Lets Make Money on Your Blog!
The topic that has come up over and over this week has been how to monetize the blog. And, as many of you are busy writing, working, and looking after a home and family, you haven’t had the time to scour the internet for all the information on monetization! So here is the summary version just for you:
Ad Networks
These are large marketing or public relations firms that do the gathering of blog sponsors for you. They take applications from bloggers, whom they call “publishers” to publish the ads that they procure.
PROS:
- they have taken care of the legalities between big sponsors like Campbells and your blog.
- They take care of paying you and collecting from the company.
- Maintaining this type of network is very easy. Most of them have a help desk that will help you install (or do it for you) the ads.
CONS:
- The downside is that they do have a list of expectations from their publishers that you need to follow.
Women bloggers should check out blogher, Real Girls Media. Food bloggers should check out FoodBuzz.
About.com has a list of 60 Ad & Affiliate programs.
Contextual Ads
Adsense is the most well known example of this type of advertising. When people come to your blog from google, they have entered some search terms. From these terms, google serves up ads that might interest the reader. Thus, they are contextual. Problogger lists these contextual advertisers to check out:
- Chitika
- WidgetBucks,
- Text Link Ads,
- Azoogle Ads,
- Intelli Txt,
- DoubleClick,
- Tribal Fusion,
- Adbrite,
- Clicksor,
- AdHearUs,
- Kanoodle,
- Pheedo,
- TextAds,
- Bidvertiser,
- Fastclick,
- Value Click,
- MSN Adcenter,
- YPN.
I’ve only had experience with Adsense and Chitika, but I know that several of you use Text Link Ads, Adbrite, and WidgetBucks – How was your experience in applying for these ads? Were they easy to install?
How much money can YOU make?
AdsenseGuide.info uses these examples – if all you do is copy and paste the Adsense code, and you are a small website, with only 400 impressions per day, and a click through rate of 1.5%.
| Impressions | Clicks | Earning per click |
| 400 | 6 | $0.06 |
| Daily | Monthly | Yearly |
| $0.36 | $10.80 | $129.60 |
And for a website with medium traffic- 4,000 impressions per day:
| Impressions | Clicks | Earning per click |
| 4000 | 60 | $0.06 |
| Daily | Monthly | Yearly |
| $3.60 | $108 | $1296 |
The above tables are from regular adsense ads that aren’t optimized or placed in any particular ‘hot spot’.
Darren Rowse has doubled his contextual ad revenue from simply moving them to a more effective location on the page! From this, and lots of other examples on the web, we can learn that placement of the ads are just as important as the relevance of the ads.
Where do I put the ads?
This is a ‘heat map’ from Adsense itself.
A ‘heat map’ is measuring the reader’s length of time spent in a particular area of the page. Isn’t it interesting that most of us will focus on the center of the page, and not the header?
If you think like your reader, you will be more likely to see where and how to place ads. When you come to the page, what are you searching for? What will you do after you’ve found it? Will you spend time on this page or click through to the next? Will you read daily or come once in a while when looking for a particular resource? Will you shop from this page? All of those things will determine the best placement for your ads.
The best place to start your ads is blending into the content – that is where the most bloggers experience the most success with advertisements. Remember to always abide by the terms of use of any particular advertiser. If you can, blend the ad into the background, and set apart the text.
Whether or not you should use text or images or both, is a matter of where you are placing the ad, the subject of the blog, and the audience’s preference. Here are some examples of placements:
Image Ad Under Post
Adsense Display Under Header
Adsense Display Links in Sidebar
Adsense Display in Header
Adsense Display Above Header
These are just a few tips to get started with contextual ads and ad networks. Next time we’ll cover affiliate ads, direct advertising and product reviews!
————————————————————————————————————-
For further information on adsense ads, check out the Adsense Guide for Optimizing.
For an 8 Part series on Adsense from Darren Rowse click here.
You may also be interested in: the Beginner’s Guide to Starting A Business.
