Monetize Blogs With Paid Advertising
When you’re running a serious blog with quality content, chances are at some point you want to monetize it in some way. Adsense ads, banners, links, donations, reviews or affiliate programs, whatever.
But if you take the jump to monetize your blog, it implies that you’ll need readers first. After all, who would see your offers and click on the ads without visitors, right? And the only way to get visitors is to generate traffic.
So, before even thinking about making money with your blog, you first should create great value in the form of quality content and a kind of community of readers that return frequently to read and post their comments.
Make sense?
Now, the question is: when do you start monetizing your blog?
Daniel Socco of Daily Blog Tips answers that question as a guest poster on Problogger.net: When Should I Put Advertising on My Blog?.
That is, Daniel doesn’t give an exact time table, but states that any monetizing efforts before 6 months of existence is too early.
I took my time with this blog. I started it back in 2004 just as an experiment, but really began blogging seriously about a year ago. All I did was post quality articles and market them to get visitors and RSS and email subscribers.
My first little steps to monetize this blog was an occasional promotion as an affiliate for some excellent products that I strongly believe in and use myself. It’s the easiest way to start monetizing your blog. And probably the most profitable.
Still, most content posted was free advice on the topics listed under categories. Readership is growing, slowly, -dang, I have so many other things to do- but steadily.
A couple of months ago, I tweaked the template, so I was able to show some banner ads in the sidebar and make money with them. My second little step.
The reason for that were a couple of emails I received for banner and link advertising quotations. Imagine, people asking for fees to place ads on my blog!
Next, because I want to keep in control and therefore do not like to use an external service, I had to select an ad management system.
Since I took Yaro Starak’s BlogMastermind, I first checked out the program he uses as described in Making money from your website using advertising.
I briefly tested it, but then read a post by Andy Beard about Oiopublisher (amongst other systems) and found that much easier to implement.
The funny thing is, as soon as I implemented Oiopublisher, I immediately got a customer, even before I was able to test this system online. They did it for me and it worked like charm; not a finger to lift!
Since Oiopublisher also comes with paid link management, I can add that in a blink too and that’s what I just did.
The next step could be paid reviews, since Oiopublisher manages that too, but I’m not sure about that strategy. Some bloggers ask $50 or as low as $30 for a review and they probably create such posts in less than an hour.
I can’t.
I need at least several hours to make an honest review. Spending that much time forces me to ask at least $150 for a review, if not more. That may be too early for this blog.
An alternative is to add Adsense, but personally I’m not that fond of ads in my posts. Also, although I must admit that they probably will work, I’m not sure about the proceeds.
So, I’m back to the resources I used to set up a monetization strategy. And the first one is BlogMasterMind, the excellent and complete blogging course, already mentioned above.
And of course the posts from the most successful bloggers on the Net. Like Marlon Sanders used to say: “Do not create mediocrity when you can copy genius”.
Here are some of them:
- How to Make Money From Your Blog
- How I Make Money Online Part 4 - Blogging
- How to Make Money Blogging
- Make Money Blogging
What do you think?
Post your comments below.
Tags: advertise, affordable internet marketing, make money blogging, monetizing blogs
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June 24th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
OIO is so easy to use though I would highly suggest making the link to me less prominent and to include an affiliate link to the plugin.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Thanks Andy, most appreciated.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Always great tips Andy… Thanks so much. I’ve been struggling with the Paid Advertising as well. Time will tell!
June 24th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Thanks Andy
i was working with google ads but i think im gonna give this a try.
June 25th, 2008 at 5:01 am
You are totally right, monetizing a blog should come last, but unfortunately most of us tend to monetize way too early.
I have not heard about Oiopublisher before. This is something new I have learned on your post today. Thank you
June 25th, 2008 at 8:55 am
My sister didn’t even realize when her blog traffic consumed 100GB of her shared hosting bandwidth in one month before the hosting company contacted her to ask for an upgrade.
Only after that she tried Google AdSense, and is making four-figure every month.
On the other hand, a client of mine repeatedly asked me about integrating ads on his newly designed blog theme.
I agree with you. Bloggers should think about content and providing good service first before monetizing their blogs.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:47 am
I agree on your views on making money thriugh blogs but adds always are a boon to the blogger.Itmotivates him and helps him to proceed further.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
earnings from ads are not that attractive to display ads in blogs… CTR is always poor, and effective CPM is at its words nowadays in adsense.
June 25th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
My most successful blogs are those that I didn’t monetize right away but really felt a personal interest in. Over time the PR just seem to appear and without trying hard I had sales.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Hi! I have just put up a new wordpress blog re MMO niche. It’s just barely a week old, and I already placed Adsense even if admittedly I thought it is still premature. Or it is just okay to have your blog with adsense and just move along, posting regular good relevant articles? Is monetising blogs at its early stage just okay? It’s because I want it done, and then I what I have to worry now is to focus on writing contents.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Wow,
The Oiopublisher sounds very cool, I will have to check it out. I am always on the lookout for ways to monetize my blog. Thanks for the tip!
Steve
June 26th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
That was my mistake, I use Adsense since day 1! =/
June 26th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
So true what you say. So what if you get 1000 visitors to your new blog. You’ve made 10 cents from all the ads and because you haven’t create a pleasing environment they won’t ever come back. Enjoy your 10 cents. Thanks for the valuable advice.
June 28th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Paid advertising is definitely a boon….but if practised too much, google ranking goes down…It has been tried out…Google does not seem to like it…I have no idea why…It actually increases the number of bloggers on the net which is a good thing for google..
June 29th, 2008 at 4:38 am
>>Google does not seem to like it…I have no idea why…
Know what else Google doesn’t like?
Showing a Feedburner count at 0daymovies.com of 11,132, while the actual count is only 90!
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/0-dayMovies/dontfollow
June 30th, 2008 at 10:03 am
i was wondering something, whenever i add some adsense to my sites they seem to get a bump in PR and a slight bump in rankings (which makes sense cus Google makes cash then from your natural listings)
however, when i start to add affiliate links (not even obvious aff. links, i do them through php jump scripts) im pretty sure my rankings are taking a slight dip because my traffic def. is
does this happen to other people? adding affiliate links in your content cause your rankings to decrease?
thanks!
-steve
June 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I tend to agree with you in some ways. I have always had adsense from the first day that I put the site up. That was the way that I was taught years ago. I have read that some say what you do, wait until your traffic is up before you monetize and then there is the way that I was taught and right after you have some content, put the adsense up. I kind of figure that some traffic clicking on my ads is better than not have the ads to make money. If they weren’t there, I would make nothing, so I am kind of chicken not to do and have them up. Any money is better than zero money. Plus the ads are up and related to the content, so it is not like they are getting bad ads.
Tim
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:44 am
I would tend to agree. All fluff and no stuff is my description of blogs with advertising that have yet to attain the audience to drive the traffic. Also, people are more likely to link to you if you do not have ads. Six months sounds like a good practice time line.
~Jeremy
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I had added Adsense initially to my blog, but the traffic was not enough to warrant any clicks. I read on other site that it’s best to hold off on monetizing until you get some decent traffic, i.e. 100 hits a day.
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:22 am
Just started out my blog as a general/helpsite for mobile phones, cheers for these tips…though I think I’ll steer clear of Adsense.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
The other mistake I think a lot of people do is to plaster stuff all over that is really distracting. Even if you want to do Adsense, you will do better with one or at the most 2 blocks. Just give folks a couple of choices, and they will respond better.
John R
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 pm
This is a great post, I think that monetizing is always such an important issue and should be done with careful consideration. There is nothing more lame than landing on a blog that is obviously new and has little to offer and filled with Adsense.
Thanks
JR Lang
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 pm
sorry I forgot to sign my name in my comment,
Thanks
JR Lang
July 11th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I think folks some times try too hard, and plaster all sorts of junk on their site to try and find something that works. Adsense is a great baseline, but one thing it brings with it is some metrics on earnings per page view, etc. If you just apply that same discipline to the other ads or affiliate links on your pages you can find other opportunities, like the ones here.
But you need to test one or two at a time, of the test is not really valid.
Just do the math and you will find the ads that serve your viewers best will serve you best as well.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:32 am
My blog still one month old and I start it with adsense.. sure too early for my blog but I will decrease the ads placement to make my reader happy.
.Harlem.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Blogs are the ultimate platform to express your thoughts, ideas and opinions. A well-written blog can attract millions of readers in a very short period time.
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Nice tip on how to monetize your blog, I quiet agree that it is good to get your blog working fine for more than six month with lot of good and related content, traffic and community of readers that alway come back to read and make comment on your blog. This will add lot of value to your blog when you want to monetize it. I used AdSense in some of my blog and I hope Oiopublisher is equally good, I have to try it on my new blog and compare the two.
Thanks for sharing this nice post.
Kind regards,
Lovely
July 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Thanks for this info Andy, I learned new ideas here on monetizing a blog. One of my mistake also was placing an adsense ad too early on my blog. Getting a reader was absolutely the right thing to consider first before displaying ads on your site.