Problogger divided two areas/models in making money from blogs, Direct Income Methods and Indirect Income Methods. Direct income methods are where bloggers earns an income from their blog, while Indirect income methods are where bloggers earns an income because of their blog. Most blogs and bloggers tend to use one or another of these methods, but there also bloggers who are experimenting both of them on their blogs.
Direct Method to Make Money from Your Blog
1. Advertising
- Contextual Advertising – Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network are very popular programs and simple to use, by just pasting some code into your blog’s templates. They will scan the content of your blog to assertion what it’s topic is and attempt to put contextually relevant ads onto your blog. Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis (CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads), bloggers earn money when their visitor clicks on the ads.
- Other CPC Advertising – A variety of CPC advertising systems which are not contextual, Chitika’s eMiniMalls as an example.
- Impression Based Advertising – Bloggers get paid for every visitor who views the advertisement. There are a variety of ad systems around like this, like Fastclick and Tribal Fusion. Usually impression based ads won’t earn bloggers much if they don’t have a lot of traffic, but can be great if they do.
- Blog Ads – Blog Ads traditionally have had a focus upon monetizing political blogs, but are expanding their focus lately. The good side is that bloggers set their own rates and can accept or reject advertisers that apply to them to be featured on their blogs. These ads put the control of what ads show and how much they earn into the hands of the blogger. The not-so-good-side is that if you price them too high you could never have any ads showing at all. They can also be difficult to be accepted into as a publisher as these days they only accept people into the system if they have a someone who is already in ’sponsor’ or recommend the new publisher.
- Text Ads – Text ads are great because they don’t take up much room. Programs like Adbriteis one such program that gives you control to set your own prices – and approve or reject all ads. Other programs like Text Link Ads, Adzaar, and Bidvertiser are another popular ad programs that more bloggers are using.
- RSS Advertising – An increasingly popular way for people to read blogs is via RSS. As a result publishers and ad providers have been keen to find ways to place ads in feeds. These attempts have been met with a variety of success levels. Feedburner and Pheedo are some example that have been used to help monetise many blog’s feeds.
- Other Advertising Systems – In addition to the above systems there are many other advertising options, many of them being used by bloggers every day. Here are some of them : AdGenta, CrispAds, Clicksor, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, Double Click, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, and TextAds, etc.
2. Sponsorship
- Another advertising form that a smaller number of bloggers are using is to find their own advertisers. All of the above systems have the advantage of finding you advertisers (or at least assisting in the automation of ads to your blog) but as your blog grows in profile and influence you might find other options for private deals come up.
The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post.
3. Affiliate Programs
- This method is where you take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most popular of these affiliate programs is Amazon which has thousands of products that you can link to. Other affiliate programs are Linkshare, Commission Junction and Clickbank. Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic.
4. Selling Blogs
- The idea of selling your blog is one that many bloggers have in the back of their minds for ‘one day’, but in reality it is not something that is overly common yet (but it seems changing). Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing, but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention, start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and it’s own good income stream so you are more likely to find buyers down the track.
5. Donations
- A very small number of blogs have a history of making good money with these (Jason Kottke being one of them). To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership (and a rich one might help too). Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make it work.
6. Merchandise
- Another method with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others.
7. Selling Subscriptions
- The idea of charging readers for content is one that surfaces from time to time. While there are numerous websites around the web that do this successfully, I’m yet to see many (any) blogs do it well. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic.
8. Blog Networks
- Another emerging income source for bloggers are blog networks. There are two ways to make money here. Firstly you can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer.
Next post we’ll look at indirect ways of making money because of your blog.
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