets cheats", so I made my blog's name The Ultimate Neopets Cheats Site.
Some of my blog posts get between 200 to 350 comments. Many of my site pages have that many comments too. One page has almost 900 comments. Other sites about Neopets cheats don't have that much discussion. I think that differentiates my blog from some of the others.
It's a lot of work moderating all the comments. I have to read them all and delete any that are inappropriate. Scammers hang out on my blog too; there are a lot of neopets scams where they try to get you to give them your password so that can get into your account.
Sometimes I may be on the computer working on my site for three hours at a time, but overall I average around 5 hours a week.
I try to check all the comments daily and have a good look around the site, answering comments or adding new stuff. And I am always searching for new ideas for posts. I may find ideas by going to the Neopets.com site to see if there are new things I can talk about. I also look for new cheats.
It took a while to put Google ads on the site so that I could make money. That was because the blog was at first on WordPress and it turned out they don't allow ads so I moved the blog to my own domain - eopetsfanatic.com.
I am still quite new to making money this way, but my goal is to save up for a car, for college, and for trips back to the States. I want to go to USC Film School and someday become a movie director.
Hey there. This is mike -- the. Chinese guy :) you met at SMX. Great panel discussion this morning -- a little more light hearted which was nice on the last day. If you ever have questions about LA/Hollywood let me know :)
Posted by: mike | February 28, 2008 at 07:26 PM
Very cool story and I like your blog Chloe. I'm going to be moving mine to my own domain soon enough. I was starting to wonder if blogging can really work for cash. You have given me new hope!
Posted by: Jason Ballard | February 14, 2008 at 11:21 PM
-WRITE YOUR OWN STORY-
You are the author of the final chapter. Let your imaginaion run free and you may find yourself beeing discovered.
-IN WORDS LIE POWER-
yourstoryonline.com
Posted by: Luise | August 05, 2007 at 07:43 PM
its really interesting how you can earn passively from blogging. and this plays to the power of the dollar :)
in my country, one dollar can buy you a meal! problogging rocks!
Posted by: jayvee | August 12, 2006 at 02:05 AM