10 Ways To Make Money From Ads On Your Blog
A lot of people blog for pleasure or as a hobby, but there is an even greater number of bloggers who take this activity very seriously, spending hours every day on developing their blogs and content. If you are one such regular and serious blogger, then you are justified in expecting to get some money off your blog, since you put so much money into it. But the question is, how?
Since a blog is a public place and any number of people could visit it, it is a ripe platform for advertising. There are a number of ways you can get paid to put advertisements on your blogs, and some may be more suitable for your style of blogging than others. Read on to find out ten tricks that can help you rake in the moolah through advertisements on your blog:
1. Through Ad Networks
You’ve probably heard of Google AdSense, but there are a number of other ad providers like Chitika that put ads on your blog, generally ads that are relevant to your content. But if you do not write for a global readership, you can even opt for smaller, more local ad networks such as NuffNang.
2. Cost Per Click ads (CPC)
Cost per Click or CPC ads means that you will have a number of ads on your page, and you will be paid a certain amount (generally just a few cents) for them every time someone clicks on them. This is not a very high source of revenue, as most blog visitors avoid clicking on ads altogether. Moreover you are not allowed to draw attention to the ads in your post, or beseech people to click on them.
3. Cost Per Action (CPA)
This is an even more demanding form of advertising than CPC, as you will not get any money even if your visitors click on an ad. You only get paid if the said visitors also follow up by taking some sort of action once they have clicked the ad, such as making a purchase, creating an account, or leaving behind some contact information such as mailing address. Like CPC, these ads will only generate revenue if you get a very high traffic, of which at least some people will take action on the ad.
4. Cost Per Impression or Cost per Mile (CPM)
CPM ads mean that you will get paid every time the ad loads, in other words every time someone opens your page. Payment is usually made per 1000 views. This is good news for people who have blogs with reasonably high traffic. Understandably, the rates are a mere pittance for most blogs, but if your blog is judged to have high value content, you could expect up to 40 or 50 dollars per 1000 views.
5. Sponsorships
This is a pretty safe and guaranteed way to earn money from your blog. Basically you are selling advertising space to businesses, and they will pay you to have their ads on your blog, irrespective of the number of clicks they get or sales they make. But you can only hope to get sponsorships if your blog is very popular or has a massive readership, or else who would want to invest money in a low view blog?
6. Pay Per Post
This is basically a post you get paid for by a business to do. You have to review, advertise, publicize, or generally praise the product in question. The problem with this is that it reduces your credibility as an unbiased blogger or reviewer. Readers will be reluctant to take your writing seriously if they know you have been paid by the party in question. Be sure to mention on your post that you have accepted payment for it, to avoid ethical questions.
7. Text Linking
Text linking means that you are accepting money from a party to post their link as a part of your text. This is usually done by businesses to improve their page ranking. But beware, this activity is not a very reputed one, and in fact it is frowned upon by search engines. So you may end up losing rank yourself. A lot of bloggers do this to earn some easy money, but keep the risks in mind if you want to undertake this sort of advertising.
8. Job Boards or Classified Blogs
If you are blogging in a field where people do a lot of buying and selling, such as second hand electronics, or if you are involved in a niche where people constantly have to look for work or look for other skilled people to do their work, such as freelance writing, you can use your blog as a job board or a classified section, and charge people for posting about their products or opportunities. But remember, you have to be able to attract both sellers as well as buyers.
9. Ads in Newsletter
Your blog probably sends out regular mails to subscribers and followers, either whenever you post, or on a periodical basis. You can earn some clean money by putting advertisements in these newsletters, especially if you have a large number of subscribers.
10. Video and Image Ads
Much like the ads on YouTube videos that pop up and can be closed, or that precede a video, you can have ads inserted into the images and videos you are psoting. These ads pay well since they are hard to miss or ignore, but for that very reason they tend to annoy readers. Make sure your pictures and videos are so darn interesting that visitors will not be put off by a few ads.
