Making Money From Your Blog

There are people who blog to let the world know what they are up, to keep in touch with others or to share an experience or knowledge. Then there are those who blog because they want to make money.

While your primary intent for starting a blog should resemble the first set of people, it isn't always a bad thing to be compensated for it. Here are some ways that you can monetarily benefit with advertising.

The biggest thing that you can do is advertising. It use to be easy to do this in the days of AdSence and cost per click. However, the cost per click companies are becoming few and far between. The trend now is to get paid for actions. Actions can include signing up for a service or a list or having someone actually purchase something that was advertised on your site.

To get the actions you need to have;

• Traffic to inspire the clicks
• The proper layout to get the ads noticed
• The proper ads that people want to take action on.

To actually get paid;

• You need to reach a certain monetary point with the middle man handling the ads and you, the publisher.
• You need to conform to rules and regulations of the middle man.

Where to get the ads
It use to be easy in the days of AdSense to say start with Google. However, since the announcement of the retirement of AdSense, things have changed.

Other sources for Ads


WidgetBucks actually has cost per click advertising. They have some good products, not as many as Google. On the downside, sometimes their widgets can slow down a load time.


Amazon is the granddaddy of advertising for bloggers. They have a good variety of widgets to choose from. On the downside, check their payment policy before you sign up to make sure that it is something that you want.

Other cost per click- The Knot and Marchex.

Sell your own spots

When you get consistent traffic, you can sell your own advertising spots. The easiest way to do this is to use one of the standard sizes for ads to make a box, say 120X90, and inside the box state "your ad here" with a link to you. What to charge is up to you but, consider how much you would be normally be making with an ad from a middle man in the same spot.

Other sources for advertising-

• Product reviews on your blog.
• Advertisement trades with other bloggers.
• Affiliate program through single companies (check out the bottom of their websites )
• Advertise for product reviews and advertisements in your newsletters
• Don't rule out the local small business if your blog is a locally focused one

Warnings about advertising;

• Limit the amount that you have obviously placed on your site. Too many is a huge turnoff to visitors and an instant cheapening to your site and authority.
• Read and abide by policies from the advertisers and affiliate programs. Take note of whether or not your action and purchase or one from your ip address counts or if it can get you booted.
• Also, what is their payment policy? Do you need to reach a reachable amount of money to get paid and can it be from multiple advertisers? What is the payment form?
• If you do a product review, actually try and test the product. You can have negative repercussions if you promote a crummy product.
  

Affiliate Marketing

With the uproar over Google phasing out their AdSense affiliate marketing, many bloggers are looking elsewhere. The truth is that most affiliate marketing companies have phased out their cost per click plans. The reason- not only did it cost them money but, there was some fraudulent clicking going on. Some people took advantage of the situation and would place a "click here" over the ad link or hire a company to click for them.

Affiliate marketing is an online advertising channel in which advertisers pay publishers, such as bloggers, to show their advertisements on their site. 'Cost per Click' would pay the blogger or host for every click that was generated fri their site whether or not the clicker followed through beyond the click.

The New Affiliate Marketing from Google will now only pay for for results, such as a visitor making a purchase or filling out a form.

While it may be easy for bloggers to get 10 clicks a week from ther 50 or so visits they get, getting an action may be a whole different ballgame. This is why the average blogger is concerned. Few bloggers actually get the 10,000 visits per day, an arbitrary amount which would definitly see a follow through or two.

• When searching for an affiliate program consider the following;
• How much will you earn per action
• Will the payment be in cash, check or merchandise credit?
• At what level will you actually receive payment? $100? $50?
• What kind of businesses does the affiliate marketer represent?

There are actually quite a few affiliate programs. Now that AdSense is paying per action, other programs seem more attractive because they are offering the same or similar incentives.
Here are some to check out.

1. Pay Per Click
2. Affiliate Guide.com
3. Shoplet.com
4. Best Buy
5. Comp USA
6. Commission Junction
7. Children's Books
8. My New Bag
9. eBay
10. eFashion House
11. Gap
12. Old Navy
13. Office Depot
14. Staples
15. Office Max
16. Walmart
17. Amazon
18. Affiliate Programs/Children's Clothing
19. Peets Coffee and Tea
20. Overstock.com