Now don’t get me wrong, the success of his blog is not defined by whether or not he gets quoted in a major publication. To be sure he is quoted everyday on his own blog that reaches thousands, if not millions, of people around the world. But, being featured in WSJ online is a great sign that blogging, and bloggers in general, are being slowly absorbed into the media conversation as someone to pay attention to.

This is fantastic for bloggers and Internet Marketing in general because as blogs and celebrity bloggers draw more attention to making money online, then more and more people will come online looking to get even a little slice of that golden pie.

The annual salary that Darren claims, along with the other annual numbers quoted by other bloggers, is getting people’s attention for sure. In fact, I would argue that people still under estimate the true earning potential online.

Just as we like to under estimate the amount of change a technology will bring and over estimate the amount of time it will take for that change to occur, so are we limited in seeing from here how much upside there still is in making money online.

Blogging is one such method that continues to prove itself out. But, just like any business there are many who will not successfully establish themselves as players in the market. There are no guarantees. But if we just hold on and ride the back of the bear, then even if we don’t find ourselves listed in the halls of the Wall Street Journal, then at least we might get linked to from enough people to keep the affiliate checks flowing.

Inspiration Seeking,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

P.S. Blogging is just one such method of making money online. Be sure to keep an eye for the series I am writing on how to build niche websites that make money while you sleep….okay, I know how cheezy that sounds, but I am doing it with several niche sites and if I can do it you can too (okay, cheezy again, but true).

What is CrazyEgg.com

CrazzyEgg.com is a simple to use click through measuring tool I recently read about in Yaro Starak’s Blog Master Mind Course. I have to tell you, the tool will change the way you look at creating posts for your blog.
In short, CrazyEgg let’s you measure clicks on specific pages of your website. This tells which parts of your page are getting the most attention. Knowing what readers are responding too can help you refine blog post titles, select topics for writing, determine page placement for ads, understand relative placement of content, and ultimately it can help you understand if you are wasting your time on producing content that no one is interested in.

CrazyEgg click through reports are presented as different views instead of flat columns and rows reports. They offer an overlay, a heat map, a list, and a confetti view.

The Overlay View

The overlay view displays a copy of your page with markers on top to show you what has been clicked and how many times it has been clicked. This is probably the most basic view next to the columns and rows list view but it is extremely valuable because of the instant visual information it gives you about what readers are clicking on.

The Heat Map View

The heat map view shows you specifically where people are clicking on your page. This is a particularly interesting view because it shows not only what readers are clicking, but specifically where on the link they are clicking. This can be valuable information if two links are close to one another and one link is getting more action than the other. I have found this view useful when placing videos on a page. Clicks are delivered mainly to the bottom of the video even though there is a large play button in the center of the video. With this information in hand, I will be sure to place resource links directly under videos to encourage click through rates.

The List View

The list view gives you a consolidated columns and rows view of the clicked links and their stats. There is also an option to export this information into a CSV file for use in Excel or Google Docs as well. The list view has several tabs that let you see all the collected data.

The Confetti View

The confetti view gives you double coupon information about what readers clicked and where they came from. This is much better information than the flat reporting most analytic packages provide. Instead of simply knowing that you had 100 visitors to a page and that most of them came from Google or some other referring site, now you can tell that 5 readers from Yahoo clicked link A, and 10 readers from Google click link B, and so on. This is extremely useful information because now you can begin to build a relationship between traffic sources and click through rates.

Total Cost

CrazyEgg has a free account that lets you track up to four pages for a total of 5000 page impressions. This is a great starting point if you just want to create a free account and try it out. After you have proven the value of the service, then you can look at investing in the paid version of the service. The next level up on the service scale is a $9 a month option that lets you track up to 10 pages for a total of 10,000 impressions and you also get live reporting. There are other levels of participation to consider, but if you don’t have a huge site yet, I recommend starting simple and upgrading as necessary.

Overall, CrazyEgg.com is a simple to use tool that provides fantastic value for testing and measuring click through results on specific pages of your website. Once you start using it you won’t be able to stop. Testing and measuring links on your blog is an essential activity that most bloggers are missing from their tool kits. CrazyEgg makes it a no brainer. Anyone who is serious about running a blog or static website should give the service a try.

Continually refining processes,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com