Blog Profit Swipe File

If you are interested in making money with your blog, you will want to sign up for an account at some of the more popular services that offer blog based projects and assignments to those who are both new and established bloggers.

For many, these services offer a great way to supplement their existing income while they continue to grow their blog and develop a reputation in their niche markets, while others rely exclusively on these programs to pay for their hosting costs and expand their business online.

To help you get started, choose a handful of programs below and register for your free account. Then, explore the opportunities to determine what offers will work best for your blog.

Expo Active

As a publisher of ExpoActive, you agree to display ads on your website in return for financial compensation, when you provide relevant and quality traffic to their advertisers.

Ad Brite

• Create an account for free.
• Create your custom ad zone.
• Copy and paste the code to your site.
• After your zone is approved—within 24 hours—targeted ads will start running on your site.

BidVertiser
You get paid for every visitor that clicks on an ad. Our goal is to enable you to make as much as possible from your advertising space, by letting advertisers bid on your ad space. We pay monthly, either by check, or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of only $10

Double Click, Inc
Drive revenue by making inventory more valuable and selling more of it. Make your premium inventory more valuable and your advertisers more loyal by driving quality traffic to your site. Improve campaign performance with our advanced search, rich media and optimization tools

Indeed
The Indeed Jobroll is an easy way to add fresh and relevant job listings to your website or blog. The Jobroll can be added to your site in minutes, is continuously updated with new pay-per-click job links and can be targeted to the interests and locations of your users. You get paid when your users click on the jobs in your Jobroll – there’s no need to sell job postings or deal with clients.

Chitika
Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue.

Quigo Network (Adsonar, Feedpoint)

What may begin as incremental income can quickly become a significant portion of your overall ad revenue. Meet demand for performance-based products and attract new advertisers. Watch your revenues grow.

Value Click, Inc

Generate maximum revenue from all standard in-page and out-of-page formats, rich media, video, e-mail lists and registration paths.

Yahoo Publisher Network
Display contextual advertising on your website via the Yahoo! Publisher network.

• Increase your revenue by monetizing the content of your web site.
• Satisfy your users by offering them ad content related to their interests.
• Leverage our knowledge of how best to optimize your contextual advertising.
• Get paid quickly via a convenient PayPal payment option and earn a return on the money in your PayPal account by depositing your funds in PayPal’s Money Market Reserve Fund.

eXelate Targeting eXchange
By integrating a simple tag on your website, you connect your visitors with leading ad networks who wish to deliver more targeted ads to them when they leave you. You don’t need to use any of your ad inventory to generate a totally new revenue stream. And, since we never collect personally identifiable information, or build profiles, your visitor relationship is assured to remain privacy-friendly.

Adify
You have full editorial control over the entire process. More revenue, none of the usual compromises.

• Set prices for every ad space and redirect unsold inventory
• Review and approve every ad
• Support CPM, CPC, and Sponsorship pricing

Blog Ads
Blogads.com is a network of influential bloggers who collaborate to promote and sell blog advertising.

Making Money With Your Blog

Profit blogging is a popular method of making an income online these days and even if you are new to the world of blogging, you can jump in on the action by setting up your blog so that it’s offering products through affiliate promotions, as well as with contextual advertising via Google Adsense, or Text Link Ads.

If your blog is a popular one, you could feature merchandise through services like www.PrintFection.com , www.CafePress.com or www.LuLu.com and let your visitors show their support while getting something in return.

If your blog is new and you are still establishing an online identity with your visitors, you could start with paid content, such as by offering ebooks, guides, reports or other downloads.  For many, developing their own products is a great way to make money with their site however if you aren’t a skilled writer or aren’t comfortable creating your own product, you could browse marketplaces such as www.PayDotCom.com or www.ClickBank.com and select products that you could showcase on your website, earning revenue through commissions.

Once your blog starts to generate traffic and a following, you could integrate services such as Text Marks, which allows you to charge your blog readers for instant text alerts whenever your blog is updated, and of course, you could try your hand at “blog begging”, by asking your visitors for donations such as the “Buy Me A Beer” (or other drink product) plugin, or by posting your Amazon Wish List for all to see.

You can also make money with your blog by simple publishing advertisements, through networks such as Yahoo Publishers, Value Click, Tribal Fusion or Chitika.

And finally, if you are willing to roll up your sleeves and do a bit of work, you could make money through blog services such as by accepting projects and assignments from blog marketplaces like: http://www.bloggerjobs.biz/or http://www.bloggersforhire.com/

You can check out the “Blog Profit Swipe File” for details on additional income opportunities.

Blog Monetization

Before you decide to monetize your blog, you will want to evaluate the options available and choose one that blends with your target audience, blog focus and overall theme. In truth, not every blog is easily monetized especially if your audience isn’t fond of commercialized websites, which is what yours will be once you tag in a few modules and integrate a handful of sponsor ads.

If you are sure you want to go this route however, there are many opportunities available to you if you are interested in being paid to blog, as well as additional options as far as making money with the advertising space available on your blog. You can feature sponsors, JV partners, affiliate products through marketplaces like ClickBank or can integrate Google Adsense throughout your navigation system, such as by featuring it in the side bar area of your blog.

In reality, you truly can make a decent income with your blog, as many bloggers are reporting $100 per day Adsense earnings, and even more with affiliate based campaigns. To join the ranks of pro bloggers, however, you need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and dig into the daily grind of creating relevant content, link bait, interesting posts as well as improving on your existing skill set to ensure your blog is taking advantage of the many tools and utilites to increase user interaction and return visits.

Some of these elements include:

• RSS Newsletter/Syndication
• List Building (with autoresponders)
• Trackbacks, Pings, Feed Aggregators
• Blog Carnivals and community participation
• Utilizing SEO plugins to help your blog rank
• Social bookmarketing, contextual advertising

And more..

While you don’t have to be a techy, or a professional web developer to make money with blogs, you should know the basics of blogging including your blog structure and the different tools and resources that will make your blog monetizing even easier.

Other elements could include podcasting, creating videos for display on your blog (or pulling videos from YouTube with blog based video plugins), or you could create your own weekly newsletter that offers tips and resources based on your blogs content. The more interactive you can make your blog, the more likely people will return.

Part of the reason why many bloggers fail when trying to make money blogging is by simply not understanding the various elements that successful bloggers focus on every single day. You need to make a significant effort to learn as much as you can about basic (and advanced) blogging so that you are easily able to take your blog to a whole new level.

Here are a few resources to help you get started:

Contextual Advertising:

Google Adsense

Chitika

Clicksor

AdSonar

Yahoo Publisher Network

Adbrite Marketing

Text Link Ads:
http://www.text-link-ads.com

Blog for Success and Money

Blogging seems to be the prime topic of everyone’s discussion these days. Blogs appear to grow more popular by the month, as they continue to expand across the internet. A major reason for this increase is due to the prosperous benefits that come along with blogging. When done correctly, implementing this popular method of online communication into your website could bring forth much success. Many of the internet’s most prominent businesses realize the importance of a blog; some say it is a must. This powerful tool is much more dynamic than the traditional website. What has made it so attractive is the convenience and freedom of user interaction. It is practically an open forum where individuals get to express their opinions and receive a wide range of feedback If you are familiar with the concept, then blogging may seem simple. While starting a blog is no difficult task by any means, turning yours into a money-making machine requires a dedicated effort.

Monetizing your blogIn order of a blog to generate income, you must develop a strong strategy for monetizing it. There are several different venues which you can employ to monetize your blog: · AdSense· Advertising space for banner ads · Donations · Affiliate programs · Paid third-party product reviews / pushes · Selling your own services or products Deciding on what monetizing strategy you employ depends upon the goals for your blog and its target audience. Each target audience will respond different to your different monetizing strategies; for example, a humanitarian blog audience may be more receptive to donations, while a cooking blog audience would click through your banner ads for an organic recipe cookbook. You should develop an initial strategy, keeping your targeted audience’s psychology in mind. The design and layout of your blog should reflect your monetizing strategy; for example, if you will be employing AdSense, then you may want to use a column layout with clean colors and lines. You want to ensure that your monetizing efforts are optimized in the layout of your website. As you progress with your blog, do not be afraid to test the water and adjust your monetizing strategies based upon feedback and performance results.

Generating traffic You may have the best blog and monetizing strategy in the world, but without traffic, your bank account will not grow whatsoever. To begin making money with a blog, one must first generate traffic. Establishing a stable list of loyal readers has been easier for some than others, but it is the key to running a successful blog. When you are first beginning your blog endeavors, it may seem daunting to generate traffic when there is not a single visitor to your website. However, with a bit of strategy, you can quickly build traffic and a returning base of readers.

Write what you know. You should consider writing your blog on a topic of your specialty or passion. The more you know about the subject matter of your blog, the better; you will be able to establish yourself as an authority and readers will come to learn from you. Content and traffic have a very strong symbiotic relationship. Remember what you learned about in advertising class in college? Viral marketing is the most effective form of advertising – period. If people like your blogs, they will refer it to their friends, and in the internet, friends can add up to millions of people.

Regularly updated content. Yes, you have heard it before, and you will hear it again – content is king! Readers will flock to your blog if you provide them with insightful, unique, and relevant content that is updated regularly. In addition, when you consistently publish quality content that is rich in keywords, the search engines will frequent your site to update their indexing, which then leads to more traffic coming into your blog. The better, more frequent posts you publish, the more other sites will link to you, thus again bringing in more traffic and increasing your search engine rankings.

Linking with related blogs. Linking is another way to generate traffic and add to your blog’s success. You want your site to be viewed by as many readers as possible. Exchanging links with another blogger is a great way to make that happen. Surf the web for similar blogs that relate to your specialty and host the same audience you are seeking. Linking relative sites on your page also displays credibility to readers. They will view you as a main source, referring other interested parties to your blog for that relative info. Friendly links also improve search engine ranking and increase the chances of someone stumbling across your blog.All novice bloggers looking to make money should know this: success is hard work. Devotion and great patience is required if you want a blog to work for you. The most comforting fact is that many people are taking advantage of this tool and creating mass revenue. While nothing is promised, applying sound search engine optimization strategies to your blog speaks volumes in the way of success. Combining this with good old fashion communication can help return profitable results in the long journey with your blog.

9 Easy Ways to Make Money With Your Blog

You always can make money Blogging guidance in a variaty of ways, and in this article I want to share veil you up to nine 9 ways domination which you burden to make money blogging.

Here is the 9 ways to make money with your blog :

1. Make Money Blogging by Selling Advertising Space – Before the advent of Blogs, we have e – zines and selling advertising space on ezines was a popular plan to earn extra money. If you race your own Blog, you importance charter others patronize imprint your Blogs camouflage bunting ads, solo ads, sponsor ads, classifieds and since on.

Forthwith that we keep Blogs, you subjection repeat the alike racket model that e-zine publishers undertake, that of selling advertising space. Besides placing advertisers ads on your Blog, you obligation again make money Blogging by placing Google Adsense into your Blog.

2. Make Money by providing specialized services like owing to Blog hosting or latitude up Blog – You burden besides earn money blogging by providing mechanical services undifferentiated since gob people to set up their Blogs or providing your own Blog hosting service.

One sample of this is www.typepad.com. This is a Blog hosting service provider that charges a annual charge. Typepad lets you sire your Blog and they will host your Blog for you, and add you cache a quantity of Blog drift.

3. Make Money Blogging by setttin up joint essay marketing – Joint Dare marketing is a competent marketing program full plate by many top online marketers. At last how joint flyer works is this: You befriend person B ‘ s merchandise to your subscriber and customer catalogue, and you arouse a cut from whatever sale that follows from this promotion.

You liability promote the principle of joint jeopardy marketing to Blogs thanks to whole. If you posses a substantial readership to your Blog, you power besides sponsor or endorse certain wares to your Blog readers and this street, and split the profits from the sales generated. This is extended system to make money blogging.

4. Make Money Blogging from using the Membership model – Over stretch, if your blog has lots of postings and serve supereminent merit content, you obligatoriness consider turning bodily into a membership site and charge access for undoubted, further giving you extended approach

5. Make Money Blogging by turning your produce into – Major plan dominion which you contract make money blogging is to repackage your Blog freight into an e – book or an audio product and sell positive. For paradigm, if you bound your own Podcasting representation or an ‘ online radio manifestation ‘, you constraint feeble compile your podcast recordings into a Record compiliation and sell solid.

6. Earn Money Blogging by swapping blogs – You posses heard of ad swapping when absolute comes to e – zine publishing, post publishers publish each other ‘ s ads dominion their own e – zines. This journey, you save on adveritising costs. You burden repeat the corresponding paste-up to Blogs, as swap ads on Blogs as strong. Thence instead of palmy augmentation sample, you inspire to direct, which factor spare money because you to spend!

7. Perfect Money Blogging by turning your blog contented attentiveness RSS feeds again ante up positive whereas number one feeds – Your blog lading constraint embody tainted care an RSS keep. If the merry is admirable, you pledge reconnaissance seeing net businesses that are looking now great gratified for related topics and sell their feed to them.

8. Make Money Blogging by hale, application! – Hey, who is stopping you from putting a PayPal donation jar or button on your Blog? Attached all, proficient are lots of easy nation out finished you sense.

9. Make Money Blogging owing to an Straighten Marketer – Added journey you burden make money blogging is by promoting other persons ‘ s goods on your Blog. This is again proclaimed in that range marketing. In straighten marketing, you influence paid a commission when someone clicks on your rank link and makes a purchase. Depending on the subject of your Blog, you incubus speak for goods that solve individuals ‘ s problems.

For lesson, I had a subscriber who asked me how coed burden blog about BALI and make money from blogging about BALI. I requited reserve her that firstly, feasibly mouse might wish to get-up-and-go calling instead of targeting the broad grade of “BALI”, and using the quotation of a Tasteless BALI TOUR, which is a recess by itself, filly incubus origin a blog on Showy BALI TOUR, providing valuable tip-off since whole since recommended solutions and goods to the upkeep and maintenance of the topic.

How to run a successful blog

The most important factor in determining if your blog will be successful or not is whether you have the perseverance to make it so. First, you must learn how to run a successful blog, and then you must follow through with determined, continuous action.

How to Run a Successful Blog – Topic Selection

A personal diary about your family foibles is not the best topic for a successful blog. You must focus a topic that is popular enough to interest other people. This is called your niche. Niches can be anything from internet marketing to scrapbooking, caring for a pet cat to educational choices in Nebraska. The topic, or niche, can be as general as specific as you want. It just has to be something others search for.

How to Run a Successful Blog – Design

A successful blog must be attractive and professional looking. You can make a blog with one of the standard templates offered by Blogger or WordPress or you can tweak it for a more unique look. Whatever you decide to do, make sure the blog is attractive and readable.

How to Run a Successful Blog – Post Regularly

A blog will only be successful if you make a posting schedule and stick to it. People will not subscribe to your feed or come back to read the blog if there are never any new posts to see. Once a day blog posting is ideal for keeping the reader’s interest, though you can be successful posting once a week as well. Make each blog post on topic and informative. Add humor, graphics, and video to catch even more attention.

How to Run a Successful Blog – Monetize It

While some bloggers do not care about making money, a truly successful blog creates some income. The easiest way to monetize your blog is with contextual advertising blogs like Google Adsense. You can also use affiliate marketing to sell other’s products or information or offer your own products for sale.

With quality design, regular posting, and money-making campaigns in place, you can run a successful blog. The last tip – and perhaps the most important one – is marketing. While some may find your blog on the search engines, you can increase your success by doing a few simple things. Submit your blog to blog directories. Submit your RSS or atom feeds to feed directories. Link to your blog in email, forums, and on other blogs and websites.

And persevere. It is hard to create a successful blog in a few weeks, but if you keep working steadily, the traffic will build and so will your income and your success.

Don’t blog as much!

There seems to be an obsession among bloggers about … blogging. But are blogs all they’re cracked up to be? Can one earn a full-time income blogging, all things considered? Or, more importantly, is that the best thing you can do?

I’ve been blogging for years, but I don’t allow my blog to stand in the way of the purpose of the blog: monetization. I love blogging, and realize that it’s an outrageously essential tool to accomplishing my financial goals. However, to focus completely on blogging without emphasizing the pillars of online-monetization is a mistake literally thousands of people make every day.

Of course, some niches are best served with a blog and not a website. Some topics simply are based upon timely relevance. I’m not saying blogging should die. I’m saying that every blogger should consider his financial reasons for blogging, and then base his business plan on the those conclusions.

Through the years, I blogged way more at first than now. The less I blog, the more links I generate to my static content, the better my content becomes and the more money I end up generating.

There are three basic reasons to spend less time focusing on constantly dreaming up content for a blog:

3. Get More Links

Article Directories should be at the foundation of every website/blog trying to get a foothold in its niche. For SEO, this should be obvious. Instead of writing an average blog post, submit it to dozens of article directories and get dozens of relevant links to your website. The possibilities are limitless as to how you can turn an okay post into an outstanding link.

Sometimes less is more.

2. Write Stronger Content

Blogging less means that you focus more on the posts that you do make. Instead of having 3 okay posts, make one essential post. Instead of having a year of blogging about random points regarding your niche, write 20 or so outrageously wonderful articles, and make those the pillars of your website.

There are two reasons to want content that is so much stronger than the typical blog post: organic SEO and repeat visitors. Organic SEO is a fancy way of saying that the better your content is, the more people will love it, and spread the word. Repeat visitors is a given. If your content is fantastic, people will come back later to read what you have to say.

Sometimes less is more.

1. Make More Money

Blogging is all about making money. Most blogs focus on ads on the sidebar. For larger blogs, this is a fantastic way to earn an income. When you have hundreds of thousands of visitors, selling ads is a piece of cake.

But for smaller potatoes, the amount of money from the traffic is harder. If one only has a few hundred subscribers, monetizing repeat traffic by selling repeat impressions with ads becomes incredibly difficult.

For many blogs, it would be economically advantageous to focus on selling a product or some other CPA monetization strategy. CPA + Residual income = success, regardless of how much traffic one gets. If all of the pages on a website are very specific and at the end include a selling pitch for a common affiliate product with a fantastic pay-out method, the monetization potential suddenly sky-rockets.

Sometimes less is more.

Should we give up blogging? Of course not. Blogging is a fantastic resource for readers, and is a great way of keeping people who enjoy your content coming back for more. It’s also a great way to constantly add new content to your website.

Like most things, we have to evaluate whether focusing all of our writing time on blogging is the best way to generate a revenue. For some niches, it might be — for others, it could be the worst thing one could do. Take a step back, look at your monetization plan, and ask yourself — should I be focusing on blogging, or should I be focusing on another way to monetize? Sometimes less is more.

Blog Tips – Five Ways To Make Money

There are many easy ways to make money from your blog. In this article, we’ll cover just five of them. Since blogs have become mainstream, new opportunities to monetize your blog are becoming available every day.

Don’t have a blog? Then you’re missing out on an easy income stream. Many people are turning their blog – or a stable of blogs – into a profitable home business.

So let’s look at five easy ways you can make money by blogging.

1. Sell advertising

Since blogs are content Web sites, they can be monetized in much the same way as print publications, with advertising.

When you sell advertising on your blog, your blogging becomes a matter of developing and leasing real estate. Just as in a magazine, the more pages your blog has, the more advertising you can display. So if you choose this form of blog monetization, your primary focus needs to be on creating pages (writing blog posts), on which you can display advertising.

There are many Web advertising services which will sell the space on your blog for you, but you can also sell the space yourself.

2. Sell a product

Another popular income stream is to sell a product from a blog. If you’re only selling a single product, your blog can be smaller than one on which you sell advertising.

Affiliate marketers, who sell products and services on commission, create small blogs of around five pages (posts) to sell a particular product.

Blogs are perfect venues for affiliate marketers because they’re fast to create, and get indexed quickly. This means that you can start getting free traffic from the search engines and make sales within days.

For this way of making money blogging, your focus is on creating many blogs, each selling one product.

3. Sell a service

If you’re selling a service – you’re a writer, designer, or Web developer, a blog is an ideal venue on which to sell those services. However, as the popular Tin Basher blog, (it sells sheet metal fabrication) shows, you can sell any business or service from a blog.

4. Blog for others

If you enjoy blogging, you can blog for others. Many businesses want to create and maintain a blog, but they don’t have the staff to do this in-house, so they hire professional bloggers.

There are many “blog job” sites online which display listings of blog jobs, and blog jobs are often advertised on the Web’s huge job hunting sites too.

Of course, you can also advertise your availability to blog for others on your own blog.

5. Create and sell blogs

Blog “flipping”, that is, creating blogs strictly for the purpose of selling them, has become popular over the past year. Many people want a blog, but don’t want to go through the hassle of creating one for themselves, so blog flippers create blogs to sell them.

If you’re interested in flipping, you can create several blogs in a week, and sell them all. This is a great way of making money blogging.

So there you have five ways of making money blogging. Blogs are a perfect home business, because there’s little or no capital outlay or startup costs. I wish you much success with your blogs.

An introduction to blogging

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!

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.

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