For all you bloggers out there, some days you may wonder why you are spending all this time writing online if you are not getting paid for it. Some people seem to be able to make tons of money from their blog sites, but for most people that just isn’t happening. So what is the secret to the blogger who makes money?
Well, blog advertising is one of the easiest ways to get started making money through your blog. What is blog advertising? Actually, there are several different types of blog advertising. A cautionary note: not all forms of blog advertising may be right for your blog. For maximum results, several different types of advertising should be used.
There are at least six different ways to utilize blog advertising. You may be thinking, “What is blog advertising going to do for me?” Well, the main thing that blog advertising will do for you is bring in money. Of course, the more people you have visit your site the better your income will be, but that is another topic. The six basic types of blog advertising are: text link ads, affiliate ads, reviews, direct ads, contextual ads, and impression-based ads. There are a lot of resources for any of the types of advertising listed here. Just search for them online and see what comes up. Of course, not all types of ads are going to be available to use all the time. Sometimes it just takes luck to get certain opportunities.
So what is blog advertising for text link ads? Text link ads are ads that you place directly in your blog posts. Say you are talking about how you got lost driving to a friend’s house the other day. You could feasibly insert a text link ad for a GPS system. See, it’s easy!
Affiliate ads are probably the most well-know form of blog advertising. You sign up to be a part of an affiliate program, and they place different ads on your site. Usually this form of advertising on blogs is a pay-per-action or pay-per-sale form of payout. I will talk more about that later.
What is blog advertising with reviews? Reviews are pretty self-explanatory. A company will pay you to blog about their product and review it. Usually they want the reviews to be positive. It would be a little silly for a company to pay someone to write a bad review about them.
Direct ads are where you, the blogger, offer space on your site for your visitors to advertise. Usually some amount of web design experience is necessary for this advertising method, as well as a large amount of visitors.
Contextual ads are similar to affiliate ads. Contextual ads, however, are usually paid on a pay-per-click basis. The ads, as the name suggests, are related to the topics discussed in the blog.
Impression-based ads are ads that pay a certain amount for every time they appear on a person’s blog site. This would be the virtual equivalent of a billboard ad in the real world.
So now that you have a basic idea about what is blog advertising, let’s talk about payment methods. There are three main ways that bloggers can usually get paid for advertising on their sites. There is pay-per-click, pay-per-impression, and pay-per-action.
Pay-per-click will pay you a small amount any time someone clicks on that ad on your page. Pay-per-impression pays for every time the ad appears on your page, and pay-per-action pays for each time someone does an action related to the ad on your page. This is usually something like buying a product, filling out a survey, or signing up for e-mails.
What about you bloggers? What kind of advertising did you use for your blog monetization? What about paid reviews?
November 7th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I like to save the best for last because RSS is a great way to get free traffic to your website without the need of spending money on advertising.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:42 am
i used to have adsense but not anymore because it slows down the viewing of the page.. i just do sponsored reviews.. thanks for posting about the different kinds of ads, i often wonfered how those things work..
November 8th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Adsense is good for large websites, but sometimes other forms of monetization can work better. See the JohncChow’s blog.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:37 am
really good idea to make this service.. help blogger to monetize their blog.
April 9th, 2010 at 2:08 am
Dang
I just spent ages typing a long comment, but when I hit the submit button my browser freaked out.
Did you get it or do I need to redo it?
June 15th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Lots of helpful information. I have bookmarked your site.