Of Monetizing Blogs, Text Links Ads, Peel-Away Ads and Hover Ads – Part 3

As the blogoshere grows in tandem with user created content, the obvious question that comes to mind is, how do I make money from blogging? This subject has exercised the minds of many a pundit, and no easy answers abound. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

For starters, blogging is about content. Content drives readers who become devoted fans and slowly a community forms. The easy camaraderie that characterizes blogs as a forum to exchange ideas and learn from each other, appeals to all and sundry. What then are the available ways for making money online by blogging?

Content and its constant creation is what separates the big fish from the small fish. It is not easy to constantly create fresh, readable content that keeps readers glued to your blog, so much that you appear on their favourites list. That is why blogging about a subject or subjects that you are passionate about makes content creation easy and not routine or tiresome. Obviously many people have many passions, so it’s usually good to keep them separate, since the readership you are targeting is different. See my other passion here.

Having created fresh, readable content, and you have droves of people hanging on to your every word its time to make some money. Online research and monitoring tools will tell you how many people are visiting you and from where. Just ask Alexa, she knows it all. WordPress, the most popular blogging engine, has its own stats that tell you see which articles were searched and viewed. It shows you what is popular n your blog, a real eye opener. Armed with the stats, you can start knocking at the doors of advertisers or sponsors.

Here there are myriad options including

Sell your own stuff – This is quite straight forward, you are simply using the blog as an interactive forum to promote your product(s). You own the stuff; you own the blog, simple.

Sell other people’s stuff – Affiliate marketing is very popular way to drive traffic to your blog. But do not make the blog an affiliates shop front with links all over. Subtly introduce the products by showing your readers the benefits and what in it for them. Reviews are great way to do this. Then gently nudge them to click through the affiliate links and upon conversion, you get paid.

Text ads – In this popular choice for many, the advertising company highlights key words on your post, and the reader clicks through the ad, goes to the landing page of the advertiser, makes a purchase, and you get paid. The beauty of these ads is they are unobtrusive and do not occupy valuable real estate on your pages.

Contextual ads – Google Adsense is the most popular. Adsense simply creates adverts based on the
content of the post, and displays them in pre-selected positions on your page. Google pays you for every click on the advert on your site. Before getting excited and sitting down all day clicking on your ads, the Google nerds have figured out most of that already, and you will simply be kicked out. Its not worth it, just re-direct that energy to content. Go to Adsense for more.

Banners – These should carefully be placed, whether on the roadside or on a web site like your blog. Because of their in-your-face element, they can change the whole look and feel of your pages. Again your readers click through and the advertiser pays you upon conversion of the visitor to a buyer.

Peel-away ads – These are all the rave now. With some clever coding, your top right hand corner tends to peel away, on hovering the mouse, to reveal an ad. Your reader clicks through and makes a purchase, you get paid. Simple. See peel away ads here

Hover ads – These are the ads that hover over the page when the reader lands, slightly obscuring the content. Upon clicking through, (usually by filling a form) the reader lands on the advertiser’s page and upon conversion, you get paid. They are similar to banners, but its still advertising.

Advertising, as you can see, is the bread and butter of monetizing blogs. If you consider how many people are out there clicking their way through cyber space, the opportunities are immense. The choice of the mode of monetizing the blog is up to the individual. The fundamentals remain the same.

Reader, what’s your comment on monetizing blogs?

Of Monetizing Blogs, Text Links Ads, Peel-Away Ads and Hover Ads – Part 2

In part 1, we saw the introductory basics to blogging. In this part we shall look at content creation and search engine optimization. It cannot be over emphasized, content is king. Repeat, content is king. I know customer is king, but on your blog you are writing for people. So no worries, customer is king. Freshly baked bread. Freshly pressed dress shirt. Freshly laundered sheets. Fresh fruits. Fresh morning dew. Freshly dug earth …. are you following my drift? Now add fresh content. This is what keeps readers glued and the search engines happy. After you have constant stream of fresh content, keep the readers happy, and things begin to be good for you.

The task of keeping your blog freshly updated can actually be a full time job. Depending on why you blog, this time management shall  be left to your designs. There are clever software that can purport to write human readable content, but at best they sound like a blogger with broken English. Is his good enough to stuff your blog with machine-generated content? Your readers will decided with their clicks. The dark side of blogging, a.k.a MFA (Made for AdSense) blogs is the home of such trash.

There are also emerging ghost bloggers who will happily write content for your blog, and you keep the readers happy. Its also an option, but be careful with some of the content they generate, since they turn to the auto-generators and spew out junk, and since you paid upfront, well you get the picture. And then again, you also ghost blog for others, and make some money on the side. Go to elance.com for professional services.

Another source of conent is guest blogs. You simply invite other bloggers to post on your blog, and of course they also invite you to do the same on theirs. These creates link backs which we shall tackle in the nitty-gritty of SEO later.

Of Monetizing Blogs, Text Links Ads, Peel-Away Ads and Hover Ads – Part 1

This is a multi part series to create awareness and educate the people on how blogging can be a fulfilling and profitable enterprise. Blogging can be an engaging and liberating way of engaging oneself. I shall cover the basics on how one can start, content creation and optimization, and finally see how monetization works on the Net. In between we shall cover Blogging Technologies for Dummies and sort out the techie stuff, especially for dummies 😉

The Internet is awash wish the so-called web 2.0 tools that should take you to a palm tree shade in Maldives for a year, as your account fattens in autopilot. This is when you fully monetize your blog. In a blog all the owner does is register a domain name, get a web hosting solution, create content, do some SEO (as in search engine optimization), slap the relevant ads, and hey presto …. off to Maldives, no packing required. If it is that easy, why are we not all in Maldives? For one the hotels there would not be enough to accommodate us all ….. Seriously though, the thing is that it’s not that simple … Read on….

Preliminaries —- buy a domain name that is catchy yet descriptive. Also aim to brand yourself with the domain name. Choose a hosting plan that puts you in control, and has all the relevant tools to make customization of your blogs easy. Ensure that you can easily put plug ins and other whizzy stuff to make your blog snazzy, but not too busy as to loose your readers attention. It is also important that you OWN your domain name, (be careful when registering, else one year down the line, the domain name owner will sell the domain, and you are left wondering what hit you). It happens. Details shall come in part 2.

Then second step is one needs to create niche content. Create content that you are passionate about, what is called USP – unique selling point. This is really the easiest way, since you are an expert on what you passionate about. What will make your blog stand out from the millions on the same subject that exist out there? And more importantly, what will make the people flock to your blog, read the content, comment, sign up for your newsletter, sign up for your RSS feed etc. The answer is content. Which really means that we should all be blogging about something, since content is inexhaustible, right? True, scratch and you shall find content to blog about under the surface.

It is important to ensure that your blog has fresh content. Repeat, fresh content, as in keep it updated. This keeps everyone happy … you the blogger shall be excited since you are writing daily about a passionate subject (content), your visitors / readers shall be happy since you are providing them with the content they crave, Mr. Google (that king of search and indexing) shall be very happy as he sends his spiders to crawl your site and report back to the index, your advertisers shall be hearing the cash clicking in the bank as the customers click through their adverts, the hosting company shall be happy to keep the servers cool, secure and running, the web master shall be happy to keep the site in shape …………. the whole world will be happy. In fact we have just discovered the solution to world peace. Happy blogging!

Comments on blogging and monetizing blogs are welcome.