How to Earn Income from Your Blog
Originally published at Blogging Basics 101
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could post
our little hearts out, sit back, and watch the dollars roll in? The
truth is that there are very few people getting wealthy from blogging.
If you’re doing it solely for the bucks, you’re probably going to be
disappointed.
There are, however, a few ways to generate a bit of bloggy income.
The most obvious way to earn income is by having ads in your
sidebar, or elsewhere on your page. You can try selling these
yourself–a lot of work, but it works for some people. Many bloggers
have had success using an ad service that sells the ads for you, giving
you a percentage of the income. (They give you the code to insert on
your blog, and your ads will appear in that spot. Any ad service worth
its salt will offer you pleny of editorial freedom to block certain
types of ads from your blog.)
BlogAds is
another favorite of many bloggers. You have to be invited by an
existing BlogAds member to participate (though not every BlogAds member
is authorized to give out invitations). BlogAds is attractive because
it can be highly specialized. A company can buy an ad on JUST YOUR
BLOG, not on every member of the network. Also, in BlogAds, you can
group your blog into “hives” with other blogs–for example, Christian
Blogs, Tech Blogs, Southern Blogs, Pet Blogs, etc.
PayPerPost
has been popping up around the blogosphere lately. I’ll confess to not
knowing much about it–I’ve been a little turned off at the notion of
being paid to “plug” a product or site actually in the content of my
blog. A sidebar ad is clearly an ad, but a post? That’s walking into
some murky waters with your readers, who want to be able to trust you!
GoogleAds
is yet another ad service some bloggers are having success with. It
works by “reading” what kind of subject matter you’re writing about and
then posting links on a similar subject.
Amazon Associates
is a tool I’d highly recommend to anyone who blogs about books. Once
you set up an account with them, they help you build links back to
their specific products. If anyone visits Amazon through one these
links, you receive a referral fee from anything they bought in that
session. It’s very easy to do–their web site will walk you right through it.
As you would expect, earning ad revenue is based entirely on blog
traffic. The more traffic you have, the more you can earn. If you’re
a blogger with low traffic, but you’d like to generate some income, my
best advice would be to focus first on building up your traffic before
going after ads. Write well, and consistenly. Consider your
audience. Join webrings. Once you’re feeling more established in your
traffic, then you will likely find adding in these ad features much
easier.
Editor’s Pick by Kelby Carr of KelbyCarr.com. I think many bloggers are now trying to figure out how to monetize their love of blogging, and I love that this covers some of the main (and the simple to set up) options. I also like that Shannon, from Rocks in my Dryer, explained it all in a very simple, straight-forward manner ideal for beginning bloggers.
Editor
Kelby Carr
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August 11th, 2008
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Category:
Advertising, Monetization, Author- Blogging Basics 101, Business, Entrepreneurs, Channel- Tech & MetaBlogging, Editor- Kelby Carr, Marketing, Promotion, Branding, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Women in Tech, blogging
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I don’t think BlogHer ads is accepting new bloggers right now. Just new advertisers.
Easy money does produce greed. But knowing that long time earnings are better than some quick earnings and your account getting deleted will prevent you from clicking on your ads again.