This is Part 1 of a two part series -How to Make Money with your Blog. This section covers how to make money using ads. Part 2 will cover other methods of making money with your blog.
So. You’ve decided that you want to make money blogging. Good. You’ve taken the first step. Now it’s time for us to look at the various methods you can use to make money with your blog. In this two part series we will look at a few of the most popular ways of blogging for dollars.
There are a number of ways to make money directly from your blog. In this series we will cover some of the most time-proven methods.
Feel free to experiment with all of these. You can either focus exclusively on one method or mix and match to suit your individual tastes.
Note:
A number of these programs will be linked to affiliates. As I’ve discussed before, by signing up for these programs you are not reducing the amount of money you can make, instead, a portion of the money the vendor would make will go to me if you are successful. This is a win-win-win situation in which the vendor gets you to sign on, you earn income, and I also earn a portion of the vendor’s income. Signing up under my affiliate is a way of saying thanks to me for providing you with this information which costs you nothing. I thank you for it.
Part 1 Ad Networks
Ad revenue
You can sell ads in about a thousand different ways on your blog. Among these are:
* Contextual ad programs like Adsense or Chitika.
These are the most common form of ad revenue generated by blogs on the net.
What they do is look at see what your content consists of and then using that context, they place graphical and text ads that are appropriate to what your readers are looking at. So if your post is on horses, the ads might be about anything to do with horses.
Contextual Ads usually involve you putting a piece of code into the template of your blog.
Ads then appear automatically and you get paid based on the number of times users click on an ad. Hence the term ‘cost per click’ or CPC.
This type of ad is best suited to blogs that are heavily weighted towards a particular niche. This is where the term ‘niche blog’ comes into play. If your niche has definite products or services associated with it, you will do better with contextual ads.
On the other side of the coin, blogs that don’t have any particular products or services associated with their niche (or that don’t have a niche at all) tend to not do very well with contextual ads. So if you are writing a political opinion blog, chances are there isn’t a lot of revenue to be made with it.
There are literally thousands of e-books about how to use Adsense. Some of the best of them can be found at Free-Ebooks.biz for between $0.25 and $5. You can also find plenty of completely free e-books on this topic, but just remember, advice is usually worth what you pay for it.
* In addition to contextual ads there are other CPC-type ads which you can run alone or alongside programs like Adsense. Among these are Chitika’s mini malls which allow you to determine the context of your site and what ads will appeal to your readers.
* Impression Based Ads – These ads pay you for the number of people who see them regardless of whether they click through or not.
Since there is less of a chance of the advertisers making a sale, the payment for each impression is usually much less than with CPC ads.
So, of course, if you don’t have a lot of traffic, these ads won’t end up paying you very much. Two programs worth looking at among impression ads are Fastclick and Tribal Fusion.
*Blog Ads – If you are running that opinion based/spiritual/political blog and you are thinking that there is no advertising model for you, think again.
Blog ads give each blogger the most control over what ads and rates they choose.
As a result, they fall directly into the realm of supply and demand. Charge too much and you will get no advertisers, charge too little and you might make the impression that your blog is not worth advertising on. Blog ads require a delicate balancing act.
Many such programs only take in bloggers who are recommended or sponsored by other bloggers in the program. I’ve used these but without a huge degree of success, but I know other bloggers who have done remarkably well with them.
A couple of examples are Adgitize and CMF Ads
* Text Link Ads – These are by far my favorite way to advertise on your blog. They don’t clutter up your pages, they don’t flash or make music, and they generally blend right into your site design. The reason why is because they take text that you’ve already written and attach links to it.
Different programs offer differing degrees of control as to what ads you want or don’t want.
Most of these programs sell the ads for the best price they can and split the revenue 50/50 with you. Payment is usually monthly and through Paypal.
Among these are , In Links, and AdBrite.
One big advantage to these systems is that they take the work of finding advertisers off your plate and they are usually very automated. This means you can focus on creating quality content and improving your blog while they take care of the rest. Once you post their ad code, you are through. All you have to do then is wait for your monthly payment.
I’ve earned more with than I have with any other program though I know plenty of bloggers who do much better with contextual ads. Another two programs that I’ve yet to use in this realm are Bidvertiser and Adzaar.
* RSS Ads – In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I’ve never used RSS ads. I know that I should and I probably will, but up to this point the idea of putting ads in my feed has not appealed to me.
Yet, many bloggers and ad providers are finding increasing success through putting ads into their feeds.
Among providers of RSS are Adsense and Yahoo Publishers Network. You can also monetize your feed through Feedburner using Adsense, Amazon Affiliate, Pheedo, or Feedburner’s own ad network. To use the Feedburner network ads you must have at least 500 subscribers.
There are literally hundreds of other ad providers. I’ve had no experience with any others or found zero success with others so I won’t write about them here. If you have, why not comment and tell us about them?
Next week in Part 2 of How to make money blogging we will look at non-network ad methods of generating income on your money making blog.
Until then- Blog on!
R.W.
