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How do you Make Money from Your Blog?

Posted By Darren Rowse 8th of June 2007 Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 Comments

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.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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/

  5. 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

  6. I use AdSense, HotWords (a Brazilian afiliate program like Text Link Ads) and afiliate programs from some e-commerce websites.

  7. 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.

  8. 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!

  9. 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.

  10. 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/

  11. 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.

  12. 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. :-)

  13. 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.

  14. Text-Link-Ads, ReviewMe… god bless them.

  15. 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!

  16. 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.

  17. I’m using Adsense and Commision Junction, and quite happy with both. Like others, my priority is still on building traffic.

  18. 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.

  19. Just Adsense ads until recently, but I’ve started dropping some product-placement ads into the content, using Commission Junction and Amazon affiliations.

  20. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. 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.

  23. 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

  24. 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

  25. 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.

  26. 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

  27. 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

  28. 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.

  29. 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.

  30. Google Ads, Amazon Associates, and recently some MTV Movie Awards Ads which just ended that were 30 cents a click!

  31. 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!

  32. 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

  33. I use adsense and Adbrite. I’ve made $23 to date with adsense, and $60 with Adbrite.

  34. I have monetizedusing adsense and just started with SponsoredReviews

  35. I have monetized using adsense and just started with SponsoredReviews

  36. 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.

  37. 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.

  38. 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

  39. 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.

  40. 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.

  41. While Adsense is doing well, I am really enjoying Adify. These guys rock.

  42. 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,

  43. 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.

  44. 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…

  45. 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.

    =^..^=

  46. 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.

  47. 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.

  48. 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!

  49. 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)

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