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[Sappho]

I am working on extra sources of income right now and I seem to have hit on a possibility. First of all, have a look at this web site: www.thefrogman.me

That's Frogman, internet personality and generally nice guy. He offers tips and pointers all the time to people who want to increase their readership on tumblr. I followed some of his advice and have been astounded to see my readership exploding.

With my new job starting in a couple of weeks, I'm going to have plenty of extra time for creative work. I'm doing a lot of writing, and a lot of painting and drawing. I currently have 3 tumblr blogs. One of them is just my art. Another is just my webcomic. The last one (the one getting all the traffic right now) is my "discoveries" blog, where I share art and other creations I found elsewhere on the internet. I put a lot of work into that one - a couple of hours per day at the moment. And it seems to be paying off. Every day I'm getting more and more followers, likes, and shares.

I'm not stupid. I know I'm not going to get rich this way. But Frogman manages to pay all his bills just by posting funny pictures on a blog and selling advertising on it. Some of his work is original, but most of it is just stuff he finds online, cute animal pictures and whatnot. If he can make a living on it, surely I can at least get a small amount of extra income on the side.

What I need to do, though, is set up a web site, and aside from the old Geocities pages, I've never really done this. I know it's possible to have tumblr go through your site, like Froggie does. I want a site similar to his, with separate pages for each of my 3 blogs, and ads on the side for income. How exactly does one go about this? I know I need to find an unclaimed domain name, but then how do I claim it? Where do I host the files? And then how do I manage advertising? I'm actually not even sure exactly where Froggie's income is from, since he doesn't seem to have ads on his page. Even if I just managed a few dollars a month from some targeted Google ads or something, it would be a start. Eventually I'd like to sell some of my art, but I need to build up more of a portfolio before I move in that direction.

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions on how to get started on this idea?

Thanks guys!

[freeformschooler]

You can get a domain and hosting account through pretty much any reputable source (e.g. BlueHost). Once you've set the domain name up to resolve to your hosting, you can use FTP (esp. a client like Filezilla) to upload whatever files you want, and www.yourwebsite.com will link to those. Depending on the kind of thing you want to host, you may also have to fiddle with SQL, but that's not too hard.

I'm not too sure about the ads, but you can probably set something up with commonly used services like project wonderful, google ads or even adf.ly.

[quinnr]

If you are looking for hosting, DreamHost has always been great with me. They also allow users to generate coupon referral codes, so if you search around you can find someone who set it to the maximum coupon value and get a pretty decent deal...(a quick search brought this up: http://dreamhost-promo-code.yellowgorilla.net/ . Usually people don't set the generated coupon to the maximum value because they get a cut otherwise.) They've always been great for me!

Before you get hosting though, you will have to buy a domain name (the www.whatever.com address). GoDaddy is probably one of the most well known places for this, but I haven't heard great things about them in the past, so I don't highly recommend them...

[freeformschooler]

Also, you don't even necessarily need a full name if you want to go through a free service like no-ip (which will let you route somethingorothernameyouchoose.no-ip.org or a similar thing to your website's hosting). It's not [snip], but it IS free.

EDIT: Oh god just clicked that link, possible nsfw warning, that was UNINTENTIONAL

EDIT2: oh right

[Tellemurius]

snip

umm yeeeeea NSFW (interesting though )

[Sappho]

I assume it's some kind of lesbian porn site. I think you can probably remove the link, freeformschooler. I don't know that Toady would approve of having it here...

Thanks for the tips so far guys. Does anyone happen to know approximately what the cost (per month or per year) is for running a web site? As in, how much revenue would I need from advertising to break even? I'll have to do some math here...

[Knight of Fools]

Depends on how much traffic you plan to have and what you're uploading, but your probably already knew that. Just so you know, it's considered rude to just link the picture in directly from another website (Since they don't get any revenue for it, but it still costs them), so try not to do that. I've seen people steal links that way, and when the host notices they change the pictures to male genitalia or something. Plan to host pictures yourself. In the least you'll know that the picture won't disappear one day.


I'm not too familiar with the actual making of a website bit, but I did throw together a blog using Google's Blogger thing and a YouTube account, and then for giggles I set them both up with the same AdSense account. It sounds like you're trying to get your own domain rather than going through the easy stuff, but it's an idea. Both YouTube and Blogger are designed to work directly with AdSense, so you can just designate a space for advertising and be done with it. Pretty easy.

I haven't made a single penny from it, but setting up AdSense is relatively painless and I know of at least one blogger that supports his family through it. He made a post a year or so back about playing with different advertising services, and stuck with AdSense. In addition to having the largest market (And thus the largest amount of possible income) Google is relatively generous with their ad revenue, too, so that's probably your best bet as far as advertising goes.

It's also easy to have multiple websites use the same account, so that's another plus.

[zombie urist]

You can try a wordpress site, hosted on a personal domain. They'll give you the basic tools and its easy to use adsense. Lots of artists use it.

Generally websites might cost ~$50-60 a year.

This site has some good tips.
http://theabundantartist.com/

[quinnr]

I assume it's some kind of lesbian porn site. I think you can probably remove the link, freeformschooler. I don't know that Toady would approve of having it here...

Thanks for the tips so far guys. Does anyone happen to know approximately what the cost (per month or per year) is for running a web site? As in, how much revenue would I need from advertising to break even? I'll have to do some math here...

Dreamhost, which is the host I use because they're pretty great, for about $9 dollars a month if you want unlimited everything. They give you full control over everything, mostly, so you won't ever have issues about not being able to something because your host doesn't allow you. They also have really great support (24/7, if I recall correctly?) and a Wiki with guides on how to do things specifically on their software/server. You definitely can get it much lower for the first year if you are a new member with promotions always on if you look around. You could probably find cheaper hosting elsewhere, possibly not with the same unlimited data and storage offered by Dreamhost, though, which means you wouldn't ever have to worry about it again, but it might not be the best place to start. The domain name registration will cost you very little compared to the hosting, probably $10-$15 per year?

Just be prepared to be in the red for a while, it can take a lot of time, effort, search engine optimization, and a bit of skill to make a website that is popular enough to generate a decent amount of revenue from ads alone. I had a relative manage to do it, but she has a grandfathered in price for her web hosting from a good deal so it is pretty cheap to start with for her...

[Sappho]

Thanks again for all the information. It's very helpful.

As for hosting, I really want to keep using Tumblr, and they host all the files I'm sharing, which is convenient. I just want to run the tumblr feed through another web site, which I know is possible. The only files I'd really need to host elsewhere would be a few images with links to switch between my blogs, and a few small pages with information and such. Again, if you look at www.thefrogman.me you'll see a perfect example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.

And I won't be stealing anything, that's a promise. I already make sure that everything I post has the title of the work, the author's name (and country if I can find it), and a link to their site. I refuse to repost anything without a source, even though I sometimes have to miss some really nice art that way.

I'd advertise directly through tumblr and skip making my own site except I don't think it's possible. I have to have a separate web site like Froggie does and run ads on the side. But I don't want to stop using Tumblr because that's where all my viewers are, and it's so easy to build up more traffic through it.

[Knight of Fools]

If you continue growing in popularity, site migration is one of those demons you'll have to deal with eventually anyways, especially if you want to stretch outside the bounds of folks who're into Tumblr. I'm not super familiar with Tumblr, but if ads aren't supported and you really want this to be a thing it's better to migrate sooner than later. You'll have to balance losing some viewers, trying to redirect to your new site, and building up your priority on search engines against not having any ad revenue.

Good luck, though. It's something I wish I could make myself do.

[Sappho]

Well, the reason I figured I could make this work is because Frogman has. He has his site, which appears to be set up with simple frames. On the left is the menu bar, then the tumblr stream appears in the middle. On the right are the ads and such. Tumblr feeds into his site, but you can view the site without ever going to the tumblr site or even necessarily realizing he's using tumblr. Yet tumblr hosts everything and sets up the whole blog infrastructure so that he doesn't have to. I know he's not getting rich off of it, but he says he earns enough money to get by, and he doesn't even post that much. Just 5-10 cute images of puppies and other animals per day, and the occasional original image of him with his dog or something. His original work is very good and he says that's what draws the most attention to his blog.

What I'm picturing in my head is very similar to the setup on his page. Roughly something like this:


So the selected blog would be fed through the middle from tumblr. One wouldn't need to be a tumblr user to visit the site and see the content, or even realize they're using tumblr. And there would be an RSS for people who want to subscribe without using tumblr.

I feel like I just typed the word tumblr a thousand times.

Anyway, does that make sense? Would there ever really be a need to migrate away from the t-word?

[freeformschooler]

Hmmm. Now, when someone clicks a link to one of your posts or something from there, wouldn't it go off-site and back to the main tumblr? I'm trying to think of how this would work. Maybe a frame...

[quinnr]

~snip for images~

Hmm, including another site within a frame of your site would indeed use a lot less hosting. Still would need some for the frames that aren't a part of Tumblr (I think that's how it is? Looking at the code a bit right now) and the actual tiny bit of code required to display Tumblr on your domain name. The Frogman does interesting things with his Tumblr, I think a bit of code in the theme, that makes any attempts to visit his Tumblr redirect to his website, which is interesting. If you only need to host a few images, http://imgur.com/ allows direct hotlinking to the images, but I'm not sure about the bandwith limits and stuff there (I know popular Reddit posts that get tons of views typically use it, though.)

I found a possibly helpful guide, too, here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/22559/how-to-add-google-adsense-to-your-tumblr-blog/

Hmmm. Now, when someone clicks a link to one of your posts or something from there, wouldn't it go off-site and back to the main tumblr? I'm trying to think of how this would work. Maybe a frame...

I'm pretty sure he uses an API or something to display the contents of his Tumblr without actually taking the whole page from there. The comments are done through Discus, not Tumblr, for example.

[Sappho]

I think Tumblr includes functionality to use your own domain without having to mess with the code: http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/custom_domains

Also, Tumblr supports Discus for comments. I already have it installed on one of my blogs.

I think most of this could be done automatically. I think I wouldn't need much in the way of hosting after all. The only issue I really see is that most people don't actually go to someone's Tumblr page to see their posts. They just "subscribe" to their blog, and all their new posts come out on their dashboard. I certainly almost never visit other people's tumblr pages. So in order to actually get traffic for ads, you'd have to find a way to persuade people to come to your actual site instead of just subscribing to your feed. I'm not sure how one goes about doing that.

I'l have a look at that link for adding google ads to tumblr, quinnr. Thanks for that.