Make Money Blogging: Tips and Techniques - [2020] Part 1 of 5

Make Money Blogging: Tips and Techniques - Part 1 of 5

Make Money Blogging: Tips and Techniques - [2020] 

Blogging is quite different from other types of Internet publishing in a way that is characterized by a more informal, less censored and rather passionate style of writing. And while the blogosphere is certainly subject to its own unwritten laws, blogs are more trusted than official websites by both Search Engines and, more importantly, people.

We all love passionate writing and honest opposition, but serious blogging with attention-grabbing posts and frequent updates takes a lot of time and it would be great if it paid off.

Combining passion with a steady income to make a decent living has always been one of the most cherished dreams of humanity, and although I'm rather skeptical about earning bloggers 6-figure income, I can assure you that making good money with blogging is more than possible.

Enough of preaching, let's get cracking!

Monetization Tips and Techniques,

Part 1: Selling Ad-Space
Ad Brokers

Description:

You can sell ad space on your blog, in your RSS feed or newsletter to place a number of different ad types. Those include contextual text ads, banners, images, videos or search facilities.

With contextual ad brokers you get paid when some of your readers click on the ads and you receive a commission for each click. Who much? That depends strongly on the topic of your blog as well as the keyword targeted by the advertiser. The commission per click may vary from anything like a few cents to a few tens of dollars (!) On highly competitive terms.

This type of advertising pricing model is called Pay Per Click or PPC. Another commission scheme that you may have with contextual ad brokers is called CPM (cost per thousand page impressions, where M stands for millennium = 1000) and is usually available for websites with high traffic only.

Resources:

The biggest player on the market today is Google AdSense, closely followed by Yahoo's Publisher Network.

Other general ad brokers on the market are:

AdBrite
AdEngage
AdOnNetwork
AzoolgeAds
ContextWeb
Chitika
LinkWorth
ValueClick

There are also a few brokers dedicated to blogs and RSS feeds:

BlogAds
CrispAds
FeedBurner
Smorty

As far as RSS is concerned, you can either insert ad code into your feed manually or if your blog is built on Wordpress, using a special plugin (eg, Fedafi). See more on WordPress Plugins Useful for Blog Monetization in Making Money Blogging - Part V.

A word of caution. Many bloggers choose to include only partial entries (headlines and excerpts) in their RSS feed to entice the readers to visit their blogs to read the entire posts. If you are one of them, I strongly recommend not embedding any ads into the RSS feed. Either feed the full entries and then embed the ads or avoid using the ads in the RSS feed completely.

People like to be sold, especially when you are giving them very little, and neglecting this fact may repel your readers and ultimately reduce your audience to zero.

The same principle applies to a newsletter that you regularly email to your readership - overstretch their patience.

Affiliate Ads,

Description:

In external appearance, affiliate ads may be no different from contextual ads or banners. The difference shows up in the function - namely, with affiliate ads you get paid only when someone clicks on an ad and performs an action (purchase a product, subscribe for a service or newsletter, etc.)

That's why affiliate ads belong to a different kind of online advertising pricing model called CPA (Cost Per Action), as opposed to PPC and CPM schemes typically available with contextual ad brokers.

Provided you can drive tangible traffic to your blog, this type of advertising is one of the most effective ways to make money with your blog and with time it can become your main source of income, demanding less maintenance on your part.

Resources:

Well established affiliate networks include:

Amazon
Commission Junction
Affiliate Window
eBay Affiliate Program
Affiliate Future

A bit less famous, but still pretty good ones are:
Buy at
Paid on Results
LinkShare
ClickBank

Subscribe to a few networks of your choice, join the merchants that sell products relevant to your blog content; Get the affiliate promo materials (text links or banners) and paste them into your blog.

Ideally, if you want to significantly increase the sales of the affiliate products you are promoting, I advise you to write detailed reviews of the products and services that you use and/or like yourself. However, NO hard selling pitch! Just a passionate review of a product's main features and functions, pointing out what problem it solves.

Direct Advertisers,

When your blog is promoted and receives good traffic (~ 1000 visitors a day) you can start selling ad space directly removing the "middle man". In this way, you could earn higher commissions and therefore increase your revenue.

However, managing the ads (monitoring stats, watching the deadlines, communicating with advertisers) can be quite time consuming, so you may as well decide that paying a certain percentage of your income to an ad-broker is really worth it.
After all, time is money and it is better spent on what you can do, rather than trying to save every penny by doing everything yourself.

Nonetheless, if you decide to go this way, bear in mind that you have more freedom in choosing the pricing model, as you are the one who "pays the piper", and thus "calls the tune". In addition to regular schemes such as PPC and CPM, you can also charge your advertiser on a fixed time basis, when their addition is displayed for a fixed period of time (week, month, quarter, etc.)