One vital addition to any monetized blog
If you’re like me, you’ll be passionate about the subject you write about, caring less about any monetary gain and more about a genuine interest in the topic.
You’ll also want to cover the costs of your web hosting, and might place a few relevant ads across your site / blog (you can see how I do this in my right sidebar, under the ‘featured sites’ heading).
Following in the footsteps of other online publishers, I’ve recently added a new page to my horizontal site navigation. The ‘Advertise‘ page gives a quick snapshot of my website statistics, and lets others know that they can give themselves a little added exposure right here, and to you, my much appreciated readers.
Take a look at the advertise pages of some other influential people:
- Darren at ProBlogger.net
- Nate at NateWhitehill.com
- Oli at TutorialBlog.org
- Jonathan at SmartWealthyRich.com
I was thinking about writing a more comprehensive guide to advertising. I chose not to for two reasons:
Firstly, I’m nowhere near qualified enough to give advice about earning money through a blog.
Second, Daniel at Daily Blog Tips recently published the ultimate guide on finding advertisers for your website, which is a great read.
Are you monetizing your website / blog?
I’d love to know if you’ve had any success, how you go about it, or if you’ve made any mistakes I / we can learn from.
Related posts
25 appreciated comments on “One vital addition to any monetized blog”
Anything to add?
All comments are moderated so you may experience a short delay before yours appears. Comments should be respectful of other voices in the discussion, and I reserve the right to edit or delete comments at my discretion.
Please use your real name. Keywords will be removed.
Interesting, I’ve not been too keen on monetizing yet and haven’t had much success with Text-link-ads either. I removed them last week. I am waiting for my blog to grow a bit bigger before I put a “Advertise Here” link
I’m a new player in the whole blog monetization market. Like you, my first focus is to write about the topics I’m passionate about. Maybe in second or third would be a goal to recuperate the costs of running the site.
Naturally, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and have myself registered for a number of advertising/affiliate programs. However, I’m hesitant to load up my site with all of them at the moment (my blog is only about 3 weeks young), and would prefer to spend my efforts building a solid audience first.
But also like you, I love learning about what others are doing successfuly to monetize their blogs, even if I’m not quite ready for that route yet.
One thing I forgot to mention is that if you’re just starting out, don’t be motivated by the possibility of earning money. Your motivation should lie in the content you’re publishing. Give it a year or so of consistent writing before re-thinking your strategy.
You’re welcome to disagree here, especially as I haven’t yet been publishing for a year!
Arpit,
I think you’re doing a sterling job with Clazh. Keep it up.
Verne,
You’re definitely right to hesitate. It’s such a turn-off to visit a blog that’s overloaded with ads and affiliate schemes.
You might be interested in the discussion on this article of mine: Google AdSense makes you look unprofessional?
Ben,
Have you’ve done anything extra to attract text link ads, besides signing up for an account?
Nate Whitehill has previously given some great advice on that topic, mentioning forums you should participat in. Like I say, it’s not a priority for me, and I’ve even contemplated removing third party ads.
This is something I plan to do for Binary Moon and Binary Joy in the not too distant future. I think it would be beneficial to everyone to include it.
I completely agree. I come across hundreds of blogs that are just starting out and plaster it with adverts. Then they blog about making money out of blogs, with other people leaving comments who also have blogs that blog about making money. I don’t think this is a good business model, reminds me of the dot com bubble.
David I think you’ve got it spot on with your advertising. Your blog isn’t really about making money through advertising, its more of an indirect marketing tool for your business.
Having said that, the advertising links are good idea to pay for your hosting, it doesn’t degrade the blog in anyway.
Jamie
Hi Jamie,
Good of you to let me know that the text link ads don’t degrade from the content. It’s something I wonder about, so cheers mate.
Hi David
I’ve been thinking about putting a bit of advertising on my site, a couple of people have approached me about it.
I downloaded a google adsense plugin the other day and had an experiment, but I just hated the way it looked and took it off. I think the way you are managing advertising with the featured sites is a good way to go, its not too intrusive.
Glad to see you back. Missed you yesterday. I really like the text link ads. I do not like the Banners and banner blocks deterring my view from what the blog is really about.
David,
I agree that you should monetize your blog, but I think it may depend upon the topic of the blog. My SmallBusinessUnMarketing.com blog is very different from ReinventYourLifeWithPassion; readers are expecting ads on the first but do not care for them on the second blog.
Hi Tara,
I’d thought of you when writing this post as I know advertising is something you’re thinking about. I don’t like the appearance of AdSense either. I’d tried it at the very beginning (jumping on the bandwagon) but it wasn’t long before I removed it.
Joseph,
Thanks for the message. I was pretty busy yesterday and didn’t have time to write an article. When not working I’ve been developing my own WordPress theme which I should put live in the next week or two (fingers crossed).
Connie,
Ideally it’d be great if there wasn’t any advertising at all, with every site focusing purely on content and its readers. I think that as long as the ads aren’t intrusive and unrelevant to the topic then it’s not so bad. Anything that detracts from the content isn’t great in my opinion.
Thanks for the link, David. I’ve been fortunate to have found many private advertisers for my site. Private advertising truly is a superior form of monetizing a blog – non obtrusive ads plus 100% of the pay out – what could be better?
No success yet, as I’ve not monetized my blog. My blog is still new to try and monetize, but I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t think about the day when/if I could start making a little money from my blog. It would be nice to at least pay for my hosting fees. I enjoy what I write about and if I never make a dime from my blog, I’ll be fine, but it would be nice to have a little extra supplemental income.
Great idea!
I have an advertise page up, but it hasnt got much on it yet.
Hey David, thanx for the link! :)
Good move on putting your advertise page up David, it’s a great way to monetize a blog without being too obstrusive. I’ve yet to sell all the spots on my blog, still have 1 spot available, but it’s fine, most of my blogging income doesn’t come from TLA anyway ;)
Hoping to monetize my blog(s) but am focusing on two aspects at the moment: maintaining posting consistency, and preparing a redesign to improve the overall look.
Posting consistency is my first priority, but I have a vacation coming up and I plan to take my time and work on the new design(s) comfortably near the lake. :) Watch, I’ll probably come back with some “wild life” theme. :)
Nate,
You’re doing a great job and it’s obvious through your well-written posts.
Deron,
You’ve got your priorities right which is great. Too many blogs start out filled with advertising and no traffic. It’s nice to have the hosting covered and I’m sure it won’t be long before you do.
Jon,
I took some ideas from you and your advertise page. Nice work.
Bret,
Looking forward to that wild life theme! ;)
I hope you have a great vacation.
I am the same as you, I love blogging and do not care about making money through my blog but I do not use adverts to cover the costs as I hate adverts. I think for some websites they can be a handy accusition and I know of one website I am creating in the near future were we are going to use advertising to cover the costs.
Ok David, I took your Adsense advice, kind of. I switched from the big and bulky 300×250 ad to the 120×240 ad. I think it makes the posts look A LOT better. Hopefully it will also increase my clicks.
Jermayn,
What’s the new site project you’ll be working on? I hope it goes well for you.
WE,
When it comes to AdSense, I just don’t like the look of it. I know it works wonders for some people, but for me it’s a turn-off.
You have to ask yourself whether you want to compromise site design for whatever income AdSense brings in. If the value of its inclusion is worth it, then that’s great and you’re doing well. If it’s not, ditch it for another method.
Still, I’m glad your change of ad size has improved the look.
@David – It is a website on how to learn the rules and understand the game of AFL…
Ah yes, it’s clear from your site that you’re a big AFL fan.
You know, I’ve often thought about launching a site dedicated to the football team I support. One of those many ideas I have floating about.
I’m trying to monetize my blogs – I’ve got the one above plus one on the stockmarket (sharescity) – plus about 5 or 6 others ! Too many and I’m doing it all the wrong way round. Learning on the hoof just as an experiment to see if it is possible to make money from blogs without spending any money.
My experience is that you’ve got to get traffic, but if you don’t understand the mechanics of blogging, SEO, keywords, trackbacks, linkbait, pinging, tagging, networking (a polite name for something else) etc… etc… then you spend a lot of time going round in circles.
My advice is a) get a niche – preferably one you know something about and that has a ready-made audience (e.g. there is a woman who has a dog site that brings in lots of revenue because people love dogs) b) the only thing that brings in money for a beginner and from my experience is Adsense, I have yet to find an affiliate program that brings in more than zilch – purely because you can’t get the necessary amount of traffic.
Old Vic,
You definitely need to blog about what you know. It takes time, and a lot of persistence. If I was writing about a topic I had no interest in I’m sure I would’ve given up a long time ago.
Personally, I don’t like AdSense. I don’t like its appearance, and think it cheapens websites.
Google AdSense makes you look unprofessional?
David,
I actually agree with you about the appearance of Adsense, even though I’ve got it on my blogs, but I don’t think it cheapens my blogs, as they were not very expensive in the first place :-). . But an ad. is an ad. after all even if it is wrapped up in high-class clothing.
Does it make you look unprofessional ? I guess that depends what profession you’re in. As a graphic designer I can see why you would not want to use adsense. Personally, my profession is nothing to do with the Internet and I am experimenting at the moment to see which online money making methods actually work. So far, as I mentioned already Adsense is the only one that brings in any money at all and I suspect that is the case with lots of beginners. So, given that the number of visitors is small Adsense doesn’t do too bad, if I could increase the number of visitors a few hundrefold then it might even prove quite valuable. I also don’t think I would get any more visitors if I removed the Adsense ads.
Old Vic,
I think you’re right to a certain extent that your profession does make a difference.
Whilst it’s true that you might not get any more visitors by removing AdSense, I think you’re more likely to have people link to your articles if you show less advertising.
Of course it all depends on your content, but personally, I’m more likely to associate myself with another website if there’s not a great deal of AdSense.