Several years ago, I took a blogging journey through the American Civil War. Each day, I posted material from the corresponding day in a specific year of the war. I started with the fall of 1860, the last several months before the war started
At first, the material was from news articles, including images, from both sides, with a semi-regular entry from the diary of a Washington, D.C. clerk. Over time, a couple of more diarists were added with fewer and fewer news articles.
On of the things I was trying to do was to – like so many others – “make money online.” While I was making virtually nothing from the civil war chronicles, I was making a couple of hundred dollars a month on another website.
With another year until the diarists would reach the end of their war, I made the decision to abandon the civil war chronicles and concentrate on trying to capitalize on the success of the other site.
Two years later, that site is still earning money – a couple of hundred dollars a month.
I keep getting distracting off into other things that interest me more.
That being the case, I’m taking a step back to the beginning – a new civil war based blog.
It’s called Diaries of the Civil War, though it will also include letters and other narratives. Most posts will be for the corresponding day 150 years earlier.
The blog is organized as though there is a community of authors. Each diary, letter, and journal writer will appear in the blog as a contributing author.
And, yes, it is already live.
The main events don’t begin until later in 1860. Until then, I will be populating the blog with material, for the most part, that occurred before the current date in 1860.
It is at http://dotcw.com. Please come visit.
It’s pretty plain right now. I will be adding graphics later and links later on. Yes, there will be advertizing, but the ads will not intrude into the content.
I’m already learning new stuff – and, it’s hardly even started.
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{ 2 comments }
I wonder if the key to the income is the price ticket on the RVs. Perhaps they pay WAY more per click than something like a book. But I wouldn’t know. This new site will interest me a bit, because I was an awful history student and now that I’ve revived my genealogy hobby, I’m interested in stories of how people lived in that time.
My mother inherited a Civil War encyclopedia that consisted of nothing but photographs with captions, about 12 volumes, but with no index. I had expected to inherit it from her and take some time every once in while to browse through it looking for ancestors. They photos are probably all public domain by now. Unfortunately, after she died I discovered that she had sold it and it’s gone forever.
Dot – That set of books sounds like The Photographic History of the Civil War. It was published in 1911 in 10 volumes. One of my early schemes was to publish the entire set online. I managed to do the first part of volume 7 – http://www.pddoc.com/photohistory/v7/ . Since most of the set is now available online via Google books, I’m glad I didn’t spend any more time on it.
Much of this project will be taking old online public domain material and mix it together to create and present something new and different. Right now I am working through a book of letters written mostly by influential young northern women. It’s quite interesting and provides a perspective that’s unique.
I think the income is higher on the RV website because the people who go there are planning to buy, researching to buy, or just dreaming about what they’re going to buy, so they are much more likely to click on an ad.
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