Marketing Ideas&Management Stuffs

http://ibrahim.cn/2010/08/20/monetizing-blogs/Monetizing BlogsMarketing Ideas&Management Stuffs

Your blog has been up for awhile and it generates a fair amount of traffic.  Now what?  If you feel that offering advertising is appropriate for your audience, start monetizing that content.  What kinds of monetization techniques are available to bloggers?  This section will go into monetization techniques in more detail.

Choosing When to Monetize

When your blog is first launched, you’re facing a few new challenges.  You’ll be asking yourself a number of questions:

l  How am I going to update the blog going forward?

l  Do I have enough content or strategies to obtain content for a few months?

l  Do I know how to attract new members to my community and alert them to the presence of my blog?

These should be your first considerations before monetization comes into play. Consider strategies to get a stronghold on a user base before you try to make money off of your barely existent content.  Establish yourself first before you proceed down the monetization route.  If monetization is on the mind initially upon launch, it may give off the impression that you’re only blogging to make money.   The community should trust that you’re adding value first.  Worry about making money later.

Like any initial investment, you’ll likely put a lot of time and energy toward your blog with no initial return.  That should change if you keep at blogging.  Successful bloggers can make anywhere from three to six figures a month.

Display Advertising

Banner advertising is a popular option for bloggers.  Sponsors can pay bloggers a monthly fee for display of a banner, or bloggers can use affiliate banners where they receive money from successful transactions.

There are number of banner options available.  These include the 728×90 leaderboard, the 468×60 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle, or the 125×125 square.  Most blogs utilize the 125×125 banner ad and those appear predominantly above the fold (which is a typical requirement for advertisers for maximum visibility).

If you are monetizing your blog with display advertising, you’ll likely need to provide information to potential advertisers.  Advertisers typically inquire about your demographic and the number of page views (and unique visitors, if possible).  You should have this information handy if at all possible.  Many advertisers often look at other metrics, including Alexa ranking and PageRank, to verify the popularity of your site and to determine how much exposure their ad will have.  This may influence the amount of money they want to offer as well.

If you choose to provide display advertising through a third party, you can use services such as Tribal Fusion (http://www.tribalfusion.com/), Right Media (http://www.rightmedia.com), and Advertising.com (http://www.advertising.com).  In this way, you don’t have to handle the ad sale directly and it may be easier for you as a blog publisher.

Pay Per Click

Most beginners start monetizing their blog with Google AdSense (https://www.google.com/adsense/) or other Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising networks, such as the Yahoo! Publisher Network (http://publisher.yahoo.com/), Chikita (http://chitika.com/), Clicksor (http://www.clicksor.com/), and Bidvertiser (http://www.bidvertiser.com/).  The idea behind these programs is that you sign up on the network and receive a snippet of code (based on the size of your selected ad) that you need to place on your website.  Google and other PPC providers will then serve contextual ads that are related to the content, and you will receive money for every user click.  Be advised that if these systems are abused, you can forfeit your admission into the program, so never click on your own ads.

Text Links

Once your blog kicks off, you’re going to be contacted by numerous people to engage in link exchanges.  Others will ask you about the ability to purchase links.  The first process is discretionary; many bloggers ignore the requests due to the lack of research performed in the blogger’s niche.  Most link exchange emails get ignored by all webmasters and you’re under no obligation to place a link on your site to another person’s website.  If the information and content is relevant and educational, however, a link exchange may be helpful.

In the second case, text links may very well work if targeted appropriately.  Be aware that search engines can penalize you if they find out that you provide text links that are not targeted and do not carry the nofollow on them.  However, many services, such as Text Link Ads (http://www.text-link-ads.com), Text Link Brokers (http://www.textlinkbrokers.com), Kontera (http://kontera.com/), and LinkXL (http://www.linkxl.com) provide contextual ads within blog posts without you having to make any changes or additions to your website code.  These systems can still be discovered by search engines and should be used with caution.  If you don’t like a text link ad, you may want to opt out.

Affiliate Programs

If your content is related to service offerings (and there are hundreds of thousands of such offerings on the market), affiliate programs are a great way to monetize your content.  The more common ones that you’ve likely experienced are book reviews with links to Amazon that include referral IDs.  In the SEO sphere, you probably have also seen banner ads from the following affiliate programs:

l  SEOBook

l  Text Link Ads

l  Text Link Brokers

l  AzoogleAds

Some affiliate program providers include ClickBooth (http://clickbooth.com), MaxBounty (http://maxbounty.com), Rocket Profit (http://www.rocketprofit.com), RevResponse (http://www.revresponse.com), PepperJam Network (http://www.pepperjamnetwork.com), Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com/), and Advaliant (http://www.advaliant.com/).  Also, check your favorite online store, as they often provide affiliate programs just like eBay or Amazon do.  Often, you can sign up for a larger network and choose among a list of merchants for niche-related advertisements that will be appropriate to your readers.

With affiliate programs, you can talk about a particular service or product and add an affiliate link to the product so that your readers can look into the offering and choose to purchase the item or service.  As a result, you earn commissions on the sale.  In most cases, it’s best to have full disclosure that you are providing an affiliate link for full transparency as a blogger.

Not all items and products you talk about will have affiliate programs.  In that case, you may not make any commissions off the product.  However, a large percentage of affiliate programs exist and there are many things that can be well-monetized if you consistently keep your readership up-to-date with content so that they trust you to purchase a product through your review.

Sponsored Posts / Advertorials

One of the most controversial blog monetization techniques is the sponsored blog post.  Once your blog is listed in the marketplace, individuals looking for exposure on their product may contact you and ask you to write a review about a particular service offering.  In return, you will receive money once the review has been live on your blog for a certain number of days.  Typically, you have a few days to accept the offer and you can decline reviews that you feel don’t suit your audience.

It is important to note that there must be full disclosure on such sponsored posts.  Additionally, reviews can be either positive or negative, and all pertinent links on sponsored posts should have nofollow appended to them.  If this is not adhered to, search engines may penalize you.

Besides the concerns about full disclosure and the requirement of nofollow links, sponsored reviews are often few and far between because of concerns about editorial credibility.  However, it can make you a good chunk of cash if the reviews are targeted to your readership.

Sponsored blog programs include ReviewMe (http://www.reviewme.com), SponsoredReviews (http://www.sponsoredreviews.com), Blogvertise (http://www.blogvertise.com), and IZEA’s PayPerPost (http://payperpost.com).

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