Written on June 8th, 2007 at 06:06 am by Darren Rowse
How do you Make Money from Your Blog?
Time for a quick reader survey. I’m sitting here at FOOA and have heard a few presentations today highlighting different ways bloggers make money and how advertisers can target blog readers. These have been from companies like BlogAds, PayPerPost and Federated Media.
It strikes me that these three models are quite varied - but that they only scratch the surface in the different metthods that bloggers are using to make money from their blogs.
So here is my question:
How do you monetize your blog?
What ad networks, affiliate programs, review programs etc do you use?
Feel free to mention the specific services that you use and even give us a review of them if you’d like.
PS: as an example of how you might like to comments - see my post on how I make money from blogs.
85 Responses to “How do you Make Money from Your Blog?”
A Marques
June 8th, 2007 6:49 am
I haven’t started to put that much effort into monetizing my blog yet, but simply because my readers numbers aren’t that high. I use some adsense and, since you talked so good about chitika eminimalls I’m giving it a try too. Let’s see how it develops in the future. Maybe, if you run a similar post in some months I can have some figures for all your readers.
Huckleberry
June 8th, 2007 6:52 am
I’m still a little wet behind the ears so I haven’t experimented a lot with ads or pay-for features. I’m using Adsense currently and have generated a little but nothing earth shattering.
foodette
June 8th, 2007 6:52 am
I am in the same boat as A Marques. I have been blogging for about a month now, and I am just trying to build up my readership. I do have a Gormet Food Store as a page on my blog, which is linked through Amazon. I just put that up a week ago, so we will see if anyone uses it. So far, though, I am just trying to be an active member of the food blogging community, and keep putting good content on my blog. I hope that I will build up a group of readers soon, and then I can start integrating more and more money making techniques.
egon
June 8th, 2007 6:55 am
I use AdSense, YPN (I’ll be stopping that once I hit the payout,) BlogAds (meh,) Text Link Ads, LinkWorth, Direct Sales (the best!), ReviewMe (very good,) PayPerPost, and I think that’s all. In my experience, it’s best to diversify your earnings. I actually wrote a post about it explaining why:
http://egonitron.com/2007/06/02/the-importance-of-multiple-sources-of-monetization/
NGeN
June 8th, 2007 7:14 am
Monetization has so much scopes.One has to find the method thats working for him .Thats it.
Well now talking about my methods, i use Adsense only for now.I have tried others but didnt wuite work.maybe because my blog is in its starting phase.Anyways i will be having a few more experiments. :p
Cadu de Castro Alves
June 8th, 2007 7:24 am
I use AdSense, HotWords (a Brazilian afiliate program like Text Link Ads) and afiliate programs from some e-commerce websites.
Hamlet Batista
June 8th, 2007 7:38 am
Darren,
While I’ve seen you and others write about ways to directly monetize your blog, there are indirect ways that are equally important as well.
One such way, is using your blog to brand yourself as an expert in your field. I decided to take that route with my blog.
This can later result in consulting or speaking engagements. Maybe even a nice high paying job.
DIY PR Builder
June 8th, 2007 7:46 am
Great post Darren - I’m sure you’ll get a lot of comments on this one! Here is how I make money:
Google AdSense - no need to explain this one. It has been one of my best producers and my CTR is midway between 0 and 10% - I can’t put in details because it’s against Google’s TOS.
Direct Sponsorship - this has paid off well for me. I sell different packages and have most sponsors pay a monthly fee through PayPal subscriptions. The bigger clients are invoiced regularly. Tip: put an advertising page on your website and a note in your signature about your special packages. Mine reads: Want to reach more small business owners? Reply to this email with ‘EC-Promo’ in the subject line and get a special discount off of our Advertising packages.
Exelate - this is a company that contacted me on behalf of a major client of theirs. They want to reach small business owners and we worked out a CPC arrangement. They have been great to deal with so far.
Kontera - they do inline ads. My CTR is just over 1% with them and I’ve found it to have very low payouts per click compared to AdSense. I have reduced my involvement with them but still have some pages with Kontera.
Chitika - I signed up with them because of ProBlogger. I tested them out but found I was not getting a good CTR. My website is about small business and not products though so it may not be a good fit. I still have some pages with Chitika but it is not very prominent.
ReviewMe - I’ve tested this with one of my blogs and have had some success but not enough to make it meaningful - I will continue testing.
The other programs I have recently signed up for an am testing are: adbrite, adify, right media, auction ads. I read about them in business 2.0 or online. I have only done limited testing but so far none of them have brought in the kind of numbers I’m looking for to expand with them. Again, it could just be my site and the content I have on it.
I have also tested affiliate programs like ClickBank and CommissionJunction but have not had too much success here in compared to the other programs I have already mentioned.
The key is to test. I now have over 21,000 pages of great content written by over 950 authors on my site so I can play around with a few programs to see if they deliver before implementing them on a big scale but you can do the same with your blog - try it out, optimize the best you can, see if it works, and if it doesn’t move on to something else.
Overall the web has been good for me. It supports me, my building, the people who work for me and lets me create my own work schedule.
I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else has to say about what works for them!
james
June 8th, 2007 7:50 am
Different blogs monetize in different ways. One of the first things I learned is that seemingly small changes to your blog design can have a huge impact on earnings, so it’s worth experimenting, especially with programs like AdSense which allow you to track performance on each ad unit.
I find that Google ads perform very well (be sure to use their Link Units - I was quite surprised at how effective they were, and I lost quite a bit of revenue by not including them on my blog for almost a year). I’ve had less success with shopping mall ads, in part because they’re not well targeted to my extremely broad audience. Things would be different if, for example, I was running a photo blog and *knew* that readers were interested in photos.
I only use direct text links to Amazon, not banners. They just clutter the screen and have an extremely low conversion rate. It’s a different story when you write about a book or product and provide a link. Here’s a recent example from my site that was very successful:
http://www.retrothing.com/2007/04/the_dangerous_b.html
This kind of monetization only works if you’re sincere. In this case, we loved the book and it was something that appeals to our audience - a natural fit.
rob
June 8th, 2007 7:50 am
my favorite affiliate program is Ewan Chia’s Autopilot Profits. It is a great way to earn money working at home online. If your just starting out it takes you by the hand and guides you through step by step.
http://tinyurl.com/3cgxq9
They say to blog about what you know, So I blog alot about mary jane. You can check out my space @ http://indicagrowingcompany.spaces.live.com/
Bill McRea
June 8th, 2007 7:51 am
I actually started posting some commission junction products in my guitar blog. One blog post is a regular post and then the next day I post something from commission junction. I am actually get a few nice sales this way, and generating extra income for the blog other than Adsense and Chikita.
Matt Propst
June 8th, 2007 7:56 am
YPN here. It does decent I suppose. Traffic being the key for any type of monetization that is CPC based to work.
It was good getting to meet you today. :-)
pixelpruner
June 8th, 2007 8:08 am
No ads on my blog what so ever! wooooooooooooooooooo!
http://www.pixelpruner.com/2007/04/14/how-much-is-a-comment-worth/
Andrew Ferguson
June 8th, 2007 8:15 am
I currently use three blog ad programs:
Google AdSense
AuctionAds
Amazon Associates
I’m thinking of trading out AuctionAds for Chitika because AA is performing like crap and they seem to have terrible customer support.
I have a TextLinkAds and a Chitika account, but I haven’t used either yet.
I also sell ads directly when advertisers approach me.
Deaf Musician
June 8th, 2007 8:17 am
Text-Link-Ads, ReviewMe… god bless them.
Dave Taylor
June 8th, 2007 8:52 am
I have had very good experiences with Google Adsense, and recently added Kontera’s ContextLink ads to my site with terrific results too: over $100/day in additional revenue without any impact on my other revenue channels. I’ve written up my experience and thoughts here:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/make_money_with_kontera_contextual_advertising.html
Great question, Darren!
Jason
June 8th, 2007 8:56 am
I only do affiliate sales on my blog. One of the first things I read when I started internet marketing(a whole 6 weeks ago) is that google ads and amazon ads are bad because they take people away from your site, when you rather want people sticking around and making purchases through your affiliate links, which is much more profitable. I guess I’ve stuck with that theory.
Matt
June 8th, 2007 8:58 am
I’m using Adsense and Commision Junction, and quite happy with both. Like others, my priority is still on building traffic.
twins15
June 8th, 2007 9:00 am
Adsense, TLAs, Linkworth, and direct sales. For me, direct ad sales have been by far the most lucrative, though obviously they’re a little more sporadic about when they happen.
Paul51
June 8th, 2007 9:17 am
Just Adsense ads until recently, but I’ve started dropping some product-placement ads into the content, using Commission Junction and Amazon affiliations.
kat
June 8th, 2007 9:20 am
I use payperpost and payu2blog, as well as Amazon and a few others like auction ads and TLA.
As a single mom who is officially unable to hold a “real world” job, I have to make an income somehow, and the pay to blog companies are paying my bills.
I know people hate them, but they work, they are paying my bills and affording me the extra income to get some things we want.
Great post as always. I read you every day, learn a lot from both you and your commentators.
Mahala
June 8th, 2007 9:27 am
I currently use Commision Junction, Amazon and PayPerPost, but I’ve only generated income from PayPerPost. I simply don’t have the traffic required to make anything from ads. I didn’t set out to make any money from blogging initially and I’ve built up a small but faithful group of readers, so it’s been difficult to find a balance between keeping the established traffic with the stories they’re used to yet trying to add sponsored posts for some extra income. I’m experimenting with featuring one affilliate ad per week instead of cluttering everything up, but I’ve not had much luck. PayPerPost has been the most profitable, but my low Google page rank (3) and no Alexa rating means I’m only eligable for the lower paying opportunities.
It’s a work in progress.
Matt
June 8th, 2007 9:31 am
I have recently setup my first blog and due to the nature of my site (education about cannabis please dont visit the site unless your 18+, it is NSFW) I had some issues getting adsense in place, however this was resolved.
I also use a UK based affiliate program and a US based one, at the moment it shows a random ad on the right side, I would like to develop this so it serves all US ip’s the US ad else the UK one.
I plan to do product reviews as well. However I would prefer to purchase the product and provide an honest review instead of
I have a very strong idea regarding a new offline marketing technique, maybe darren would discuss this with me to further develop the idea.
I have made no effort to promote my blog as of yet, it was only indexed in google in the last couple of days so there is no cash flow as of yet.
Although my primary objective isnt to make money from my blog, it is nice to see a small trickle of cash to help support it, especially if im using the cash to purchase products to give an honest review.
Brandon J
June 8th, 2007 9:42 am
I just reached the first $100 payout on Google Adsense and I’m pretty happy about that. I try to help out stay-at-home spouses for military and I try all the “at-home” schemes and write reviews for them. They can either sign up under me and I get the referral revenue.
I have used Payperpost and all of Linkworth’s programs. I like that a lot because I can write whatever I want and just provide their links. They don’t micromanage the content like they used to.
I used Adbrite but I didn’t like them at all. I use Auction Ads now, but I think that’s going to be the same thing.
Brandon
Money for Military
http://moneyformilitary.blogspot.com
Mark @ Dumb Little Man
June 8th, 2007 9:44 am
Hey Darren - it’s been a while since I stopped in but I attribute a portion of our success to you so I’ll participate. We’ve tried tons of different programs. In May of 2007, here is where we made money (in order of earnings):
Adsense
Feedburner Ads (mainly on the site as opposed to in the feed)
Amazon
Adbrite (50% is reoccurring through referrals)
Text Link Ads
Chitika (experiment, my blog is not in a good niche for this)
Shareasale (like commission junction but earning here are growing like crazy because of the ad selection, not the program itself)
Selling Ad placements direct (1st month doing this)
Commission Junction (placing affiliate links in my feed as text ads)
- Mark
Dom
June 8th, 2007 9:55 am
Text-link-ads is by far my biggest earner at the moment - about 3 times that of AdSense. I also have a few direct ad sales, but that’s about all that works for me - but I think you have to keep trying new things.
Chris @ Martial Development
June 8th, 2007 10:23 am
Darren, thank you for asking. I use a variety of methods to make no money from my blog.
Firstly, AdSense provides a basic stream of no revenue. I attribute this lack of income both to my chosen niche, and the CTR commanded by my theme and layout.
Second, I give weak recommendations for a set of affiliate products that none of my readers want. Most of these orders would be fulfilled by Amazon, if anyone ever placed them, but I also shill for the occasional foreign DVD company–whom my site visitors do not trust with their credit card information.
Perhaps I should consider broadening my scope of my profitless blog endeavors? Unfortunately, exigent circumstances may force me to pursue other income opportunities (such as fishing aluminum cans out of public dumpsters).
Very Sincerely,
Chris
CornerScribe
June 8th, 2007 10:32 am
I’ve used adsense, but my traffic isn’t high enough to earn much more than soda money that way.
I experimented with Blogitive, but it just doesn’t fit with the goal of my site. It pays out on time, but at $5 per post, it’s not a great option. However, the posts you do for them are short and quick. They don’t even seem to care what you write, as long as you post something.
I did a series of posts reviewing Blogitive. The first one is here…
http://cornerscribe.com/wordpress/?p=111
Patrix
June 8th, 2007 10:52 am
1. Adsense
2. Text Link Ads
…are the primary earners. I’ve received couple of direct ad sales offers but I don’t actively promote them since my blog is mostly personal.
Other avenues although I just earn in infrequent bursts are ReviewMe, Feedburner, AdVolcano, and Vizu Answers. Prefer to keep my advertising to a minimum now and focus on the big earners instead of cluttering up the blog.
Disabled Kontera as the links are deceiving and readers were getting pissed. Prefer to keep my readers happy first than earn a quick buck.
MotorsportBabesAU
June 8th, 2007 11:12 am
I make all my money from adsense and shareapic.net (refferal link). I have also started using commision jucntion mostly for the targeted ebay auction adverts but I have made nothing from them yet. May change over to auctionads soon.
Chris
June 8th, 2007 11:27 am
Google Ads, Amazon Associates, and recently some MTV Movie Awards Ads which just ended that were 30 cents a click!
Jimson Lee
June 8th, 2007 11:33 am
I use Adsense and Amazon for books and DVDs. My site is targeted towards Athletics, health, fitness, nutrition, and diet, so the ads work really well with the topics in my posts. Sometimes I get a cheesy weight loss, 6 pack abs ads, but that’s life. Let the readers decide!
Sainam
June 8th, 2007 11:50 am
Hi Darren
I am one of your fan club. You are extreme inspiration of network make money online for me indeed. I keep reading and catch your way, many words of yours make me fighting myself to keep going on.
For the question, I would say that I am now doing Adsense, adwords, Auction ads, Amazon, text link ads.. bra bra bra, about tens things but never success even one, poor girl. ^_^ but anyway I am still alive and keep walking forward. Until success not even more rich but happy enough for such a small additional income. Thanks again for your postsss
redwall_hp
June 8th, 2007 12:20 pm
I use adsense and Adbrite. I’ve made $23 to date with adsense, and $60 with Adbrite.
Ravi
June 8th, 2007 12:20 pm
I have monetizedusing adsense and just started with SponsoredReviews
Ravi
June 8th, 2007 12:22 pm
I have monetized using adsense and just started with SponsoredReviews
Jason the TVaholic
June 8th, 2007 12:42 pm
I have found that it greatly depends on the topic of your site. For me, I use Adsense on everything. Amazon Associate, Commision Junction and LinkShare all get used, as you can find affiliate offers that fit just about any niche. Like for my TV site: DVD sets at Amazon, NBC Universal, ABC and other official network stores through CJ and iTunes and Netflix via LinkShare. I also use Chitika, but it doesn’t work so well on the TV site, but on my Golf site, it works really well. I am looking at AuctionAds, Kontera, BlogAds and TextLinkAds/Feedvertising and maybe ReviewMe as possible ways to extend the monetization of my sites. Am very interested in how others have found these to work.
It is great to read about what others are using and what is working for them.
Pickel
June 8th, 2007 12:44 pm
I’m just starting up…one month in. However, I have seen some success with Adsense and Amazon Affiliates. I also have Commission Junction, Linkshare, and Auction Ads. I have not seen anything from them but my traffic is still low despite my niche.
BeachBum
June 8th, 2007 12:50 pm
Most of my income is from TLA and private link sales. The rest is AdSense and affiliate commission.
I am testing the Chitika TagCloud on one of my sites. CTR isn’t the best, but not enough impressions yet to see if it can be a winner.
Volume is the key.
Michael
kat
June 8th, 2007 1:24 pm
Oh, wanted to add, that with TLA, I’ve actually made more with them in just 2 months of using it, than I have with adsense in the 3 years I’ve used them.
I’ve made over $200 with TLA, and only $54 with adsense.
I think it’s because the TLA ads are targeted more towards my sites content, while adsense relies on what I am posting about after I’ve posted it. I also do not post adsense in between posts like so many bloggers do. I keep my ads to my sidebar, and my pay to blog stuff in my content.
Yeah, totally backwards I know, but I think adsense in between posts looks ugly IMO.
Ari @ FewGuysFromWork.com
June 8th, 2007 1:27 pm
Hi folks, new poster here, been a fan of this blog lately!
The following is what I do on a few heavy traffic sites I operate, though it’s not my new “blog”. Even though it’s not from a blog per se but radio music sites I hope it is still relevant to be of use, because we’re still talking about displaying visual ads on regular pages in the browser. To give you an idea of the scope, the sites together at that time pulled around $500 and up per day (just high traffic, no secret optimization or anything).
YPN - I use this for contextual type of links *only* for USA traffic. They used to perform much better than Google Adsense for us in the USA market, however in recent weeks they are almost the same.
Google AdSense - I use this for all other International non-USA traffic. Google still seems to be king for International stuff.
Note: Keep in mind you can’t serve both AdSense and YPN on the same page at the same time, so your software has to be smart enough to serve either one set or another. This is when it can be useful to be in control of the webhost aspect so you can run software like OpenAds for geotargeting ( http://www.openads.org ). I hear RMX Direct may similar features to do this sort of thing also.
RevenueScience - these guys used to rock the socks off, and it was the best kept secret in the world, I thought, for a year or so. The payout was *excellent* compared to AdSense, especially for international traffic. Apparently though most of the ads were fed through a Yahooo partnership, and once that was over sometime by around end of 2006 they switched to other horrific visual ad partnerships and we totally had to jump ship. Oh yes, that was over when Panama rolled out and YPN went on its own few weeks later.
Casale Media - Casale can have very good returns on a CPM basis, however be ware that most of their ads don’t look so good. You can filter them out, but the more you filter them the less you earn (though just set up Defaults correctly so you don’t loose out). They do serve some International traffic too. I only use it in one place on only one of my sites where users are less savvy and do not mind so much. Other sites I run I cannot put Casale as the banners are not from major brands and are too visual. Pay is nice though if you have the traffic.
BlueLithium - have tried these guys a few times. Some CPM, CPC, and even CPA there - however mostly of quality visual banner stuff (the likes of Microsoft Live products, major credit cards, etc, not the “fart buttons”). However the campaigns can vary a lot from great to okay, and often times AdSense or YPN could just get you a better result. All this created too much micromanagement of trying to compare which week was better and which was worse compared to competition.
Chitika - even though I think they have an awesome idea and the way they are implementing is great, they need to provide stats that people can rely on. What I mean is, back when I tested them last year the difference between what they said we earned, compare to what they revised this to a month later was huge. The revisement was not so much my problem as the fact that it took them that long to revise. It meant I couldn’t compare how it was performing in almost real time or on a day or two delay compared to my other A and B tests with other networks. Sorry, a month later was way too late, and unpredictable. Plus it turned out I wasn’t making enough anyway at the end. Another thing that bugged me about Chitika is that it took many days for us to try and optimize which products seemed to work better - we got more revenue and so did Chitika. But then all of a sudden something changed on their back end, or more likely the advertisers decided they should pay less, and the selections we made after careful screening were useless and we were making low numbers again. Sure you can go the automatic route, but that wasn’t ideal. In the end it was too much micromanagement for us, I don’t know if things changed too much recently.
Direct Sales - when we can we try to sell directly. This works out nicely in terms of price and a poper fit for our viewers. But it doesn’t happen often enough.
I don’t have much experience with CPA or affiliate links, I guess I figure I either don’t have the time to optimize or can’t take a risk waiting for CPA.
Cheers, -Ari.
Amit Agarwal
June 8th, 2007 1:46 pm
While Adsense is doing well, I am really enjoying Adify. These guys rock.
A Tentative Personal Finance Blog
June 8th, 2007 2:09 pm
I use adsense, kontera textlinks, text link ads, bidvertisers… I’m still trying to figure it all out. I’ve only been blogging for a month,
J-Ro
June 8th, 2007 2:18 pm
My main monetization comes from Adsense, however AuctionAds has been doing nicely as well. I really want to expand into text links (textlinkads, textlinkbrokers) and more affiliate marketing, especially Amazon.
ross
June 8th, 2007 2:52 pm
i have been using adsense for a while. i just started getting in to CJ more rescently and i bought a script called PHPbay pro that has a beta WP plugin that allows me to import auction itmes from ebay SUPER easy. i am hoping to start making some money with that on my guitar related blog. The blog has only been on WP so i need to wait to start picking up some traffic i lost from search engines in the switch from blogger. But if not anything else, it also helps for my SEO withh all the geywords it brings…
Jennifer Lynn
June 8th, 2007 2:58 pm
Hey Darren -
Although I may try to expand revenue with private advertisers in the future, I simply sprinkle a bit of Adsense over my blog for now.
=^..^=
Leo
June 8th, 2007 4:51 pm
This has been a challenge for me. Even as my site has grown in traffic and subscribers (just passed the 10K subscriber mark!), I have a feeling my revenue could be much better. Currently I’ve been experimenting with Adsense, YPN, Amazon, BlogAds and FeedBurner. I haven’t found the right combo yet. I dropped Chitika and Adbrite as they weren’t working out well for me. I might drop YPN if it doesn’t start doing better in a month.
Markus Jung
June 8th, 2007 5:42 pm
For my german blog and homepage I use AdSense, individual contracts and Affiliate programs: Amazon, Zanox, Adbutler, Superclix, affilinet.
In my niche (distance education, distance learning) a lot of companies use Zanox to advertise - so I can user banner rotation etc.
And I will give trigami a chance - they pay for articles in your blog (clearly marked as paid articles). No experience here so far.
Molli Fire
June 8th, 2007 5:50 pm
My main blog is rewarding but not with cash. The single ad on my site is for an affiliate program that rewards me with store credit at the legendary Threadless Design Community. Everything else is there to spread information or inspire action. Nothing for profit. However, since I consider this info and action to be valuable, to society as a whole as well as myself, I use the same principles that everyone else does to get readers to click through. HearingTest (a music blog) will remain ad-free, but I have started to use the Amazon Affiliate program for another site I run. So far I love it! Thanks for all the great tips Darren, and Problogger Commentators!
SEO South Africa
June 8th, 2007 6:51 pm
Hi Darren, I am clueless regarding monetizing my blog and read the comments above, but still don’t know which is the best. I know all blogs are different and therefore the way you should monetize should be different too, but may I suggest you set up a poll to see which are the most popular methods to monetize? (ad networks, affiliate programs, review programs etc)
Tara
June 8th, 2007 7:09 pm
Adsense and Amazon. Amazon is best if you post about the book or product you’re linking to. Adsense is good some days and bad others. I blog about my life (I’m really interesting, I swear), which involves being a stripper. Adsense wisely applies that by giving me ads about wire strippers and paint strippers. Those days I don’t do so well. Other days I do okay.
side-line
June 8th, 2007 7:47 pm
- Adsense: doing well
- TLA: nice extra
- Auction Ads: this is one that will be a big grower I think, I am really surprised by the excellent results, but my site being a product related site makes it logical I think
- An e-partner for CD’s and DVD’s
- selling banners and other packets
- Chitika: I have mixed feelings about this one…
All in all an ad mix that is doing pretty well its job. The house is being paid with it, so I can’t complain :)
gaman
June 8th, 2007 8:15 pm
I ran a poll recently asking similar question to my blog readers.
http://www.sabahan.com/2007/05/25/whats-your-blogs-biggest-money-maker/
Mock Duck
June 8th, 2007 8:53 pm
I like Foodette’s approach. Very sensible.
Dario Salvelli
June 8th, 2007 9:25 pm
Adsense,Tla. I have to try video ads and direct sales that is the better way i thik. :)
Stephan Goral
June 8th, 2007 10:00 pm
I currently use AdBrite on my BattleCity Classic website which is working pretty good!
At Home Mom
June 8th, 2007 10:30 pm
Great post. I just hit the 3 month mark on my blog and am now able to apply for all the paid review programs, but I had previously applied to a few before my traffic was high enough, so I am now waiting on those.
Yesterday, I got a pleasant surprise when SponsoredReviews emailed me to say that a company had purchased a review from me! That was my first real earning, since I have only made a few pennies from Adsense.
At the moment, I am using Amazon affiliate links, a little Adsense, and now Sponsored Reviews. My main focus so far has been to build the quality and traffic for my blog.
Taegan Goddard
June 8th, 2007 10:50 pm
If you have a blog with traffic, I highly recommend BlogAds. (I’d be happy to sponsor others into BlogAds if it fits your site.)
My top revenues sources, in order:
1. BlogAds
2. Google Adsense
3. Auction Ads
4. Text Link Ads
5. Amazon
Brian Auer
June 8th, 2007 11:03 pm
AdSense and Auction Ads — 50/50 split for impressions, and 50/50 split for revenue.
David
June 8th, 2007 11:34 pm
We’re just diving into Blogging and currently use it to help promote our consulting and training. I gave this post some link love on our Friday, “Who Said That?” Our readership continues to grow. That’s our main focus at this point.
dragonfly183
June 8th, 2007 11:36 pm
I love payperpost and all of the other paid to post programs. I average 8 ads a day between my 3 blogs and I have 2 others am waiting to get page ranks on and they will also be listed on those sites. You have to write the adds yourself but those 8 ads a day make me anywhere from 40 to 70 dollars a day and usually take 1 to 1 1/2 hours to write, and thats. I’ve also been seeing a lot of opportunity to do video adds lately and they pay a lot more. I’ve just been to lazy to hook up any of my web cams.
Steve Remington
June 8th, 2007 11:40 pm
I personally use Adsense, Text Link Ads, Blogads, Auction Ads, Amazon Affiliates, targeted affiliate programs in the form of banners and text, rotating banner ads through 3rd party agency, and then personal ads which I get very few but when I get them they sell for the highest prices.
I used to use Adbrite but dropped them last month. Wasn’t working well for me and used up too much space for such little pay.
Ramkarthik
June 8th, 2007 11:59 pm
I only have a blogspot blog.It is only one and half months old.So my blog doesnot qualify for most of the paid to review or paid to blog sites.I can go for affiliates but i dont think so with a less traffic i can earn much.I just joined Auction Ads.Im really worried about it.I have had nearly 2500 impressions and 60 clicks last week.But the worst part is that no one bought anything.So now im only concentrating on getting traffic to my blog.
The Reviewer
June 9th, 2007 12:31 am
I have adsense and I really like Auction Ads. I can’t get a CPM network yet, as I do not have enough unique visitors a day. I think this will be where i would do best. Being a movie review site, I do not get a lot of click through on Adsense, Auction ads I get a lot of click throughs but not a lot of conversion. I have not made 100 dollars yet in 6 months. I guess making a movie blog is hard work.
D. Campbell
June 9th, 2007 12:34 am
I use Google Adsense primarily. I’ve tested the others, but since my site isn’t product related, they don’t work well. Right now, I’m attempting to do more marketing to help my Adsense earnings increase.
Leo
June 9th, 2007 1:26 am
I make money from Google Adsense.
But, as my blog is in portuguese and Brazil is still discovering the blogsphere, I don´t get so much money.
Anyway, my plan is to write a lot of marketing content, to in the future, when Brazil finaly discover the blog magical world, I´ll be prepared.
hacker not cracker
June 9th, 2007 1:27 am
I’ve dabbled into Chikita in the late 2005. But, now I’m pretty much fully Adsense. I would like to branch out into TLA and Affiliate though in the very near future.
John Hewitt
June 9th, 2007 1:30 am
Currently make about $1000 a month, my top performers are (in order of highest payout to least):
Indeed
Adwords:
Amazon
YPN
Sam
June 9th, 2007 2:09 am
I recently started a blog talking about music and the benefits of learning music. http://musicbeginnings.com - So far I just have a couple of Google ads posted, but I don’t use anything else right now. Everything I’ve read has talked about building up your reader base and traffic first - establishing a quality blog - and then try to monetize. So what I’m doing now is trying to collect what information I can about blogging and monetizing and doing some research, and when I feel my reader base has grown enough I will implement some money-making tools.
Arjun Muralidharan
June 9th, 2007 2:44 am
I do have some income through AdSense, but not past the 100$ mark yet. No-one likes my blog. :-(
SEO Expert Blog
June 9th, 2007 5:10 am
I use Affiliate Programs from affili.net, especially eBay relevance ad, TLA, and AuctionAds
Jim Walton
June 9th, 2007 7:31 am
I’ve started using adsense across about 5 blogs and sites, and get most hits from my blog, churchtechmatters.com, and have a steady stream of income coming in, not a large stream yet but it is growing.
I’m starting to do reviews from reviewme.com, I wrote my first review and it will post either tonight or tomorrow, once I proof read it again, with another in a few days.
I signed up for text link ads but need to check on the status of that.
I haven’t tried Chitika yet but since you rave about it so much, I want to give that a shot.
That’s all, at the moment but I’m looking for more ways to bring in some real income.
junger
June 9th, 2007 9:18 am
Mostly Adsense ads, but I also make some money by linking to online savings accounts with referral bonuses for new opens.
Christian @ iamboredr.com
June 10th, 2007 12:10 am
I’ve used Adsense so far only.. not earning alot atm but still it does pay off for the domain name and hosting!
Buensancho
June 10th, 2007 12:55 pm
It’s not easy at all, I’m trying with AdSense, Auction Ads and Amazon and I’d like to experience with others but there are inconvinients such as the fact that I still haven’t reached monthly traffic figures big enough to apply on Chitika, TLA, etc. or because my blog is in spanish and Pay Per Post are exclusivelly for english content.
Revenue from those I’m using has already become a “family joke” regarding the fact that I’m “counting cents” I guess the main issue in my case is the content, I’m blogging about current events, especially related to Venezuela and Latinamerica and also on history, biographies and books reviews and I guess those aren’t quit commercialy attractive topics for my readers since I’ve noticed that there are plenty of items and services offered trhough the ads that are actually related to my content but people just don’t click on them. I’ve been trying different locations for the ads with the same result…
Either way, I’m trying to be patient, I enjoy blogging a lot so this won´t dicourage me from doing it but it would be even nicer if it paid off; I guess sooner or later it’ll take off and I’ll see the “family joke” removed from our conversations and we’ll have to find something else to laugh on…
Mae
June 10th, 2007 2:16 pm
I make money mainly through TLA, I have been trying to make revenue through adsense but I’m having a hard time :(
Blogs Do Make Money
June 10th, 2007 7:56 pm
I’ve been blogging for 2 years plus but have yet to get any cheque from Adsense. However, I’ve been actively involved in many Paid to blog network like PayPerPost, Blogitive, Blogsvertise, etc. PPP is where my bulk of income comes from.
Apart from that, I like to use Linkworth and just started direct advertising too.
Jesus Guerrero
October 10th, 2007 4:07 am
I’m a 1-year-old-blogger and I have been using AdSense. Currently my adSense income is almost 200 per month and I expect to grow it much more. I know I will do it working a lot. I also began to experiment with Amazon Affiliates Program but I still don’t have nothing to report about it. My blogs are written in spanish and I suspect the ads are much cheaper than the english ones. I expect that the Google AdWords Program also grows to have better ads in the future.
Scott
November 17th, 2007 10:10 pm
Hi Darren,
I’m using Adsense at AspireNow and a custom ad program that I administer. This is starting to bring in some revenue. I’ve found that Amazon has been largely a bust, so far. CJ was disappointing, so I recently switched to Clickbank.
On my blogs, both http://ARRiiVE.blogspot.com and http://aspirenow.blogspot.com, I’m just using Adsense. I’m sure that as traffic grows, I’ll bring in other alternatives.
Cheers!
Scott
P.S. - You might want to join my Plaxo group on collaboration. Obviously, you’re good at getting it! I’d love if you’d contribute your thoughts and ideas: http://advancedcollaboration.plaxogroups.com
mark
December 26th, 2007 4:28 am
I am trying adsense on my blog mmadepot.blogspot.com, with poor results. It is mainly a video site though, but on my other sites, tekshelf.blogspot.com and genuinemen.blogspot.com adsense is doing great.
Christopher
January 17th, 2008 7:37 am
Affiliate sales is number one plus a daily trickle of adsense.
Blogger Tips
February 13th, 2008 12:02 pm
I am try YPN on my blogs currently however I haven’t had much luck with them. I have signup with TLA however i have not had any sales yet.
Ruel
February 20th, 2008 6:18 pm
I monitise my blog with adsense and some affiliate banners.
Ronib
February 21st, 2008 9:01 am
Very nice,
Please visit my blog and see how to make money
cati
March 17th, 2008 3:51 am
Hi there,
Great blog. Very informative, and the comments are great too.
I think I recognized the owner of this blog was at the TED 2008 conference!
Anyhow, I don’t make money with Google ad sense (but I only tried for a week). I am sure it is because I don’t want to impact the design of my blog. I never return onto web sites that have many ads. I don’t know how others do.
But do people clic on ad and why?
Dave Morgan (AOL Global Advertising Strategy) blogged about a study that they did to investigate who clicks on ads:
I quote him:
“What did we learn? A lot. We learned that most people do not click on ads, and those that do are by no means representative of Web users at large.
Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks.
Who are these “heavy clickers”? They are predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. What kinds of content do they like to view when they are on the Web? Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. Yes, these are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers.”
A link to the study:
http://blogs.mediapost.com/spin/?p=1085
So in sum, web marketing seems to capitalize on a niche group.
I have a google page rank of 6, more than 700 average regular feed readers on a culture blog, and yet no clic ever.
Of course contextualizing the ads make a lot of sense through channel and ad units, however it also depends on the niche and the demographic of your readers.
Because I have a relative good number of rss feed reader, I sometimes do reviews, but only if it melts perfectly with the content of my blog and if the product is interesting. Two in one, these reviews are great!
Cati
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