Hi there ! I have a personal blog (link below in my signature). After a year of blogging, I'm slowly considering monetizing it. I'm now a PG4 and have regular readers, relatively good and steady traffic. I currently have no ads and I wish I could keep it that way. But... but yeah, I'd love to make a bit of money with my blog. My goals would be : - Make from 50$ to ??? per month - Focus on one specific type of ad/ monetization source - Something steady (I don't want to bribe my readers to click on ads!) I know, I'm probably too picky! I don't know anything about the whole making money on the web, so I'd appreciate some advice. Thanks !
You can try and sell links in your blog, or add Adsense, I don't really know of any other ways to monetize blogs.
Find sponsors for your blog, or try Adsense.. There are also sites that pay for blogging (though your readers may find you biased on a review just for money). There are also widgets like BlogAds that shall pay you based on any sale you make. You may use affiliate links on your blog. But then, the best is Adsense..It's there on all blogs, so your readers might really not mind that.. Maybe, you can create a poll for your readers to tell you what kind of ads would be least intrusive for them..maybe that should help...
Zhu, As with anything, there are a zillion different ways to do just about everything! What's right for you and for your blog community may not be right for someone else. I checked out your blog real quick just so I could get a feel for it. The fact that you have a logo which reads "Ad free blog" tells me a lot. There are many ways to monetize your blog but you're going to have to find one (or more) you are comfortable with and sit well with your readers. With a PR4 blog you could sell text links and easily achieve this goal. 15 text links x $5 a month is $75 a month. You might consider letting your readers know your situation and let them give you their feedback. They might be a lot more open-minded than you think they are... Good luck
Thanks for your feedback and good advice! I don't think my readers will mind that much, considering I'm the only one with no ads I know so far... as long as it's not too intrusive, that is. Sorry for being new at that but... what are text links? Could you point me to a good website? I don't mind your referral by PM if you want. I don't have a good feeling about adsense for some reason... I might be biased but from what I read, with the exception of a few lucky ones, most people struggle to have clicks.
Hey Zhu, You don't need to apologize for being new on an issue... we all have to start at square one! As for Adsense, I make some money with it but nothing to write home about. In my experience it really depends on the type of visitors you get. If your visitors are the "lookey-loo" type then Adsense can make you some money but if your visitors are on your site with a focused purpose, the Click-through rate seems to drop dramatically. That said, I don't claim to be an Adsense expert. Of all of the facets of Internet Marketing it's the subject I'm weakest in (it just doesn't excite me enough to want to do a thorough study). It's easy to remove though so it couldn't hurt putting it up there for a few weeks and seeing what happens. In regards to text links they are just hyperlinked sections of text... exactly like your "Correr Es Mi Destino..." is linked to your blog. You can sell text links to other webmasters/blog publishers and since you have a PR4 blog you should easily be able to get $60/year ($5 per month) from the advertiser. If you want to see an example, look at the bottom right-hand side of one of my sites... Kevinsebookuniverse.com I only allow 15 outgoing paid text links and I don't use the phrase "sponsored ads" as this devalues the link. You can see that I've got three spots occupied and have space for 12 more. You can sell these on eBay, Craigslist, to regular blog contributors or here on DP (amoung a thousand other outlets)
In my opinion, if people are visiting your blog regularly then, obviously, they are interested in what you have to say and trust and value your opinion. Maybe start recommending some products to your visitors. Nothing too fancy, but maybe products you use in your everyday life. Or something new you tried and really love. Recommend the products to your visitors. Don't make it sound like a sales pitch, but just give an honest review of, for example, your Apple iPhone (if you have one). Then setup some affiliate links for your readers to click through on. This goes back to the trust issue I was talking about. Your regular readers value and trust your opinion so they will value your review. The end result is they clickthrough to purchase the iPhone. This would be something I would do infrequently though. You don't want to do it like every other day, but maybe start making it a special feature on your blog and post it bi-weekly. Just an idea for you.
Adsense. Then write clear well-thought-out and grammatically sound blog posts. For starters, just go to clickbank and commission junction and sign up. Then embed affiliate links within your blog posts. Remember to enable the blog to receive comments from your visitors. Finally, post at least 5 articles a day that are related to your blog topics to article directories and also remember to add our blog link in the articles! Voila!
Thanks for your replies ! I may try Adsense... that said, I'm only posting twice a week, no way I'm posting 5 times a day ! However, my posts are usually quite long and researched... Recommending products is also a great idea.... I might wanna look into that. If any of you guys want to "sponsor" me or have a referral to a specific website, PM me - I'd be happy to take the link if it can benefit you as well