If you follow my blog closely or just follow my “Make Money Online” posts, you will see that I have come into contact with numerous pinoy probloggers. The reason I do this is to serve as an inspiration for me and for those readers of my blog. Earning money online to supplement your real world earnings is no easy task. Thus if you see ads anywhere on the internet claiming to make you rich in a day (or even a week or a month…) that is more likely hype than real.

Image via Wikipedia

Today, I am bringing you insight from a problogger from Mindanao. If you notice, many successful Filipino bloggers comes from the South and our subject today is one of them. He is no other than Gumer Liston of Techno Techniques.

This guy is one cool problogger. Much like the others I talked to, he is friendly and ready to help. From what I gather, he seems to be a hard-working person. So though he is cool, he is also a no non-sense kind of person who focuses and what needs to be done and does it.

Here is how our conversation went:

Paolo: So thank you Gumer for accepting this interview, so how are you doing?
Gumer: I am doing fine.

Paolo:How long have you been blogging?
Gumer:I started my first blog in 2006 but I did not take it seriously because I did not know that I could earn from it. I was more active in online forums then. But in 2008 I read a blog post from a Pinay blogger about how she earns Php8,000 or more a month from PPP and Social Spark. So I left a message in her blog, I asked many questions, mostly about how to get the blogging money into a Philippine bank. She answered my questions promptly and we became friends, she encouraged me to blog. I learned a lot from her also. That Pinay blogger is Berry of BerryBlog.net

Paolo:Other than blogging, what do you do? Do you have a full-time job?
Gumer:I have a day job. I work as a registrar in one of the many colleges here in my place. This is just between you and me (and those who’d be reading this) : I am bored to death with that day job.

Paolo:Do you have any plans to taking this online earning venture to the next level (full-time)?
Gumer:That has been playing in my mind for months now. I think before this year ends I’d go full-time with my online ventures.

Paolo:How long did it take for you to earn $100 in Adsense?
Gumer:It took me more than a year to break into that realm he he he, the first cash out was $185, 14 months after I signed up for an account in Adsense. But after that I got Adsense money every month and what I earn just sort of grow bigger every month.

(Ok now to the meaty part of the interview)

Paolo:No need to give the exact figures but how many digits of income do you earn from Adsense(dollars/peso)?
Gumer:I am earning five figures in Philippine peso from Adsense every month. But now things really look good, I guess if this will go on (and it has been going like this in the first seven days of August), I’d break into the six figure income in this month of August from Adsense. I am just crossing my fingers that it will happen. Of course you’ll know about it at the end of this month, I’ll post my August earning in one of my blogs.

Paolo:How many blogs do you have to create that income?
Gumer:I and my wife (we’re a team) have around 15 blogs but the real income comes from only four of them, our main and oldest blogs.

Paolo:For those starting to blog, what niche do you recommend them take?
Gumer:I think the easiest road to tread is the one that leads to news. With a news blog, you have something to post every day.

Paolo:How do you look for a profitable niche?

Gumer:It’s difficult to say, really, I just rely on gut feel. It takes a lot of creativity and sharpness of thinking to find a good niche. In this age and time, almost every niche is taken so it is really difficult to say what is the most profitable niche. If you love what you are doing, if you enjoy your blog, then probably you have yourself a good niche. Even if a niche is highly saturated already, if what you do with it is extraordinary, you’ll be noticed, people will see you.

Paolo:Do you only do pure seo or do you use PPC as well?
Gumer:As of now I only use basic on-page SEO. I have yet to try PPC.

Paolo:So how many hours do you allot for SEO per day?
Gumer:It’s a lot of hard work at first, it takes a lot of time, but once you get on it becomes a natural part of every post, you do the SEO every time you post on your blog, it comes second nature and you forget that you are SEOing.

Paolo:When you say you do SEO, what exactly do you do? Or is this a secret =P?
Gumer:It’s not a secret, I only do the basics. I am building a blog which will cover all the SEO I know, GumerListon.com. In a week or two it will have many posts about SEO.

Paolo:Do you have any particular SEO technique?
Gumer:I could not really say. What I do is basic SEO, no secret formulas or anything.

Paolo:How do you optimize for a keyword?
Gumer:I just use it as the title. Very basic. I also use the tag for it in the post.

Paolo:Do you think content is King?
Gumer:Of course.

Paolo:To the newbies (like me), what do you think is the best step we can do to increase our Adsense incomes?
Gumer:You are not a newbie, I am the newbie. The best thing to do to increase your Adsense income is to drive massive traffic to your blogs. To do it, you need SEO. You can also experiment with how to use keywords so that high paying ads will be served in your blogs. Never stop experimenting. You can make use of channels in Adsense to track the high performing and the low performing ad blocks. You need also to experiment with your template, find the best place in your blog to place the ad blocks. This is very important. There is no fixed formula in placing the ad blocks because every template is unique in its own way and “the psychology of a clicker” is of course affected by the template. I personally like clean templates, the white ones, for me it’s easier to blend the ad blocks with the overall look of the page if it is white. But the blog that gives us the biggest income is my wife’s blog, it’s template is yellow and people could not help but click on her ads.

Paolo:What mistakes do you often see newbies doing in their Adsense campaigns?
Gumer:The most common mistake is in how the ad blocks look. If the ad block is saying loudly “Hey, I’m an ad, please click me,” no one would click it.

Paolo:Who is your Adsense mentor? Do you have one?
Gumer:Actually I learned from a lot of people, from reading a lot of blogs about Adsense optimization. I also learned a lot from Adsense’s blog. As to having a mentor, I do not have any, I am basically self-taught, that’s how I do my thing.

Paolo:How about Infolinks, do you earn from it?
Gumer:Yes, I love it. One of my blogs averages $3-$4 a day from it, the other three blogs make $1.7 to $2 a day. Not bad because I consider it as a source of passive income, my focus is really with Adsense.

Paolo:I often see a lot of newbies get discouraged quite easily when they only see cents in their daily earnings, what message do you have for them?
Gumer:I was like them, there were day that my income is zero. remember, it took me 14 months to get my first Adsense money.

Paolo:Would you like to thank anyone for helping you when you were a newbie before?
Gumer:Yes, I want to thank Malou aka Berry of BerryBlog.net for being the first blogger to welcome me into the blogosphere. I learned a lot from her about earning with my blogs. I also want to thank Gem of TheLadyProgrammer.com for the help with some of the technical side of blogging.

Paolo:Any additional tips for anyone wanting to earn an income online?
Gumer: Don’t quit early in the game. Enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, then it’s not for you. Never be ashamed to ask questions from those who know, the real experts are always willing to share what they know. See your blog as your baby, love it, consider it as an artwork in progress.

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