Monetize Blog – Earn Money Online
July 14th, 2009
Monetize blog might sound like a strange name for a blog post but I’m trying to target that keyword phrase in this post so we’re going to have to make the most of a bad situation. I make no claims to be an expert in the art of making money from a blog but I am learning quite a bit as I go along so if you are a newbie to the world of Internet Marketing we might find something useful that you can apply to your own earn money online ventures.
So if you are looking to monetize blogs what are your options? I’ve only got experience with a couple of methods of making money with blogs so that’s what I’m going to talk about here and to be honest its all you need to get started. The thing is that you can choose to monetize your blog in a huge variety of ways but you’ll figure this stuff out for yourself as you go along and different needs crop up.
Deciding how to make money from your blog with regards to what monetization method to use pails into insignificance when compared to the important stuff such as choosing profitable keywords, search engine optimization through intelligent linkbuilding and ultimately getting the traffic which you can convert into cash. Get these things right then you can start having fun trying to work out which is the most profitable way to generate money.
Right off the bat most people who are trying to make money online from blogs or websites add Adsense to pages and hope that visitors will see something on one of the Adsense ads that catches their eye. If the visitor clicks on an ad Google will ship some money to your account. There are plenty of other similar advertising programs out there, if you are interested enough you can do your own research but Adsense is the daddy and the best place for to start.
Google Adsense has the advantages of being extremely easy to use and can be implemented successfully with a huge number of niches due to the number of advertisers who pay to have their ads displayed in the system.
Negatives of Adsense are that the Ads in some niches will pay you a very little per click so to make a lot of money you’ll have to get many visitors to your pages and get a good click through rate.
Affiliate Programs
Another way to monetize blog is to become an affiliate for one of the vast array of companies with products and services to sell who offer such possibilities. When you are doing affiliate marketing you are basically a partner of the retailer and work to promote their goods and services, you’re rewarded whenever you send a visitor to a site who goes on to make a purchase.
Obviously the affiliate system differs from Adsense due to the fact that your visitor actually has to buy something when they click on to someone else’s site. You get paid less often than with Adsense but have the potential to make more money as affiliate programs pay a percentage of the value of the sale. Work in a niche that concentrates on expensive products or services and you could make a living from a small amount of traffic in comparison to regular advertising programs.
Where To Find An Affiliate Program
Whenever I’m on the lookout for a company to partner up with for a particular niche I’ll simply go to Google and search for “My niche + affiliate” or “A particular product + affiliate” to see what comes up. You’ll usually find something that suits your site that you can push to your visitors. Of course, there is always the opportunity to become an amazon or Ebay affiliate. I’ve had some success with Amazon recently although many people moan about the small percentage you get from sales but for some niches it works well. I haven’t tried Ebay affiliates yet but plan to sign up for an account in the near future and give it a shot. I’ve heard good things about the Ebay Partner Network so I’ll report back when I get some experience.
Clickbank.com is another popular place to find products to sell to the “guests” on your niche blog or website. With high percentage payouts per sale you can make some great money using these products although some of them won’t sell well and many are of dubious quality. Still money is money in the battle to monetize blog.
If you were reading this post hoping to find the definitive guide to how to Make Money Online from blogging with various methods of monetization you may be disappointed I haven’t covered all the possibilities. But the reality is there are more important things you need to do to earn cash online than monetize blogs with the perfect advertising program or affiliate product. Work on the big stuff to get more traffic to your blog then you can worry about searching for the best way to make money from that traffic.
The truth is that this post was a bit of an experiment on my part to try and get a post to rank in the search engine results pages for the term “monetize blog”. I’ve tried to impart a little knowledge for anyone new to earning money online along the way so I hope you have found something useful. And if you found this post by typing the phrase “monetize your blog” or something similar into Google or some other search engine leave a comment and let me know so we can see if the experiment worked.
By the way I have installed the KeywordLuv and Dofollow plugin on this blog so if you leave a contextual comment you’ll get a free “dofollow” link back to your blog to help with your search engine optimization efforts. You can’t say any fairer than that! 
Well I’ve tried a few “monetization” ideas – Adsense works, Kontera is useless, not sure about Adbrite yet. Amazon – hard to make sales due to their 24 hour cookie. Clickbank tends to have very spammy products so I’ve stayed clear. Commission Junction tends to have mainstream products and they are working out for me.
But I’m sure everyone you ask this question of will give you a different answer… That’s what makes things so interesting!
Comment by Earn money online in a recession — July 16, 2009 @ 4:54 am
Yeah, I agree with you in regards to Kontera. I tried it on one of my sites and got quite a large number of clicks but I was getting 2 or 3 cents per click, a waste of time.
I’ve had some success with Amazon in one niche, and commission junction looks like it could be good due to the quality of products you can promote but I have yet to give it a fair go.
But yeah, I think the success of any method you use to monetize a blog depends on what niche you are in, how well you build your sites and the “quality” of your content.
Comment by admin — July 16, 2009 @ 5:20 am
Monetizing your blog seem to be a very exciting idea but its not that easy though.Affiliate programs being one of the old method has gained a bad reputation because Amazon and ebay are dumping these affiliate marketers suddenly, just one mail and your affiliate program has gone. It has happened in some part of world.But still its its one of the best way to earn money online.Old is gold as they say
Comment by Jack Garreth from Play games — July 17, 2009 @ 8:59 am
I would almost always use affiliate programs over AdSense – that way you are basically replacing the AdWords advertisers who are making money from YOUR site!
Comment by Macro Polo — July 18, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
I’ve got a feeling you’re right marco polo. I’m moving more towards affiliate programs on a lot of my sites. I have to say though that I do find adsense very easy to implement compared to affiliate stuff which I don’t have as much experience with.
Finding the right products to promote and pre-selling them is something I have yet to master.
Comment by admin — July 18, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
[...] think its a road that many people who are trying to earn money online consider due to the fact that most of us are attempting to avoid doing a real job at all costs and [...]
Pingback by How To Make Money Writing Online | Adsense - Make Money Online — July 19, 2009 @ 6:23 am
I can see your getting the odd spam comment because your using keywordluv. I feel your pain mate…using Bad Behavior and Akismet at least kills off the obvious spammers :p
Comment by Matty from Rugby Boots — September 5, 2009 @ 3:25 am
Apart from affiliate marketing, I think that one should also consider monetizing their sites through CPA marketing as well as paid blogging!
Thanks,
Comment by Dave Richards from Anorexia Tips — September 17, 2009 @ 1:55 am
People really can make money off of an adsense site, it just takes a real desire to succeed. You have to be fluid with online marketing and find high traffic niches to serve up ads. There are still a lot of untapped markets that a lot of people could make a killing using adsense on. A great way to earn residual income. Great article by the way.
Comment by lapel pins — September 26, 2009 @ 7:32 pm
Great & very informative post. I think people out there are really willing to work online & getting paid. But there are many misconceptions which they need to be cleared & most think that it’s a get rich quicker way. But i think that making money through blog or website isn’t easy, it takes time & hardworking. I am fond of Google adsense as it is easy to use & Click Bank as affiliate program, but one thing i dislike about affiliate program is they pay your when you sale something on their behalf, before that i thought that affiliate programs Pays per unique click too. I don’t know much about CPA Marketing, I hope to hear something about CPA.
Comment by Mel from Coquina Sands real estate — September 27, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
Adsense is a big money earner but you go up and down according to Google’s whims… in the end list building is a more long term and stable business model IMO..
Comment by Marie from Breast Enlargement Without Surgery — October 3, 2009 @ 12:14 am
I’ve tested most all of the blog monitization methods. I listed some below and my comments. I also use one of the more mature plugins for WordPress: Ad Manager. this helps to split test several methods at the same time.
Google AdSense: The best payout by far.
Yahoo Publisher Network: The payout is very small. Kind of a waste.
MS pubCenter: I’ve tried twice to get my site approved with no success. When I was running MS, the payout was similar to AdSense.
AdBrite: Still in testing. I’ve heard some good things.
Amazon: More than 250 clicks and no sales. Very disapointing.
eBay: Heard from some friends. They don’t pay for all your clicks. Very disappointing.
Chitika Premium: The CTR is lower and payout small. Also very disappointing.
I’m holding out hope for MS pubCenter. Perhaps they will loosen their standards in the production release.
Comment by Brian from Margarita Maker — December 22, 2009 @ 11:50 am
I’ve always had the best luck with blog monetization – if the site was getting good traffic – by going with either Adsense or something built on the same model (Adbrite, Chitika, etc.). But if you’re in tightly targeted buying niche, I actually think you’re better off avoiding those forms of advertising. Go with higher paying affiliate links or, if appropriate, Clickbank. Just my 2 cents worth.
Comment by John from How to make money with adsense — January 5, 2010 @ 7:06 pm