Blogging is much more about communication and kids are all about communication. Blogging is dirt cheap and highly effective marketing. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information. Blogging is more about speaking out and meeting other people that agree with your narrow point of view. Blogging is difficult, but I have to agree that it IS worth the time.
You have to make sure that making money from your blog directly is your goal. For example, for this blog direct income isn t my goal. I didn t have ads at all untli recently, and the only reason I added them was to use the ad network management application I ve been working on called RMX Direct. It s quite possible that your blogging goals may just to network, write about something you re interested in, or serve some business purpose that isn t direct income generation, and why the majority of people who try end up not generating significant income.
With that out of the way, let s get started:
1. Contextual Advertising
Surprise, surprise. Advertising is easily the most popular blog monetization tactic, mostly due to it being the easiest thing to implement. Advertising comes in many forms, and contextual advertising is the most popular due to Google Adsense and it s general success with blogs and niche sites.
I m going to assume everyone reading this is familiar with it, but I think it should be mentioned that too many bloggers assume that Adsense is the best solution for their blog. For some blogs and topics it works great, for others, not very well at all.
My advice is to not limit your blog to one ad network or just one form of advertising. Other contextual options include the Yahoo Publisher Network, Chitika, Clicksor, AdSonar, and others. It s not easy to manually test all these though if you re shuffling ad tags around and randomly allocating your impressions to them, using a ad network management tool like RMX Direct can help you manage, evaluate, and control your various ad networks.
2. Display Advertising Like Google Adsense
As I mentioned above, contextual networks aren t always the best solution for blogs. In some cases there aren t enough advertisers in niche topics, and in others the users just isn t likely to click. In this case, you want to be working with ad networks that provide CPM display advertising. This means you get paid something for every ad viewed, opposed to only getting paid per click.
Just like with contextual networks, it s important to use multiple display ad networks to get more variety from your ads, to not let any one network control your inventory, and to make sure you re earning the most amount of money possible.
3.Affiliate Links
One of the older web monetization methods is still as good today as it s always been. If you ve got a blog in a specific area, there s a very large chance that there are companies out there that sell products or services your users are interested in. You can earn some nice income recommending or linking to those products.
Amazon.com is probably the most common affiliate merchant used by bloggers, but I d advise finding other unique merchants who may pay better and be more specific to your topic. Amazon is always there as an option, but you re more likely to get more help from the merchant if you go with a smaller company.
Another nice thing about affiliate links is that they fit well with quality content. Reviewing products and services for your users is valuable content, and if you can make money off it as well it s a great combination. A word of warning though that you shouldn t change your reviews or be biased due to the fact you can make money off a referral.
While traffic also helps for affiliate links, it can sometimes be an easier way to generate income without high traffic levels like advertising requires. As an example I did a review of a web analytics application a couple of years ago, and this blog had very little traffic at that point. I referred two sales through that review though that still earn me $150 a month every month two years later.
4.Selling or Promonting Your Content (Ebooks, Videos, DVDs)
If you ve got great content, another option is to package it and sell it. There are numerous bloggers who have created ebooks and even real books based on their blog content and made great income selling them. You can also expand to infoproducts like videos, DVDs, audio CDs, and printed books on demand.
This can take some significant work and it requires great content to actually sell, but it can be a nice income stream that lasts a long time.
Conclusion
It definitely takes some work to monetize your site well, and having good traffic really helps out. Work on building a blog with a solid userbase, and you should be on your way to generating income using any of the methods above. Good luck, and please share any blog monetization experiences you have in the comments.
It definitely takes some work to monetize your site well, and having good traffic really helps out. Work on building a blog with a solid userbase, and you should be on your way to generating income using any of the methods above. Good luck, and please share any blog monetization experiences you have in the comments.