Simple, Fun Method for Anyone to Make some $$$

About 6 months ago, I decided I was going to try to make money with Tumblr. I set up a single blog about baseball. It failed miserably. I couldn't get followers, and ended up making pennies for hours of work.

Why did I fail? The answer is simple. I was targeting the wrong audience on the wrong platform. Yes, I suppose a Tumblr porn blog would've been more effective, but I just personally would feel morally wrong for doing so. A couple weeks ago, I decided I would try making money off Tumblr again. This time I did a little research on the audience there and found it to be mostly teen girls. So then I thought "What do teen girls like?" I came up with boys, fashion, and cute/funny pictures. Since I'm not gay, that kinda ruled boys and fashion out, so I decided on Funny pictures.

Here's what I did:

1. Created my Tumblr blog, title thatsfunnystuff.tumblr.com
2. Followed about 200 blogs about funny pictures using an IMacro.
3. Found about 30 funny posts and put them in my queue, scheduling them to be posted 4x per day between 12 PM and 11 PM. I set the clickthrough link for the pictures to my Tumblr URL.

In total this took about an hour.

I decided to leave it alone for a week and see what happened. When I got back I found that I had gotten over 500 pageviews, about 200 reblogs, a bunch of likes, and had gone from 5 followers to 90.

So I scheduled some more funny picture posts and I just keep getting more and more popular. I haven't tried monetizing it yet... I'm going to wait until I get 1000 followers or so.

Anyways, I thought I'd share this for those of you who are struggling making any money. It's a quick way to build up an audience and I'm sure you can make good money off of it once you get a solid amount of pageviews daily.

If anyone needs any help with this, feel free to PM me, I will be more than happy to help.

Well, seeing as how you haven't actually generated any $$$ from this method, this thread is a little underwhelming. While it's true that Tumblr is very accessible, and the process of gaining followers/pageviews is simple enough, the actual making money part is not quite so easy. Unless your process is highly automated, the ROI will be relatively low until you have a large number of followers (~10k at least), and even then it doesn't seem particularly great based on what I've seen. Additionally, it's debatable how targeted/useful the traffic is, especially for a humor niche. Tumblr is easy to manipulate, but difficult to actually turn a profit from.

Enryu said:

Well, seeing as how you haven't actually generated any $$$ from this method, this thread is a little underwhelming. While it's true that Tumblr is very accessible, and the process of gaining followers/pageviews is simple enough, the actual making money part is not quite so easy. Unless your process is highly automated, the ROI will be relatively low until you have a large number of followers (~10k at least), and even then it doesn't seem particularly great based on what I've seen. Additionally, it's debatable how targeted/useful the traffic is, especially for a humor niche. Tumblr is easy to manipulate, but difficult to actually turn a profit from.

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Way to add NOTHING of value. Awesome first post.

Dumb question i know, but what is/how do you use an IMacro?

Enryu said:

Well, seeing as how you haven't actually generated any $$$ from this method, this thread is a little underwhelming. While it's true that Tumblr is very accessible, and the process of gaining followers/pageviews is simple enough, the actual making money part is not quite so easy. Unless your process is highly automated, the ROI will be relatively low until you have a large number of followers (~10k at least), and even then it doesn't seem particularly great based on what I've seen. Additionally, it's debatable how targeted/useful the traffic is, especially for a humor niche. Tumblr is easy to manipulate, but difficult to actually turn a profit from.

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WOW!! difficult to turn a profit from?? How'd you work that out?? I know quite a few members on this forum that are makeing nice money from Tumblr, myself included..

Op you're right, porn is the biggest thing on tumblr followed by funny memes/gifs. You're doing the right thing though, concerntrating on gaining followers. How do you plan to monetise? I presume some form of ad or cpa, best thing you could do is set up a external site, preferably self hosted. If you don't have hosting and can't afford hosting then I'd recomend setting up a blogspot blog and put your ads/cpa link on there. People put adsense on there tumblr blogs and as far as I'm aware they don't get banned, I monetise of the porn niche and know from first hand experience that they ban blogs with adult ads on there so plugrush stuff like that. Also are you planning on makeing a auth account ot do you plan on makeing more accounts as your current one grows? If you do plan on makeing more accounts consider investing into a bot in the future, do your research though as all the bots out at the moment have there downfalls. Good luck though

michael8t6 said:

WOW!! difficult to turn a profit from?? How'd you work that out?? I know quite a few members on this forum that are makeing nice money from Tumblr, myself included..

Op you're right, porn is the biggest thing on tumblr followed by funny memes/gifs. You're doing the right thing though, concerntrating on gaining followers. How do you plan to monetise? I presume some form of ad or cpa, best thing you could do is set up a external site, preferably self hosted. If you don't have hosting and can't afford hosting then I'd recomend setting up a blogspot blog and put your ads/cpa link on there. People put adsense on there tumblr blogs and as far as I'm aware they don't get banned, I monetise of the porn niche and know from first hand experience that they ban blogs with adult ads on there so plugrush stuff like that. Also are you planning on makeing a auth account ot do you plan on makeing more accounts as your current one grows? If you do plan on makeing more accounts consider investing into a bot in the future, do your research though as all the bots out at the moment have there downfalls. Good luck though

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I plan on staying pretty whitehat, just one blog for now until I figure out how to maximize my efficiency. (What types of pictures get most reblogs, what ads to use etc.)

As for monetization, MyLikes has a decent program that pays you to post an ad. There are lots of campaigns involving funny quotes, pictures, etc, so they wouldn't be very intrusive. Most of them pay like a measly $0.02 per click, but every once in awhile you can find a good one for $0.10.

This might not say that sound this great, but with the Tumblr reblog feature, if one of my sponsored posts goes viral, I could be pulling in quite a bit of money......

I also have Google Adsense on it. Haven't made much off of it though.

What I really like about this method is how any success you have builds on itself. Getting reblogs leads to even more reblogs, which leads to more followers and reblogs. It just keeps going.

Furious George said:

Way to add NOTHING of value. Awesome first post.

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There is value in his post, your too stupid to notice it. OP I already knew this method and thus the reason why I keep working on Tumblr Blog. I failed at first just like you, but I started again and now I am up to 900+ followers. Of course my niche is the adult niche and it's alot easier in this niche. Now that I am getting decent followers, I am averaging about 180+ views a day on my tumblr blog. Keep up with the que's and you will reach more followers.

Thanks for a great post OP

hits79 said:

There is value in his post, your too stupid to notice it. OP I already knew this method and thus the reason why I keep working on Tumblr Blog. I failed at first just like you, but I started again and now I am up to 900+ followers. Of course my niche is the adult niche and it's alot easier in this niche. Now that I am getting decent followers, I am averaging about 180+ views a day on my tumblr blog. Keep up with the que's and you will reach more followers.

Thanks for a great post OP

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Furious George didn't say the OP was a worthless post, he said the guy responding, ya know the guy with ONE POST as he stated and you didn't see before ripping Furious George.... anyway....

As far as Tumblr, many of you know I have some huge blogs there and I use them for a variety of reasons. Some for traffic redirection to other sites, some for fun, some for money, some to send people to other social media. All in all i use it as a hub to narrow traffic where you want it. I have traded product suppliers for free products and placed their banners in exchange.

Look you're not going to be a tumblr millionaire, but if you use it smart, yes there are ways you can make good money using it as a tool. I know a guy who gets giftcards and offers them for the best submissions of girls, or most notes n a pic submitted. cost a few bucks to start but when you are getting a 1,000 notes on every post after a few months and like 1,000 follows a day you figure out how to bankroll it.

workoutsforteens said:

This might not say that sound this great, but with the Tumblr reblog feature, if one of my sponsored posts goes viral, I could be pulling in quite a bit of money......

What I really like about this method is how any success you have builds on itself. Getting reblogs leads to even more reblogs, which leads to more followers and reblogs. It just keeps going.

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Haha yeah that's what I like the most about Tumblr, the reblogs. Last week I had a pic reblogged by another user, I had some intense traffic come from it. I investigated the blog and it had over 7k followers! A week later and I'm still getting traffic from it The problem with adsense is they're very hard to blend in to look natural. I'm gonna sound like a complete noob saying this but I've never heard of mylikes, gonna go investigate Good luck though dude, I'll keep checing in on the thread to see how you're doing Also a member called fatboy released a que bot today on this forum, it's completly free. Might come in handy for you at a later date if you decide to mass upload to your que

Don't even bother with PPC on tumblr. Chances are you are not posting original content, and the reader/follower can see the same pics somewhere else without your wonky ass banners and click-throughs. So you'll waste time, adsense will ban, tumblr will box you out of search results if you overload your tags to draw traffic, etc.

You've got to think a LOT more creatively than posting some crap to click on.

This is obviously a very simple method, it wasn't meant to be taken too literally. Twist it and run with it

A friend has a porn tumblr blog, he put a lot of effort into it. He is monetizing with plugrush and blending the ads into the posts, it is easy to be done in a porn blog. He got more than 3k followers and updating the content regularly. The profits are $3-$7 a day or so. He has around 5%-10% click rate and is making $7-$8 per 10,000 visitors, according to me it is a waste of traffic. He is a newbie and never did any IM before, but got some money in the first week.

I aplied a twist to it, but it didn't work for too long. Plugrush has mobile redirects and i was driving traffic from twitter, 50%-80% of the clicks were mobile. I sent ~4000-4500 clicks from twitter and ~2950 were mobile, resulting in ~$13 and the good part is that the non-mobile visitors can still click on your ads(i didn't include any, i wanted to test the mobile traffic only)
Twitter made the spamming harder and harder, so i dropped this project.

Also i tried monetizing(my blog is a shit, just made it to test the waters) with adult dating/camera websites($1-$3 PPL) i barely manged to get 1 lead per 100 clicks on the banners(~1 lead per 6000 visitors to my blog...).

PS: Sure, it is "very easy" to make money from tumblr, but making $5-$10 a day and working on it for a few hours a day is a waste of my time.

Furious George said:

Way to add NOTHING of value. Awesome first post.

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So this comment has more value than my own? How amusing George. Don't feel hurt, and feel the need to lash out at me--it's wasted energy. Offer some constructive criticism, like I did. I wasn't saying I was necessarily correct, just my opinion on this method, and how it's not really proven against anything as even OP said he hasn't actually monetized it yet. 150+ posts, and your posts still fail? lol, at least it was my first post. I'm sure you'll learn in time, George.

michael8t6 said:

WOW!! difficult to turn a profit from?? How'd you work that out?? I know quite a few members on this forum that are makeing nice money from Tumblr, myself included..

Op you're right, porn is the biggest thing on tumblr followed by funny memes/gifs. You're doing the right thing though, concerntrating on gaining followers. How do you plan to monetise? I presume some form of ad or cpa, best thing you could do is set up a external site, preferably self hosted. If you don't have hosting and can't afford hosting then I'd recomend setting up a blogspot blog and put your ads/cpa link on there. People put adsense on there tumblr blogs and as far as I'm aware they don't get banned, I monetise of the porn niche and know from first hand experience that they ban blogs with adult ads on there so plugrush stuff like that. Also are you planning on makeing a auth account ot do you plan on makeing more accounts as your current one grows? If you do plan on makeing more accounts consider investing into a bot in the future, do your research though as all the bots out at the moment have there downfalls. Good luck though

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It's subjective. Your view of "nice money" vs actual ROI is probably very different from mine. Tumblr doesn't seem worth it below a certain thresh hold. Otherwise, it's pennies. This is coming from someone with 3.6k followers, gaining 50-150 per day, and where making $5 a day with my single blog is trivial.

theMagicNumber said:

PS: Sure, it is "very easy" to make money from tumblr, but making $5-$10 a day and working on it for a few hours a day is a waste of my time.

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Agreed. You need to really build up followers to make it worthwhile, which is not quick and easy, although relatively simple.

Enryu said:

Agreed. You need to really build up followers to make it worthwhile, which is not quick and easy, although relatively simple.

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This is true. It is a bit time consuming without a bot. I did say simple, and fun, not short. Obviously you need to keep building it up.

It started off as more of a fun, hobby for me until I realized that money could be made off of it.

And as for PPC advertising, it probably isn't the most effective method but I've made $1.06 off it in the past week or so from 500 pageviews. Not AWFUL I suppose

You can try to Ubot , its way more helpfull

workoutsforteens said:

I did say simple, and fun, not short. Obviously you need to keep building it up.

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Fair enough. Keep building away! It will be interesting and instructive to see the results of an organic blog in this niche with 10k+ followers down the line.

A little update for anyone who's interested:

I've gotten a little lazy the past few weeks but still continue to make progress.

So far this month I've made about $1.5 from Google AdSense, and my earnings seem to be continually growing.
I have also gone from around 100 followers to about 150. I've been extremely busy, and have only been able to keep up my queue so that it posts 2 pictures a day.

Obviously, I am far from banking from this method, but I definitely am making progress. I'll keep going with this method and see where it ends up. I don't really want this to be an IM journey thread but I'll try to keep you guys updated.

This thread is awesome and I don't think the OP's post was stupid. I actually use adsense on my funny pictures blog but I've been so busy with my other blogs and interests that I haven't focused alot on it. But this is definitely motivation. However, I have one ad unit under my description on tumblr and recently I've added an unit called "ad links" and I've been getting more clicks with that unit. I don't know how popular or new that ad feature is but I can't find much online verifying how successful that feature is compared to the basic ad units, but I definitely recommend trying that as well.

As far my monetizing tumblr goes. I use JuicyAds for my adult blog and I'm happy with the profit I make. To me its important to target people without tumblr accounts instead of only getting a high amount of followers. People without tumblr accounts are likely to save and visit your blog, which is important if you have ad space. That is compared to people who follow on tumblr that may rarely visit your blog and only view your posts in their news feed. My strategy with the adult blog is to create a sister site with a similar name. I post GIFs or Pics on tumblr and occasionally link to the video where the GIF/Pics originated from located on my sister site. I then use juicy Ads on that 'sister site' and enable popunders to increase profit (popup/unders not allowed on tumblr).

seng1 said:

This thread is awesome and I don't think the OP's post was stupid. I actually use adsense on my funny pictures blog but I've been so busy with my other blogs and interests that I haven't focused alot on it. But this is definitely motivation. However, I have one ad unit under my description on tumblr and recently I've added an unit called "ad links" and I've been getting more clicks with that unit. I don't know how popular or new that ad feature is but I can't find much online verifying how successful that feature is compared to the basic ad units, but I definitely recommend trying that as well.

As far my monetizing tumblr goes. I use JuicyAds for my adult blog and I'm happy with the profit I make. To me its important to target people without tumblr accounts instead of only getting a high amount of followers. People without tumblr accounts are likely to save and visit your blog, which is important if you have ad space. That is compared to people who follow on tumblr that may rarely visit your blog and only view your posts in their news feed. My strategy with the adult blog is to create a sister site with a similar name. I post GIFs or Pics on tumblr and occasionally link to the video where the GIF/Pics originated from located on my sister site. I then use juicy Ads on that 'sister site' and enable popunders to increase profit (popup/unders not allowed on tumblr).

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So you're focusing on getting traffic from bookmarks and traffic from non- Tumblr users who are returning visitors?

And I'll have to try the Ad Links thing, sounds interesting!