Sometimes I have all kinds of things to write about in this blog, and there are other times when I sit down at the computer with no idea what I will come up with to fill the minimum 500 word quota I set for myself every day. Fortunately, one way or another, I always seem to manage to come up with something. My old man used to say, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

But in writing today’s blog, I had a completely different problem. I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to type, and my fingers all felt like limp noodles when I tried to hit the keys.

No, I’m not sick, just super relaxed. Our friend Jean Damon gave Miss Terry and I full body massages yesterday evening that just turned us both into Jello. Jean was born and raised in the Philippines, where she studied Asian massage techniques before marrying Dave and moving to the United States to become a fulltime RV gypsy. Now they work the rally circuit, selling 303 products, and Jean gives massages.

Jean said she did about 10 massages at our Eastern rally at Elkhart Campground, and another 25 at the Escapade in Goshen. She offered us massages at our Elkhart rally, but we were just too busy to take her up on them. So when we ran into them here at the Orlando Thousand Trails, Jean said we weren’t getting away until she got us on her table. All I can say is wow, it do feel good! If you have never had a professional massage, trust me, you have no idea what you’re missing. Pamper yourself and get one sometime.

Check Out Our Holiday Subscription Special Offer!

Speaking of RV rallies, I’m thrilled to say that our friends Joe and Vicki Kieva will be presenting two of their excellent seminars at our Arizona Gypsy Gathering rally in Yuma. Joe and Vicki are two of the most well know RV writers and speakers of all time, and having them at our rallies is a real honor for us.

They will be presenting their ever popular  Alaska, the Ultimate RV Adventure seminar, and if you have ever wanted to make the trip north, you don’t want to miss this one. There are plenty of travelogues showing pretty pictures of Alaska, but Joe and Vicki’s presentation is a how-to type seminar telling people how to prepare for a trip to Alaska, and what to expect along the way.

Joe will also be drawing on his experiences as a police officer, and their years of RV travel, to present his Personal Security Tips for RVers seminar. Overall, RVing is one of the safest lifestyles that one could ever choose, but even so, we know firsthand that anyone can run into trouble anywhere. Joe’s seminar shows you the criminal’s point of view, and gives you tips and ideas on how not to become a victim.

Check out Joe and Vicki’s RV Notebook blog, and  be sure to take note of the books and e-books they have advertised in the right hand column. I’ve learned a lot from them over the years, and they’re happy to share their vast knowledge with you too.

For anybody planning an Alaska trip, you can’t have too much knowledge. This rally is going to be a real learning experience on making the big trip north. Besides Joe and Vicki’s seminar, my buddy Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School will be presenting his Preparing To Drive To Alaska seminar, and we will also have an RVing Alaska panel discussion with several folks who have traveled and lived in Alaska participating. So as you can see, we have the topic covered well!

Okay, I’m so relaxed I can’t write another word. I’m headed for bed.

Thought For The Day -  I am not stupid. Everyone else is just smarter than me.

Register Now For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally

RVers love blogging! These electronic newsletters provide us with a way to share our traveling adventures with our friends and families back home, and to keep in touch with other RVers we meet along the way.

Blogs allow us to remain a part of our children’s and grandchildren’s lives; they can log in and see pictures of Grandma and Grandpa fishing, sightseeing, or just relaxing under the awning. These visual reminders seem to make the miles separating us go away.

But can your RV blog also become a source of income? It’s a question I get asked a lot from RVers who have or want to launch a blog.

There are several ways to monetize a blog, though the simplest is by putting advertising in your blog. On the surface, it looks easy. You sign up for one of the many advertising affiliate programs, such as Google’s AdSense, paste in a simple code, wait for your readers to click the ad links, and then sit back and watch the money roll in. How cool is that?

There are literally thousands of books, e-books, special reports, and online courses you can buy or subscribe to that promise to help you make a fortune with affiliate advertising. Uh huh, and I have some swamp land in Florida I want to sell you.  

Yes, you can make money by placing advertising on your RV blog. But can you earn enough money to make it worth the effort? Probably not. The sad truth is that out of the millions and millions of blogs on every topic imaginable floating around in cyberspace, very few bloggers make more than $5 or $10 a month, if that.

To make any significant money in blogging, you have to have a lot of visitors to your blog every day. I average about 1,000 daily blog readers, and with my five blogs and websites all together, last month I averaged 2,206 page views, according to Google’s AdSense statistics. In June we averaged just over $13 a day in ad commissions.   

But, my RV blog runs at least 500 words daily, our Todays Hero Blog is several hundred words a day, and I have a couple hundred pages on my various websites. That’s a lot of work. I approach this as part of our income stream. Most RVers don’t want to invest that much time into their blogging efforts.

I have found that commissions from ad clicks on my different websites can vary widely. My biggest single commission comes from ad clicks on my Publishing4Profit website. Many of those clicks are over $1.50 each. My Motorcycle Travel Online website generates the next highest individual commissions per ad click, at about 75 cents each. By contrast, ad clicks on the Todays Hero Blog and Honor A Veteran websites earn an average of five cents each. I don’t publish these two websites for the money as much as for the love of honoring people who deserve it.

My RV blog and Gypsy Journal website ad commissions average about twenty cents each, with some exceptions. Some of the ads on pages like Use That Generator and RV Tech Training Offered Online pay a dollar or so each.

Experienced blog publishers have found that Google is constantly tweaking and adjusting the formula they use to determine AdSense commissions, and there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to how they do so. A few months ago my commissions were higher, and then they suddenly dropped like a rock. The same type of ads are appearing, the number of visitors and ad clicks have remained stable, but the commission are much less. This is a cycle that I have seen come around every so often in the three years or so I have been blogging.

I also have Amazon ads on my websites, which has proven to be a total waste of time. In over a year, I have earned just over $100 from the Amazon program. I also tried the Commission Junction advertising affiliate program, with no results at all.

So, can you make money with an RV Blog? Yes, if you work hard enough at it and put out a lot of information on a consistent basis, but I sure would not want to try to live off my commissions. I love blogging and website publishing, and would be doing this even if I did not have ad links on the blog and my websites. And the ads do help buy a tank or two of fuel now and then.

My advice to you, if you are considering putting ads on your RV blog, is to go for it and see what happens. It doesn’t cost a thing to enroll in the AdSense program, so all you have to lose is a little bit of your time. But blog because you enjoy it, not because you expect to make any real money at it.

Thought For The Day – Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars in the universe, and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint, and he has to touch it.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally