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

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. Targeted Advertising

The most desirable form of advertising is having companies that wish to
pay good rates to advertise on your blog directly whether it’s text or
image ads. Many bloggers feel that this is a pipe dream, but I speak
from experience from running a wakeboarding blog for many years that
you can make solid income from targeted advertising without having
insane amounts of traffic.

There are a number of key things you have to do though in order to get this type of advertising:

* Have a blog with leading content in your niche and a professional design
* Create a “media kit” which is essentially a page on your blog that
explains that you take targeted advertising, what your rates are,
demographics of your users, your traffic levels, examples of the types
of ads people can run, testimonials from any companies that have
advertised with you, and a phone number and email address they can use
to get more information.
* Have obvious “Advertise On This Blog” links in key places on your blog.
* Give a company or two in your niche free or very low-cost advertising
in order to get the ball rolling. When advertisers see their
competitors or companies similar to them advertising, they get the idea
that it’s available. If all they ever see is Adsense ads, they might
not realize it’s an option.
* Be willing to be creative to help your advertisers achieve their goals, and lower your price to get the deals.
* Provide statistics and results to your advertisers. Use an ad server
like RMX Direct, phpAdsNew, or something similar which has the ability
to create reports per advertiser.

Once you’ve set your blog up properly, start approaching companies in
your niche who will want to reach your traffic. You don’t need to go
after the biggest companies, there are many small companies who are
looking to get better results from the web, and they might not even
know about your blog. You don’t need to be an ad sales professional,
you just need to present your case well on why they’re missing out if
they don’t advertise on your traffic. Make it easy on them to work with
you, help them create ads, help them determine what sizes to use, and
work with them to make sure they get the results they need. It seems
like hard work at first, but after you get a solid base of advertisers
going, it’s a great source of income and it starts to streamline.

4. Text Link Advertising

Another somewhat unobtrusive form of advertising is using services like
Text Link Ads or Adbrite to sell text ads directly to companies. This
is pretty low effort and often doesn’t take up too much space on a
site, so it’s easy to implement and try out. It should be noted though
that you need significant traffic for it to be a big source of income.

5. 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.

6. Selling 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.

7. Consulting

Depending on your topic and your level of expertise, you can sell
consulting services. If you’re a web analytics expert, you could offer
web analytics consulting services on your blog for an hourly fee. This
takes very little work to setup beyond creating a page outlining your
services, getting a standard contract, and having a way to take
payments from companies. Again though, it just takes a little bit of
effort to let people know that consulting services are available.

8. Donations

Not quite as common as it once was, it used to be fairly common for
bloggers to ask for donations on their blog through Paypal or some
other service. This only works if you have a dedicated userbase, and a
large enough number of users that their donations add up. I wouldn’t
recommend this if you’re also putting a lot of advertising and other
monetization methods on your blog. You’ll come off as a bit too greedy
in that case.

9. Selling Products

Besides infoproducts, you can sell real products like t-shirts, bumper
stickers, clothing, or whatever other kind of merchandise makes sense
for your topic. Companies like Goodstorm, CafePress, Lulu, and others
make it easy by creating the products based on your design and letting
you set up a shop. There is no risk to bloggers, which makes it a great
opportunity.

10. Selling Your Blog

Perhaps the most extreme of the blog monetization methods, but it can
be lucrative! If you aren’t attached to your blog and are willing to
part with it, you can usually find a buyer for it. Your blog must be
pretty good, and have a level of traffic worth buying, and it really
helps if you already have some income streams going for it. Blogs
usually sell for 12-24 times monthly revenues, and there are numerous
places you can sell them like eBay and the Sitepoint Marketplace.

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.

Article Source: www.associatedigest.com

Author: David Lechner
Web Hosting Rreviews: webhosting-reviewz.com

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