My Top 7 Blog Monetization Methods

This list reviews my preference starting from the best to the least effective monetization methods I have implemented on my blogs. Note the list is entirely representative of my experience and I believe what monetization methods work depends heavily on the topic you blog about and consequently the type of reader you attract. This is why, as you will see, my list differs from Chad’s, although I do agree with him that AdSense is at the bottom of the heap.

The important thing is to test and find out what works best for you. Don’t assume because something is best for someone else’s blog that is the case for all blogs.

1. Recursive Affiliate Income

If you are on my early notification list for Blog Mastermind you already know why I love recursive affiliate income. Affiliate marketing is great because you sell something and you don’t have to deliver any product or provide customer service. With commissions as high as 75% you can run an online business that never produces anything, all on the back of affiliate marketing.

Recursive programs are the best type of affiliate program. When you sell a continuity product – something people pay for on a regular basis to maintain their membership – you are also paid an affiliate commission on a regular basis. If you build up enough recursive affiliate sales you can secure a stable income source.

As an example, I don’t just recommend programs like StomperNet because they are great products backed by real experts (which StomperNet is), but also because they have recursive affiliate programs. When a person signs up under my affiliate ID I make a commission every time they are charged to maintain their membership.

In your case you might have to look around to find relevant continuity products with affiliate programs to promote on your blog, but it’s well worth it.

2. Direct Ad Sales

Chad called this fixed monthly sponsors, which is exactly what I do as well and I agree with him, it’s a fantastic way to monetize a blog. There are no middlemen to take some of your profits and you can maximize the return on investment of your advertising inventory.

I’ve been selling banners off of my websites for eight years and it’s always been a consistent earner. Lately text links have become more popular, but it really doesn’t matter what the format is, it’s all about providing value to sponsors. In my experience I’ve usually had a small handful of sponsors who remain regulars and buy my ad inventory on a repeat basis. They see the value in this advertising medium and I appreciate the regular source of income.

If you don’t have one already, the first step for attracting sponsors is to set up an advertise page. Take a look at my advertise page as a good simple example to follow.

If an advertise page doesn’t translate into sponsors, and this might be the case if your blog is small or new, you will need to be proactive and look for sponsors yourself. I did this many years ago on a hobby site about the card game Magic: The Gathering. To locate sponsors I found all the most prominent online retailers that sold the game and emailed them to see if they would be interested in sponsoring my site. The end result was one advertiser coming on board and sponsoring the site for four straight years and others coming on for many months at a time.

I have always sold ads on a per month basis, but you can do per impression (CPM) or per click or even per lead. I once tried per-click for banners but unless you charge something ridiculous like $1 a click you don’t make much. Banners are simply not good for direct traffic in my experience and are better used as combination branding/exposure tool to associate your company in the minds of the people in a certain industry. That way, when they do come to decide they need something that your company provides, thanks to seeing your banners everywhere, they remember you as a provider of that product/service (in other words – effective branding). But I digress…

3. Text-Link-Ads.com Brokering Service

Text-Link-Ads is a very well known text link broker that connects advertisers with publishers who are paid to place text links on their site. The Text-Link-Ads service acts as the middleman company, taking a cut of the revenue in exchange for sourcing the sponsors for you.

From a blogger’s perspective this is a very low-maintenance monetization method. You install the plug-in, assuming you are a WordPress blogger, add a line of code to your theme template for where you want the text links to appear and then sit back and let Text-Link-Ads do the work. It’s been a proven income source for me now for many months, and while it’s not a massive return, a consistent $500-$700 a month is nice to have.

For smaller bloggers Text-Link-Ads is still an option, just don’t expect to earn a significant return or sell all your ad inventory until you increase your traffic and pagerank.

4. One Time Affiliate Income

Affiliate income takes position number four on my list too but the difference to recursive affiliate income is that this time I’m talking about products that pay out once, each time you make a sale. In this case the money isn’t quite as dependable as recursive programs since you need to keep selling in order to generate revenue, however some products have large payouts and just one sale can make it worth while.

I find there are two types of products that have sold well for me as an affiliate. The once-a-year big events like conferences and workshops, which pay out commissions ranging from $100 – $1000 depending on the cost of a ticket. I don’t usually sell many of these, but with such a high commission just one or two ticket sales can be enough. About two years ago I promoted Perry Marshall’s conference which cost $2000 to get into and he paid a $750 affiliate commission. I only sold two tickets, but that $1500 was more than I had generated in the previous year of blogging.

The other good seller is staple products, things people in my industry eventually buy. Most industries have a seminal book or a service you can’t do without (for example web hosting) and if you review these products and mention them now and then you usually can sell a few on a regular basis. Perry Marshall again makes a good example again, with his $49 Definitive Guide to Google AdWords ebook, a solid repeat seller since if you intend to do AdWords campaigns you must have this book.

No doubt in your industry there are must-have products or services that you can review and recommend as an affiliate, just make sure the margins make it worthwhile. Try the Clickbank catalog if you are stuck for affiliate products to promote or just think back over the last few purchases you made online related to your blog topic and see if there is an affiliate program for them.

5. Paid Reviews

I’ve almost stopped doing paid reviews recently, but I still think the ReviewMe service is a great way to start earning from blogging. In previous months it has been a consistent $300+ income source, but frankly I’m moving away from income sources that require output from me directly to generate. Since you have to write the review to get paid it’s far from the kind of passive or near-passive income sources I prefer, even if it does pay out $125 per review in my case.

6. Google AdSense

Google AdSense has never been a favorite monetization strategy for me. It forces you to focus on increasing pageviews and thus AdSense displays in order to earn more, which is a labor-for-income relationship, which I try and avoid. The payments are very low and unless you blog in certain product categories even high traffic sites earn peanuts.

That being said, AdSense is fantastic on sites that have user-generated content and thus traffic, because you can set it up and let Google handle the optimization. There’s almost always a higher-paying method to monetize, but sometimes the simplicity of AdSense is appealing.

7. Miscellaneous Programs

There are many other options, including ad brokering services like Chitika, BlogAds, AdBrite, AdVolcano and Blogkits. Some of these I briefly tested but did not like their system or my current monetization methods pay more.

Again, these options might be fantastic for your blog but you won’t know until you try. However in almost all cases, if you sell ads directly to sponsors you make more, it just might be harder to manage and initially procure the sponsors, especially for small and new blogs.

As I’ve said many times before, I suggest you not think about monetization for the first few months of blogging, or until you get to at least 100 visitors a day, preferably 500. Once you hit that first milestone, slowly roll out some monetization tests, perhaps starting with an affiliate promotion to your readers in the form of a product review and then work your way through the list above to see what works best in your case.

How To Make Money With Your Blog – Part 1

Blogging is the latest craze all over the internet universe. I call it a “universe” because there seem to be endless opportunities in this virtual world for just about everybody. It’s like the American dream. If you have a genuine idea and you are willing to work hard, then nobody can stop you from becoming rich and famous, no matter what age, what religion or what nationality you belong to. But how have blogs helped so many people make so much money in such a short time? Well, you’ll have to read and find out.

While blogs were initially started as just a place where somebody could express their feelings about something or just as a web space to write something down, very soon people realized that a blog was more than just a scribbling pad or a personal diary. Blogs can be said to have been rediscovered as a great marketing tool and then there was a sudden explosion in the number of blogs and the things that people were doing with them.

People started using blogs to market their products. Companies started using blogs as a place where they could get their consumer’s feedbacks. In fact companies like Ford Motor Company, Honda etc. even asked people to give suggestions as to what they would want to get changed in an existing model and what they would like to be different in an upcoming model. Thus blogs suddenly became so famous that hundreds of people could be found discussing at the same time and making it a really lively place.

But where there’s such a crowd, there’s also an opportunity for generating revenue out of advertising. This is where the monetary benefit of running a blog comes into play. If you run a popular blog, one where you have a loyal visitor base and where people have a lot of fun and get some value for the time they spend, then you too can make a lot of money. You want to know how?

A popular blog is like a popular website where you can always make a lot of money through advertising. There are various methods by which you can make money out of advertising.

1. Sell your advertising space to an advertising company for a fixed amount (this is particularly favorite amongst the more famous and active blogs). This way you get your money every month or in lump sum for a fixed period of time. You don’t have to worry about the advertising anymore.
2. The second method which is the most widely used is tying up with companies like Google Adsense which place ads on your blog and pay you on Pay Per Click basis. So every time somebody who visits your blog and clicks on any of the ads placed by Google AdSense, you get a small commission. The more the visitors, the more the clicks. The more the clicks, the more the money that you make.
3. The third way and the least practiced is by finding advertisers on your own and placing their banners and ads on your blog. While in this way you don’t have to share your advertising revenue with anyone, you’ll have to do all the running around. This is preferable only if you have some solid contacts and a long term contract for advertising.

One of the things that you must always ensure while seeking advertisers is relevance. If you are blogging about health and fitness, then an ideal advertiser on your blog would a company that manufactures or sells health products or fitness equipments.

And to ensure maximum number of visitors, keep your content absolutely to the point while using appropriate keywords to help the search engine locate your blog.

Also if you have decided to find sponsors for your blog on your own it would be wise to not put too many ads for two reasons. The first one is that too many ads may distract and irritate the visitor and keep him or her from coming back. Also if your blog is popular and the advertising space is less, you can charge your sponsors more.

Making Money with Your Blog Traffic

Your blog is your traffic hub. In other words, it shouldn’t be the final destination for your visitors. By giving them other places to go and other things to do, you direct them to places where they have the opportunity to spend money buying your products.

One place you want to direct traffic to is your newsletter. Include an Optin form to your newsletter in the top right corner of your blog. By placing it “above the fold,” visitors don’t have to scroll down to get to your form.

Make it as simple as possible for them to subscribe. Once they do subscribe, continue the relationship with them. Be personable and likable in your email correspondence. Offer them great content in your newsletter, perhaps information that is a little more in depth than what they read on your blog.

This will give them a reason to open emails from you. You want to give them such a reason because that is how you reach them with your sales and marketing messages.

Another place to direct traffic to is a sales page. By including links to sales pages, you give people the opportunity to buy your products right away. They might want to do just that if they like what they read on your blog. Also, include links to affiliate sites or any other sites you have that lead to cash.

Of course getting people to visit your blog is an essential first step. You have many ways to help you do just that. For instance, you can register your blog with Technorati.

Technorati is a search engine dedicated to tracking blogs. This is a valuable service in light of the fact that 175,000 blogs are created every day, and more than 1.6 million people update their blogs daily. This site follows all that activity as it happens.

Technorati tracks links between blogs and indexes thousands upon thousands of updates every hour. In essence, they monitor live blog communities and the conversations within those communities.

To help make your blog findable in this or any search engine, you need to format your permalinks so they are search engine friendly. A permalink is simply the way other sites see your links. By customizing the structure of these links with relevant phrases and keywords, the search engines are able to find you with much more efficiency.

To customize your permalinks, click on the permalink tab of your blogging dashboard. The default link will already be selected, but you want to select the “customize” option. In this field, enter the following information: /%category%/postname%/

Another way to make your blog findable within the search engines is to categorize all your posts. Every time you make an entry, select or create a category for that new post.

For example, if you have a blog about health, some of your categories could be Cardio Workouts, Strength Workouts and Healthy Meals. But if your post about a new supplement you’re promoting doesn’t fit into any of those categories, simply create a new one called Supplements.

By categorizing your posts, you create the specific information for your permalinks. Plus you keep all your information well-organized and easy for readers to find.

Another way to keep your readers happy is to post on a regular basis. So if you don’t do anything else, keep your blog active. Update it consistently, even if the update is only a paragraph or two long. The purpose is to keep the content fresh so you stay in the sites of the search engines, ping other sites often and are constantly in contact with your RSS subscribers.

You can also start a Podcast. Podcasting is a sound file with an RSS feed. Instead of just posting words, you can post audio content that your RSS subscribers can listen to and be updated about when you post new files.

Finally, comments are great traffic generators. So comment on other blogs. Be a part of conversations other people start and include links back to your site. On your site, comment about other blogs. Create trackbacks and track your own.

Don’t just comment on other blogs, though. Allow comments on your own. Not all will be positive, but if you want to have a conversation with your target audience, you need to hear what they have to say. Let them talk to you. LISTEN, don’t just talk.

When you set up your Internet traffic hub properly, you then have the ability to direct that traffic to your money sites.

Six Easy Steps to Making Money with Your Blog

I’m going to give you 6 quick pointers on how to optimize your blog to drive traffic and hopefully earn some extra Adsense and affiliate income.

One huge benefit of using blogging as a means to create your site vs. trying to build your own is the ability to monetize your content immediately and not have to worry about page layout, graphics, hosting, domain names, and content management. This is a massive time saver when using the free bloggers such as Blogger or WordPress hosting. The downside is that you cannot fully control the fine tuning of your site for specific optimizations. Nevertheless, you must let go of this desire and focus on your content – which is a very good thing.

So, let’s start with the key topics you need to consider when optimizing a blog:

1. The Blogging Service
2. Layout
3. Links
4. Keywords
5. Traffic
6. Site Tricks

1. The Blogging Service – this is a very important choice because some of the free blogging services do not allow you to place context ad such as AdSense on the free blogging service (they allow it if you host your own blog). Because of this I strongly recommend using Blogger as your free service since it is easy to use and is ad friendly.

2. Layout – since you are using a free service you must get over the desire to control your site. Let go! Most free blogging sites allow you to tweak the layout somewhat. There are some tricks you can use to easily keep your site a blog but at the same time add sections as if you were on your own site. For example, keep one blog entry for all of your favorite external links and descriptions. This is where you can continue your link sharing with other sites and continually add new ones. Now, add a specific link to this article on the sidebar so that there is a direct reference when the article gets archived. That way any readers will always find the links article and not have to search or stumble upon it. (Note, you can use this same technique for additional pages that refer to specific topics so that you have a directory of topics on your sidebars).

3. Links – besides the links I noted in #2 you should always use plenty of linking from within every article you publish. The internet values links and the more you use from your blog entries the better. Other sites pay attention to who’s linking to them and when they see a referral in their logs your appreciation level increases. Also, add your favorite affiliate and topic links to your sidebars.

4. Keywords – I cannot stress the importance of this but I’m not going to go into detail on keyword identification other than to say that each blog entry should focus on a SEO keyword phrase or name – especially the title. Be sure to use your titles carefully and use the same keywords in your entry. This will mark the blog entry to the keyword topic (remember, each blog entry is a separate web page that can be indexed). Also, be sure to include the keyword near the end of the blog entry as well.

5. Traffic – don’t forget to promote your blog to drive traffic! Use all the means possible to do this – forums, articles, reprint rights, etc. Be sure to post well written comments on other highly ranked blog sites. However, don’t make the mistake and write only a quick comment. Always write your responses in a way that is interesting and direct to the point. There’s enough free material out there to do this!

6. Site Tricks – another simple technique is to place hard coded links to your favorite blog entries and articles in the bottom of the Blog template. That way it will show up on every page. Eventually you can make this your site map which is very important to the search engines. The last thing you want is your blog links to be archived!!

And, of course, don’t forget to add your AdSense sections.

Just by completing these 6 simple tasks you can get your blog monetized in no time at all!

Making Money With Your Blog – Part 2

I’ve sure you’ve heard before that it’s a possibility to make money with your blog and you may be wondering how this is possible. And were they really meant for making money or just for journaling your personal thoughts? I’m not sure what they were intended for but they are great ways to make money.

I have a personal blog which is just my own private little place to go online and jot down my thoughts, but I also have my business blogs.

Back In The Beginning

Now to be honest with you in the beginning of my blogging experience I really wasn’t sure what I should do with my blog. I knew I wanted to make money with it, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I could do to not only be a value to others so they would come back to my blog, but that I would still enjoy writing it.

So it was really important to me that I find a topic in which I would be excited about, and have enough to offer so that I could blog every week or so. After starting a blog that was meant to just be an add on to my business at MommysPlace.net and struggling with the direction of that blog, I came across one of Alice Seba’s blogs. Which she used to write about her experience through a traffic product.

Every couple of weeks or so she would update her progress through this course. She would tell us all about her successes with this product and how great it was for her business. And it made me think of how I could do something similar.

Product/Service Focused Blog

This is when the light bulb moment went off in my head. This is when I realized what I should have been doing all along. I have been a member of a exclusive coaching program for mothers in business.

Since joining this program my business has seen great success. My income has increased more then five times what it was before I joined and my traffic has increased even more then that.

I enjoy and believe in this coaching program and it happens to have an affiliate program. I often got email from other work at home mothers who wanted to know my thoughts on this program.

Taking a cue from Alice’s blog I decided to start my own such blog. And named it http://MomMastermindsJourney.blogspot.com – okay, not a catchy title, but I’m no good with picking names

I used this blog for the purpose of documenting my successes with my business. My projects, new content added to my website, keyword phrases I was ranking for…etc. Basically anything that had to do with my business, that was directly or indirectly because of my joining Mom Masterminds, I jotted down.

Not only was this the best move I could have made for my promoting this affiliate link it also served as a great way to really see for myself the successes my business was achieving and also to keep me on track.

This is one way you could make money with a blog. There are other ways you could make money with a blog if you don’t want to devote a blog to one service or product you’re promoting.

Side Kick Blog

For instance, my blog at http://www.mommyworkingvirtually.com is a side kick to MommysPlace.net and my forums. This is a blog in which I update my members on additions to the website, newsletter and forums. Updating any important telecommuting or business news and can promote my adsense and any other affiliate programs.

So this blog serves more then one purpose. My main goal with this blog is to get traffic to certain sections of my website. I have a large website and it’s not always easy for people to find my information. So this is a great way for me to keep certain new pages or sections of my website in the public eye and get traffic to those pages. It also serves as a way to make money with adsense and affiliate programs. And lastly it gives exposure to my forum and my newsletter.

There can be many ways and many topics in which you can make money and gain exposure to other businesses you may have or can help in creating you as an expert in a certain field.

Just take the time to really think about what you could be writing about and then how you can make money with that as well. You can take a look at others blogs to get an idea and see what other people are looking for.

Making Money With Your Blog – Resources:

Blogs to Riches- is an ebook that details ways you can make your blog profitable. And the really cool thing with this is if you list the publishers link on your blog for 45 days he will give you this ebook for free! If you don’t want to wait that long you can also purchase it for a low price. Read more about Blogs to Riches – www.blogstoriches.com

Increasing Adsense – is an ebook about how to increase your adsense revenue. This ebook isn’t specifically geared towards blogs, but the information you will learn you can use with your blogs. (As well as websites and forums…anywhere you have adsense.) www.adsense-secrets.com

* Don’t know what adsense is? Go to www.google.com/adsense to learn more.

Ready To Blog?

Are you ready to take the leap into a blog? If so, it’s really very easy to set up a blog. The one resource I have used for all my blogs has been blogger.com. This is free, easy, and fun. There are many templates to chose from and you can customize yours if you would like.

I have used the general template for my mom masterminds blog and I have customized my http://www.mommysworkingvirtually.com blog with different colors and fonts then what it came with. I also have that hosted on my own domain, but you certainly don’t have to do that.

Submit Your Blog

After you create your blog you will want to submit it to blog directories to help get your blog out in front of the public. Some of the directories you can try are:

BlogWise – http://www.blogwise.com

Blog Search Engine – http://www.blogsearchengine.com

Blog Hub – http://www.bloghub.com

Blog Daisey – http://www.blogdaisey.com

Get Blogs – http://www.getblogs.com

Is Blogs – http://www.lsblogs.com

Feeds

Next, you need to add feeds to your blog. What is a feed? Good question. I don’t know the exact way to describe a feed nor do I have a lot of valuable information on this subject.

This is still very new to me, but I can tell you briefly what a feed does. You add a little graphic to your blog. It can be for someone’s yahoo page, msn page and other ways.

When they click on that they can add your blog to their personal yahoo page. Then every time you add a new post they are alerted on their yahoo page that you have posted AND it even shows the topic of the post and how long ago it was posted.

This is one of the best resources I’ve found in keeping people coming back to your blog. They can subscribe to it so easily and they will be automatically updated whenever you have posted. It’s pretty easy to add an RSS feed to your blog. The resource I personally use is at www.feedburner.com

Watch Out Blogging World – Here I Come!

Now, see how simple this really can be? You can make money with a blog, gain exposure for another business or websites, can create yourself as an expert on a certain topic, can create a blog for free, get it listed for free and start an RSS feed for free! Now get out there and start blogging.

Make Money With Your Blog: The Clean And The Dirty Methods

Making money with your blog is not a hard process. However, there are MANY different paths that you can take in creating your new income stream. You can make a blog to promote affiliate products, a blog to promote solely the Google Adsense program, or you can ever create blogs to promote your own websites.

If you are going to use blogs to make money with affiliate programs, I suggest you find the main keyword subject of your blog, and type it into google like this:

“affiliate program” keyword

This will help you find affiliate products to promote on your blog. Once you find an affiliate program that you would like to promote you can gather the linking codes and add them to your blog’s template. You can also use Clickbank.com to help find affiliate products to promote. Clickbank pays you twice a month which is great, because you get the money you made from your blog really fast. Just go to clickbank.com and click “Promote Products” and enter your search terms in the top-left corner.

If you are going to use Adsense to monetize your blog then I suggest that you get some articles ghostwritten for you. Ghostwriting means getting someone else to write the articles for you, so you don’t have to do anything. I am currently paying $8 for a 600-700 word article, so base the prices you pay from that. There are a few sites that you can get ghost writers from, here are 3:

Scriptlance.com
Rentacoder.com
Getafreelancer.com

Remember though, if you find someone willing to work for just a few dollars an article, the quality may be very poor. I suggest you do NOT use people from India when getting articles ghost written, as English isn’t their native language. Make sure you also get a sample article from the ghost writer before you select them for your project. You need to make sure they have good writing ability and that you like their style of writing.

Now that you’ve gotten your articles, all you have to do is put your Adsense code on your blog template, and post an article every day or every other day. After you are done posting make sure you ‘ping’ your blog (bring spiders to distribute the content), this will make sure that you will have some traffic coming to your blog!

Now, if you want to just use your blogs to promote your own websites in the search engines, then I suggest you only use Blogger.com blogs. These blogs have a “weight” to them because they are a subdomain on Blogspot.com, which is PageRank 10. These blogs can get your websites indexed in as little as 2 days!

You need to be creating 5 new blogs per day per website that you are trying to get indexed with Blogger because they will delete blogs. This is not uncommon and it even happens to people that have personal blogs not promoting anything. However, this is not a reason to avoid them – you are the one who will be losing out on the fast search engine indexing.

For Blogger.com, I suggest that you create blogs with the following settings:

- Change the blogger template from NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW to INDEX/FOLLOW: This tells the search engine spiders to INDEX the blog and FOLLOW the links on the page.
- Remove the blogger bar at the top of every blog you create: To do this you must edit the template, and replace the body html tag with this code:

noembed tag, body tag, close no embed tag.

- Notify Weblogs.com
- Show 1 Day of Posts on the Front Page
- Archive Posts Daily
- Non-Public Blogger Blog (Unless you are adding Adsense to the blog) – this way no one can find your blog from the Blogger.com web site, you only want the search engine spiders to find it from pinging.

If you go as fast as you can you can create about one blog every 5 minutes. If you don’t want to do this whole process you can try using BloggerGenerator.

Now that you have your blogs created you have to post links to your websites. Post them in normal link format, from 10-100 links each post. After each post make sure that you ping your blog at Pingomatic.com or Pingoat.com. Post to these blogs twice daily or at least every day until Blogger has removed them. If you get lucky your blogs won’t even get removed and perhaps even get PageRank on the next update!

Making money with your blog is not challenging at all as you can see. If you start right now you could begin to see profits by as early as tomorrow morning. Make sure you use this information and not let it sit in the back of your mind!

Blogging as a career

The fact is that it is absolutely possible to make a living with a career in blogging. Well-known expert bloggers like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net and Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com have had great success blogging, with some of these top bloggers making six figures a year.

Having said all of that, you also need to know that most bloggers fail to make blogging a career. If you are considering blogging as a career, there are three specific things that you need to do in order to be successful:

1) Be Patient. Successful blogging takes time. If you want to have a career in blogging, you have got to put in the time and energy needed to make your blog successful. Writing your blog posts is only a small portion of this endeavor. You need to spend time every day building channels of communication with other bloggers and other web sites. You need to spent time every day marketing your blog. You need to spend time every day looking at the various monetization options available to you. Beyond this, you have to realize that it takes many months for a blog to become successful, and that your blogging career will probably take as much as six months to a year to really get started.

2) Write good Content. Content is King. You’ve heard this a thousand times by now. Everybody tells you that the key to a successful blogging career is producing good content. The reason they tell you this is that it is TRUE. If you want to make blogging your career, you need to hone your writing skills so that you are really on top of your competition. Beyond this, you need to be creative in the way you approach content, and consider using unique methods, from video blogging to podcasting, to provide value to your readers. Without good content, all of the marketing in the world can’t save your blog, or give you a career in blogging.

3) Choose the right monetization techniques. For most bloggers, Google AdSense isn’t going to provide you with a full-time income. You need to have other forms of monetization, whether it is affiliate income, direct ad sales, or some other sort of monetization. The best forms of monetization are going to be those that are recursive – that pay you over and over again as time goes on. A good example of recursive income is selling an affiliate membership-type product that pays you a portion of the customer’s membership fees every month, long after they have signed up.

While doing these three things won’t guarantee you will be able to make a career from blogging, you can be certain that you won’t make it as a blogger if you don’t do them.

Maximize and Monetize Your Blog

Maintaining a blog or an online journal is often done by people as a hobby but it can also be used to gain extra income. For people who are passionate and spends several hours to create a content for their blog, it will be useful to know that they can actually monetize it.

Maximize Your Blog

Every now and then, it has been emphasized that “Content is King”. Aside from gaming or other entertainment purposes, people go online to research for information, news, movie reviews and more. Blogs are great venue to share information about the topics that are interesting to you. These days there are a lot of blogs available for people to read. To make your own mark, target a specific blog audience that shares with your interest. Maximize your blog, by writing about topics that you are knowledgeable at. Create entries about the places or events that you have experienced yourself. Through this, you can generate a unique content and not some copy paste entry from other people’s site.

Aside from creating a unique content, you should target to create something useful as well. You might be ecstatic to share about a specific interest in your blog but to maximize the result, you should choose to write about growing topics that haven’t been touched about in every other blog.

You can choose the popular topics but make sure to do your research since there are a lot of bloggers competing for it.

Monetize Your Blog

There are several advertising platforms that you can use to monetize your blog. The most popular is Google Adsense wherein Google ads are placed in your blog and you’ll be paid every time a visitor clicks it. The good thing about this platform is it adds related ads based your content.

Another popular advertising platforms is applying text link ads, where you create a content and put a link on the advertiser’s product pages. Involuntary donations can also be done by visitors who appreciate your website because of the content that you offer.

You can put any type of ad on your blog but make sure not to overdo it. While designing the placement of these ads, put yourself in the position of your readers who want to read a useful and unique information. Ads can be annoying if its cluttered over the page but it can complement your content if done a proper way. Within your web pages, your content should be emphasized and not these ads.

Maximize and Monetize

The key to maximizing your potentials in blogging and earning at the same time can be done through encouraging and keeping your visitors. You could have created a good blog entry with different ads properly placed but if no one get to see it, then its worthless.

Blogs: The basics

Google Adsense is a powerful marketing tool which allows its users to monetize their websites in a time-saving, hassle-free manner. Many people are under the false impression that they must have their own website in order to monetize their blogging activities. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Here’s how to monetize your blog without starting your own website.

Step 1:

First, you must sign up for Google Adsense. In order to do so, simply go to Google’s homepage and start an account with them.

Step 2:

Go to “My Account” under your Google Adsense account, and then note your pub number. This will be a number which will begin with “pub-” and then have a series of digits. It will be in the following format: pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Copy this number down for later reference as you will need it to help monetize your blog.

Step 3:

Next, you must find a website that allows its users to monetize their blogs and shares its marketing revenues. The vast majority of these sites do so by integrating each users Adsense account into the website. In order to find one, simply go back to Google’s search engine and type in “blog monetize revenue share.” This will return a host of different websites from which you can pick, such as PrintnPost.com. Feel free to pick more than one site, but also make sure that the site you pick lists a competitive revenue sharing rate. They should usually offer to share at least 50% of marketing proceeds with you.

Step 4:

After setting up your account with this new blogging website, you will generally be asked for your Google Adsense information. This is where the “pub” number from Step 2 enters the equation. Give that number to your new blogging website and this will monetize your blog posts.

Step 5:

Blog! Go ahead and share your opinions. Remember, the Google Adsense advertisements will be targeted specifically at whatever you write about, so make sure to write about things that are easy to advertise in order to make as much money as possible.

Conclusion:

That is the basic methodology for monetizing your blogging with Adsense, without having to go through the hassle, expense, and continued upkeep that is associated with starting your own website. Remember, while your blogging may not immediately pay off with huge financial rewards, if you stick with it then you’ll eventually start to see a significant stream of revenue from your efforts.

Blogging for Fun and Profit

A blog is an online version of diary where people write and display almost anything – their opinions, photos, jokes, thoughts for the day and more. People also share stories about their pets, their passion for soccer, stamps… the limit is only your imagination!

In the last few years, blogging has emerged to become a much more meaningful activity than simply maintaining a personal diary. People use it to advertise their products and services, in fact, quite a number of companies even create their online presence by using a blog instead of a website.

Create Your Own Blog

Starting a blog is free. You can create one at http://www.blogger.com – a free service from Google Inc. You don’t need to register a domain name or buy hosting. When you sign up at Blogger, everything happens online. Your blog will be hosted by Blogger and you get an URL like http://yourdomain.blogspot.com. You simply log in to your account and start to write. This is much easier and cheaper than buying your own domain and hosting, then hiring someone to do the web design, writing and coding.

Another free blogging service available online is WordPress which is also very popular and easy to use. WordPress supports more features than Blogger while allowing you to customize your blog with various plug-in. You can check it out at http://wordpress.org.

Monetize Your Blog

While blogging for your own interest, you can in fact maximize the potential of your blog for many marketing or commercial purposes.

The quickest and easiest way to turn a blog into a money-making enterprise is to include advertising on your blog. This can be done with contextual ad programs like Adsense – an advertising program by Google. Basically, you get paid when people click on the ads displayed on your website or blog. Google Adsense program is free to sign up. You can visit http://www.google.com/adsense to learn more about the rules and guidelines of the program. Other Adsense type ads that you can use for blog monetizing are SearchFeed, AdBrite, and Yahoo’s Publisher’s Network (YPN).

Affiliate program is another potential way to make money blogging. By focusing on the subject of your blog post, you can promote relevant products from cost per sale affiliate programs like ClickBank and Amazon. You can write a review about the product or service with your affiliate links embedded inside so you get the commission whenever a sale is made.

Boost Your Blog Traffic

Blogs are quickly indexed by search engines, but you need to update it regularly. Search engines love fresh content and regular update will ensure that your website is indexed and ranked high up as well. The higher up it appears, the more traffic will come to your site, which means more sales. You can actively participate in forums discussion or post comments on other blogs to get more link back traffic.

Whether you use your blog for fun or for work, remember that it’s a highly potential tool any which way. So what are you waiting for? Start blogging away right now!

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