Direct Earning Methods –With the help of these methods a blogger can earn income directly FROM their blog.
Indirect Earning Methods – With the help of indirect methods a blogger can earns revenue from their blog.
Most blogs are using one, direct method, and some are using the other indirect methods. In this post I am going to share about 8 direct methods for earning money. After this posting this article I will give some information about indirect methods. In the following post I will provide some few affiliate links to services that I am using. I have some success with these affiliate programs because I have earned some money from it.
Direct Income Earning Methods for Bloggers
1. Advertising
There are several methods for making money from a blog. Numerous bloggers are using many ways of selling advertising space on a blog. As I have told here that bloggers are using different advertising options in which I have provided some of them below.Contextual Advertising – The contextual advertising program is used by numerous bloggers. In fact the contextual advertising programs, such as AdSense and YPN (beta) are very popular among bloggers. Probably it is the most common and popular income stream being used by them today. In addition to the AdSense and YPN the MSN are also developing such type of program for its customers or publishers. In fact these programs scan the content of your blog to assertion what its topic is and attempt to put contextually relevant ads (text and image) onto your blog. If you want to start this type of program you will need to register with these networks. It is very simple and easy to use. In fact they will involve pasting some code into your blog’s templates. Payment is on a ‘per click’ basis, referred to as CPC or ‘cost per click’ ads. Contextual ads are most suitable for those blogs that have a particular niche topic, especially if it has some sort of commercial angle. They are not so good with ‘general’ type blogs like those blogs which have many topics of interest and/or political/spiritual blogs which argue just one side of a case. In fact such type of case confuses AdSense. For AdSense tips please visit this link that how to use AdSense on your blog here.
Other CPC Advertising – There are large number of other ad systems that pay on a per click basis. In fact these networks are not contextual in nature. These networks are also very popular and important just like the systems like AdSense do not allow you to run contextual ads on the same page view as them. These systems include Chitika’s eMiniMalls (aff).
Impression Based Ads – The other most important and common method is Impression based ads. In fact impression based ads pay a small amount for every person who views the advertisement. The amount of payment varies from program to program, and ad to ad, and is generally a fraction of a cent. There are a large number of other ad systems around like this including Fastclick (aff) and Tribal Fusion. It is clear that impression based ads are working very well on those blogs or websites that have sufficient number of traffic. But in case if your blog or website don’t have sufficient traffic then it would be difficult for you to start such type of advertising on your blog or website.
Blog Ads – In fact BlogAds have become something like an institution when it comes to advertising on blogs. The main focus of BlogAds is monetizing political blogs, but is expanding their focus lately. The beauty of them is that bloggers set their own rates and can accept or reject advertisers that apply to them to be featured on their blogs. Similarly the other most important feature of these ads is that it put the control of what ads show and how much they earn into the hands of the blogger. The disadvantage of this network is that if you select a high you could never have any ads showing at all. They can also be difficult to be accepted into as a publisher as these days they only accept people into the system if they have some one who is already in ‘sponsor’ or recommend the new publisher.
Text Ads – You can also make money from the Text ads. This is another way for making money. Its best example is vneedjobs It is also increasingly popular to sell ads on your blog is to look into text links. The main advantage and beauty of these text ads is that they don’t take up much room and that depending upon the system you choose to run them you can have control over which advertisers you accept and reject. AdBrite (aff) is one such system that gives you control in a similar way to BlogAds in that you set your own prices and approve all ads. They also have some other formats of ads. Text Link Ads (aff) is another text link seller that more and more bloggers are using. The beauty of both of these systems is that they have a pool of advertisers already so you don’t have to go looking for your own advertisers. For this purpose you have to copy and past some codes, and just in a matter of few second or minutes you will have your ads on your blog or website. I use them both and while they don’t earn anywhere near as much as AdSense or Chitika for me they add up over the year and have done well for me. Bidvertiser and Adzaar are other system that I know are popular with some. I have used them on some of my blogs very successfully and my experience was very interesting with them. And it is the main reason that I also refer these networks for ads on your blogs or websites. I hope that you will also have the same experience with them, and would be happy when you make some money from it.
RSS Ads – The most popular way for people to read blogs is via RSS. And, therefore, a large number of publishers and ad providers have been keen to find different ways to place ads in feeds. This system is very successful. In fact too many people making big dollars with RSS ads yet. There ad systems seem to be improving in the near future. As it is clear that AdSense offers RSS ads to some of its publishers. For this purpose you have to have a certain number of impressions first, as does YPN. Feedburner is a tool that I’ve used to help monetize my own feeds. In fact the feedburner is providing three options to its publishers, these are given below.
- 1. AdSense if you’ve been approved by them,
- 2. Amazon affiliate program and
- 3. If you have a lot of subscribers, over 500, they have an Ad Network.
The other important and becoming popular system in this respect is Pheedo. You should also try with it and use it I think you would like it.
Other Ads Systems – In addition to the above mentioned ads network systems, most of which I’ve used myself; there are many other advertising options which I’ve not had experience with and so won’t personally recommend. I’m sure they are worth experimenting with however as I see many of them being used by bloggers every day. I am going to present some of these in front of you if you want to register with them and use their services. I hope you make some money from it if you use it on your blog or website.
- AdGenta, CrispAds, Clicksor, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, Double Click, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo, Adknowledge, YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point, OneMonkey, and TextAds. Feel free to add your own and tell us how you’ve gone with them in comments below.
2. Sponsorship
Sponsorship is another form of advertising. Sponsorship is being used by a smaller number of bloggers to find their own advertisers. All of the above systems have the advantage of finding you advertisers, or at least helping in the automation of ads to your blog, but as your blog grows in profile and influence you might find other options for private deals come up.The big blog networks have people dedicated to the task of finding advertisers, but smaller bloggers might find this worthwhile also. I have find a blog that been selling ads on Digital Camera Blog for two years. In fact as it grow in traffic and profile and managed to attract larger companies, who are willing to pay more, to buys space. Currently the blog features ads from Adobe who have bought a combination of banner, newsletter and text ads.
The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post.
3. Affiliate Programs
The other important source, for direct advertising, for making money is affiliate programs. In this case you would be able to take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most common of these for bloggers is Amazon which has tens of thousands of products that you can link to. Other affiliate programs that represent many different companies and products include Linkshare, Commission Junction and Clickbank.With the help of affiliate program you can make sufficient money by referring different products of various companies. In fact the affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most profit form it, but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic. I am referring a link to you peoples if you want to explore affiliate programs more you should to read 10 tips for using affiliate programs on you blog.
4. Selling/Flipping Blogs
This is another most important idea for making money from your blog. From selling, or flipping, your blog you can make considerable amount of money from it. Probably the largest sale is that of Weblogs Inc. It is, a network of blogs which, sold to AOL for a reported $25 million. There are examples of smaller blogs that are sold, either privately or via auctions on sites like eBay and SitePoint. One such auction was that of the Blog Herald which took place here.Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down the track is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention I think if you start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and its own good income stream you are more likely to find buyers down the track.
5. Donations and Tip Jars
By the help of donation you can also make money from your blog or website. A very small number of blogs are making good money with these networks. Its best example is Jason Kottke. To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership. And it would be very successful if you have some rich loyal readers, because they will be able to donate some money to your blog or website.6. Merchandise
As I have told in the above portion of this article that there are various ways that bloggers are using. They are making a large amount of money from it. In this category there is another way and that is merchandise. By using this method some blogs use with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, and Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you has a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others.7. Selling Subscriptions
The other mostly used method for making money from your blog is selling subscriptions. This idea of charging readers for content is one that surfaces from time to time. There are numerous websites around the web that do this very successfully. The problem that most bloggers who have tried it have run into is that most topics that you could think to start a blog about already have free sites available. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic.8. Blog Networks
This is another method for making money from your blog or website. This method is emerging income method for bloggers is blog networks. There are two ways to make money here. Firstly you can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer. There are many networks out there and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ll attempt to write a post on what to think about when you’re looking at whether to join a network later in this series.I am going to mention it here that my next topic will be about the indirect ways for making money from your blog or website. So please also read it and share it on your twitter and facebook account.