Monetizing your blog simply means making your blog capable of generating income for you. There are several ways of monetizing blogs, but the most common is the use of contextual advertising systems. A contextual advertising system goes through the content of your blog and uses keywords to return adverts to the blog page based on what the user is viewing, hence delivering adverts which are more relevant to the content of your blog and, thus, more likely to be clicked by users. Clicks on any of these adverts on your blog generates money for you. All you have to do is to register or open an account for free with any contextual ads service provider and you will be provided with a unique code which you simply copy and paste on your blog and the system will start delivering these highly targeted adverts to your blog. Contextual ads service providers include Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft adCenter, AOL sponsored listings, kontera, and so on.
Another common way of monetizing blogs is the placement of affiliate links on blogs. Affiliate links are usually image-only, text-only, or image and text adverts provided by online merchants or advertisers which are placed on a blog by the blogger. These links, when clicked, lead the user to the merchant\’s or advertiser\’s website and if any sale, action or lead, as the case may be, is made, this can be traced back to the referral site which is the blog from where the user entered the merchant\’s website and the blogger earns a commission for that sale, action or lead. All you have to do as a blogger is to register for free with any affiliate network where you can have access to tons of great products and services to promote and earn commissions per sale, action or lead. On registration, you will be given a unique ID, which will be embedded in the affiliate links for any products or services you choose to promote on your blog. This unique ID is what makes it possible for any sale, action or lead to be traced back to you as the referrer. After registration, you can then search the network for great products or services to promote, preferably those relevant to the content of your blog and you\’ll be provided with codes for your chosen products or services containing your unique ID which you copy and paste on your blog. The affiliate link will then appear on your blog. Affiliate networks where you can have access to tons of great products and services to promote include clickbank, commission junction, shareasale, azoogleads, hydranetwork, neverblue, and so on. Because of the sheer volume of available products and services on these affiliate networks, it is often a daunting task to search these networks, so to make it easier, instead of searching the actual affiliate networks, you can use a service like offervault which searches the highest paying offers and sorts them according to niche.
You can also monetize your blog by directly renting out advert spaces on the blog to merchants or advertisers. This method of monetizing, however, can only be useful when your blog has become very popular and has a lot of inbound traffic, as no advertiser will be willing to pay for advertising on a site where very few people, if any, get to see their adverts. When you manage to get this stream of income rolling, however, you\’ll start making more money than you do from contextual and affiliate adverts. Interested merchants or advertisers pay you directly on a monthly basis for placing their adverts on your blog. All you have to do is to create ‘advertise here’ spaces on your blog so that advertisers can see what you are offering and be sure make your advertising rates competitive enough, taking into account your blog stats(or traffic) and what your competitors are offering.
Basically, the higher your blog stats, the more valuable your advert spaces become. Displaying your blog stats on your ‘advertise here’ spaces or page could help attract advertisers and even justify your advertising rates. You also need to incorporate online payment processors, like paypal, alertpay, liberty reserve and so on, to your blog, so you can easily receive payment from interested advertisers. You can also receive credit card payments, but to do this, your blog must have a secure platform for credit card transactions.
A fourth method of monetizing your blog is by directly selling your own products or services, or those for which you have reselling rights. These products or services could be anything from softwares, eBooks, audio and video CD\’s to webhosting, graphic designing, and so on. There is really no limit to what you can sell as long as they are relevant to the content of your blog. Again, as in renting advert spaces, you need to incorporate to your blog a means of easily receiving online payment from interested buyers.
Another common way of monetizing blogs is the placement of affiliate links on blogs. Affiliate links are usually image-only, text-only, or image and text adverts provided by online merchants or advertisers which are placed on a blog by the blogger. These links, when clicked, lead the user to the merchant\’s or advertiser\’s website and if any sale, action or lead, as the case may be, is made, this can be traced back to the referral site which is the blog from where the user entered the merchant\’s website and the blogger earns a commission for that sale, action or lead. All you have to do as a blogger is to register for free with any affiliate network where you can have access to tons of great products and services to promote and earn commissions per sale, action or lead. On registration, you will be given a unique ID, which will be embedded in the affiliate links for any products or services you choose to promote on your blog. This unique ID is what makes it possible for any sale, action or lead to be traced back to you as the referrer. After registration, you can then search the network for great products or services to promote, preferably those relevant to the content of your blog and you\’ll be provided with codes for your chosen products or services containing your unique ID which you copy and paste on your blog. The affiliate link will then appear on your blog. Affiliate networks where you can have access to tons of great products and services to promote include clickbank, commission junction, shareasale, azoogleads, hydranetwork, neverblue, and so on. Because of the sheer volume of available products and services on these affiliate networks, it is often a daunting task to search these networks, so to make it easier, instead of searching the actual affiliate networks, you can use a service like offervault which searches the highest paying offers and sorts them according to niche.
You can also monetize your blog by directly renting out advert spaces on the blog to merchants or advertisers. This method of monetizing, however, can only be useful when your blog has become very popular and has a lot of inbound traffic, as no advertiser will be willing to pay for advertising on a site where very few people, if any, get to see their adverts. When you manage to get this stream of income rolling, however, you\’ll start making more money than you do from contextual and affiliate adverts. Interested merchants or advertisers pay you directly on a monthly basis for placing their adverts on your blog. All you have to do is to create ‘advertise here’ spaces on your blog so that advertisers can see what you are offering and be sure make your advertising rates competitive enough, taking into account your blog stats(or traffic) and what your competitors are offering.
Basically, the higher your blog stats, the more valuable your advert spaces become. Displaying your blog stats on your ‘advertise here’ spaces or page could help attract advertisers and even justify your advertising rates. You also need to incorporate online payment processors, like paypal, alertpay, liberty reserve and so on, to your blog, so you can easily receive payment from interested advertisers. You can also receive credit card payments, but to do this, your blog must have a secure platform for credit card transactions.
A fourth method of monetizing your blog is by directly selling your own products or services, or those for which you have reselling rights. These products or services could be anything from softwares, eBooks, audio and video CD\’s to webhosting, graphic designing, and so on. There is really no limit to what you can sell as long as they are relevant to the content of your blog. Again, as in renting advert spaces, you need to incorporate to your blog a means of easily receiving online payment from interested buyers.
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