How do I...

Blog for Cash

In How to Blog, we discussed many ways you can increase traffic, views and gain a following. But what about how to blog for money? There many ways to start an online business, through the sales of products or services but when it comes to information such as articles you are limited. Or are you?

I read a book years ago about multiple streams of income. The whole point was diversity. This works well with passive income models such as blog websites since you can’t track or forecast like you can while selling hard goods or services based on marketing budgets and advertising. With a blog, people come to your site, may or may not read the article and even less will click on an ad. But before we get into the process of the reader to cash let’s list all of the ways you can make money online through your blog.

Advertisement

Blog ads are a simple way to earn money from your blog. The code is small, you’ll have a wide range of options when it comes to different sizes, image vs text and color. You can sign up for Google Adsense which provide a great list of options for you advertisement for your blog. These ads are popular since they pay higher than most and offer the largest range of advertising so you know your ads will be relavent. With Google’s ads you don’t get control over the relevance. They match the ads to your content which is good for both you and the ad shown. Recently they began to show ads related to the viewer’s recent searches. This is a feature you can disable in your account if you’d like. Payment from these ads are based on how much people bid on the ads with the ad code provider so the amount will fluctuate often, even throughout a single day.

You can also offer your own advertising where you are in charge of everything. There are plug-ins, scripts and code you can find online to easily integrate advertising into your site. This model works best if you have enough traffic to prove value to clients. There are two ways you’d charge. One is on impressions. Let’s say your blog is about Miami vacations. It might make since for local businesses to want to advertise with you to put there brand out there. Then, when they come to Miami to visit they’ll remember the name and stop at their business. In this case you’d charge by the 1,000 impressions. Most of the ad software can handle both at the same time. For instance, if you wanted to charge $25 for every 1,000 impressions but $2.00 per click.

When it comes to advertising on your website you’ll want to always keep your users in mind. Write for them, but also limit your ads to keep your webpage clear and look as if the article is the value. They don’t value your ads like you do so keep them to a simple amount, in a nice place that don’t take away from your perfectly designed blog. Nothing cheapens a site quicker than ugly, cheap, gimmicky or large amount of banner ads.

There are many ads for publishers out there other than Google. Also, I’m working on an article about other ways you can increase your revenue from your blog such as article sales, downloads and more. Register with us to receive updates when we release articles. I’ll be sure you are notified about more ways to make money from your blog.