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Monetize a blog. A blog has to be the cheapest, easiest business on
earth to set up. So now you have set up and ready to run your new
business, exactly how do you monetize a blog.
The secret to monetize a blog is to try each of the following approaches and find what works for your blog and readership base
There are several ways to do this, I will list them all, read
through and find the ones that are suitable for you and keep these in
mind while writing your articles
Google Adsense and Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
Monetize a blog with Google Adsense as your essential first step. Google Adsense is an advertising block of text - like you see on
this page - that has links to other webpages. Each time a reader clicks
on one of these links and leaves your site then you get paid an amount
of money. I have personally had payments of 1c to $1.20 per click and
some higher paying niches like home mortgages and finance have paid up
to $10 per click. Some lawyers terms pay over $40 a click!
The 1 cent clicks are terrible, I'll tell you how to stop them later.
To monetize a blog with the Goole Adsense Program is good because of it's simplicity for the
webmaster. You just make an account with Google, cut and paste some
code into your Blogging Software Template, or easier yet, load a plugin
and you have ads on your site.
Google Adsense is also good in that they have channels. These allow
you to test different ad sizes, colours, formats and get different stat
reports on each. Over time you will optimise your Adsense and monetize a blog the most effectively.
You can then pretty much just leave it alone and Adsense will keep
generating money for you, the ads are updated for you and the whole
process is automated for you.
Better yet Google Adsense is the acknowledged leader in text and banner advertising to monetize a blog the only way you could do better would be to sell ad space direct to an advertiser - but Google Adsense will even handle that for you too
I have been on holiday before for a week, come back, checked my
account stats for that week and found that my hotel bill and dining had
been covered by my Adsense earnings - what a nice feeling.
There are other providers of PPC advertising but most people find
that Google pays the best, so it would be wise to start with them and
get your figures here first, then test the other Ad networks against
your Google numbers.
ADBRITE is another network that webmasters turn too,especially those who get kicked out of Adsense for having 'Adult' content (though this definition seems to be up to the low level employee on the day he sees your site with little recourse)
Commission Selling Via Affiliate Links
To monetize a blog though affiliate links you mention or recommend other peoples products and recieve a
commission for each sale you refer, you basically work (or your blog
works) as a commission only salesman
For this to work well you have to be believable and have credibility.
Write honest reviews of products with links to places you can purchase.
This works well if your Blog and passion is about one particular
range of consumer items like digital cameras. Also it has to be
something people are willing to purchase online, so generally cars and
real estate is out - though I am sure someone can and will prove me
wrong on this.
For example if you have a movie review site you could link to the
appropriate Amazon.com purchase page for that movie, the book it was
based on and the soundtrack. You could also link to an online DVD
rental store
This can take a lot of work to keep up to date with all the latest gadgets, but this is a very good way to monetize your blog
For example you could write a review on Spamarrest and place thier link in the text as I have done in the name or run a seperate banner at the bottom of the article for interested users to click on..
Are you getting sick of recieving hundreds of spam emails???
Selling Text Link Ads
UPDATE: Google has officially said that they are taking steps against this practise as it is an intentional way to game the Google Pagerank. Webmasters have seen their traffic fall considerably until they removed their Text Link Ads - be warned
Generally you can only sell Text Link Ads when your site is well
known (high Google Page Rank) and has good traffic figures (Alexa
Ranking).
Then you can be paid for putting links on your site to theirs.
There are four reasons for this:
- To get some of your readers to visit their site
- To get a quality Anchor Text linkback to help them rate higher in
Google for their Search Keywords so they get more search engine traffic
- To gain some reputation from your site, this additional Page Rank
will move them up the Google search rankings overall, and thus help
them gain traffic
- To get their site indexed by the search engines faster
The pay for this is generally not a lot, you are looking at a total
of about $100 a month (at time of writing) for an average Page Rank 5
site, but it is a nice bonus for 10 minutes of work
Go to Text Link Ads for more information
Banner Advertising
You see this one everywhere, on all the websites you visit there are
banner ads all over the place. Banners are those flashing
advertisements you see everywhere. Bloggers generally don't use these
but there is no reason not to.
You can also monetize your blog with this method by selling banners to appropriate websites. ie If you had a rose and tulip Blog you would probably find a Gardening Tools website that would pay a set amount per month or per thousand impressions to run their banner on your blog
You can put affiliate link banners on your site, say a complimentary
product can be shown, and you make a commission per sale, or a Pay Per
iMpression (PPM) banner could be shown. In this case you get paid a
little amount of money per thousand times it is shown. Most Bloggers
make more money from Adsense though and other methods, though that is
no reason to discount the idea, it might work for your niche. Experiment
The free and open source software I use to serve and track my banners and text links is OpenAds
Pop Up / Pop Under Adverts CPM
Generally out of favour now as they are annoying and they Pay Per
iMpression (PPM), you still see large well known and respected sites
use these as their traffic is so large that these start to pay decent
money. Bloggers tend not to use them because they are annoying and it
takes a heck of a lot of traffic to make decent money off these.
Also to mention the Firefox Browser, Opera Browser, and the new
version of Internet Explorer all come with Pop blockers, which will
effectively stop the ad from being displayed.
Networks like Clicksor and Tribal Fusion offer CPM Pops
Interstitual Ads
This is a full page ad that is called when a reader clicks a link to
go to another page on your site. A slight detour is taken and a full
page advert with a "click here to continue" and a 10 second countdown
is displayed along with the ad.
Again this method to monetize a blog is considered annoying but if you can explain it by
offering good value to your visitors then they aren't going to mind seeing
one of these a day too much (hopefully - test it and make sure)
I have seen these successfully employed on download sites where you
get an advert before getting the free download - fair enough.
ADBRITE is the network that I have used for these previously
Inline Content Link Advertising
This is advertising links added to your content randomly. Some Javascript programming adds in the adverts to the page the user downloads, if you see any double underlined links on this page, hover your mouse over and see the contentlink advert come up. If a user then clicks on the advert then I would recieve some small amount of money, multiply this by hundreds or thousands of visitors and you can make real money.
Google Adsense have also just OK'd it to run inline adverts with Adsene, thus giving you an additional stream of income with little additional effort.
The networks currenly doing these type of adverts are Kontera.com, Intellitxt.com and ADBRITE.
Making Your Own Deals
Once you gain traffic you can approach, or they might approach you,
potential partners. You can then work out a deal that is suitable to
both parties.
For example Franks rose and Tulip gardening site might partner with
Worldwide Gardening Suppliers. They could pay Frank a set fee per month
to display a banner and links in the article to their product pages, he
might also make offers to his member base and email them out discount
coupons, catalogs, etc.
This is only limited by your imagination
Selling a Premium Subscription
You can sell more valuable information in the form of a Newsletter or members only areas like a forum.
Don't be stupid and try the Internet Age Old and failed give them
nothing and think they'll pay becasue I say it's good information. That
is greedy and it doesn't work - unless you are a trained copywriter
with a good product suited perfectly for your target market.
What you do is you have your site, you give away (advertiser
supported) the majority of your information then those regular readers
who trust your knowledge and abilities will be open to the possibility
of purchasing exclusive membership or information from you.
If you are Frank the master gardener and your site is helpful and
encouraging to new rose gardeners and you had a monthly newsletter
where you let in on your secret fertiliser formula, tips and trick
swapped by other members, special offers and discounts from gardening
outlets, latest news on hybrids, etc - then they would be likely to
purchase your newsletter.
Selling Your Own Premium Product
The advanced way to monetize your blog, why advertise others products for a small commission when you can advertise your own?
This is similar to above but you could sell your own product.
As an example Frank the gardening expert could even sell his own line
of fertilisers to his readers, he could sell his own specialty book on
roses. A Roses of the world calender could work. He might even have his
own range of Frank approved gardening aprons and boots (or whatever).
It all depends upon your niche as to what you could sell, this is
not so far different from an affiliate deal but you sell your own goods.
In fact if an affiliate deal seems to be working out particularly well
then it would be wise to measure up the gain in profit to sell your own
product against the extra effort involved.
You can do more than monetize your blog with this method, if your product sells well then you can put it into an affiliate network and get others to sell your product for a commission
Cafepress make, sell and ship your individualised products for you. A great turnkey solution that allows you to keep doing what you do best while they handle the money and shipping for you
Solicit Donations
If you are providing valuable information or a service for free or
supporting a worthy cause then asking for donations would be
appropriate. Though a friend who writes a cheeky online mens mag,
promised to spend any donations on wild women and cheap booze and
recieved $100 in donations before Paypal decided his content was too
risque and froze his account and took his money (this happens often)
Sell Your Own Services Or Your Offline Business Products
Use your Blog to generate interest in your offline business. Start
an informational Blog about an aspect of your business that people
don't fully understand, they can get the information they need and then
they can call you up for your services.
You can also use this method to set yourself up as an expert in your
field, so that when a client calls he already knows you, knows your
reputation and knowledge and there is no sell - he is a pre-sold
customer - the best kind.
Paid Article Writing
This is a fairly new thing in Blogging but it is set to grow -
possibly with problems later. Here you are actually paid for writing a
Blog article on a particular item as outlined by the commercial service
that pays you. ie They may pay $5 for a post on holidaying in Africa
with a link back to an African Adventure Tours Website. This send
traffic and gains Page Rank in Google from all the backlinks.
You should only write on topics that are of interest to your reader
base otherwise you will loose their loyalty and trust with off topic
articles.
The leaders in this field are Pay per post:
And Review Me:
Get Reviewed by this blog for $60 at ReviewMe!
Building Your Blog Then Selling It
Yes, build it, get it as big as possible, re-invest all your profits
into marketing and hen when you are big enough sell out to a large
company.
Even though it wasn't a Blog this is what happened at Youtube. They
built the business up so well that they sold it for over a Billion
Dollars to Google.
The same is going to happen to Blogging in the near future, you can mark my words on this one.
So you have a nice range of ideas there to work with, I will add
more as they come to mind but that covers the most common methods of
earning money from your Blog.
Think about which methods to monetize your blog are most suitable for you before we move on,
the methods you choose to make money from your Blog will affect the way
you write and what you write.
And Finally Number 15 - Referring Webmasters
Have a good look at the links throughout this article, affiliate referral links. This is a great way to make money if you can tell a friend about a marketting method you are not already using. Often like Adbrite they will share commissions with you for hte first three months, or google will pay you $100 for telling a friend about the adsense program.
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