Blogging for Dollars

[notepage]

Blogging for Dollars

Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but it's the latest craze to hit the Internet. Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off.

Whether a blogger's focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:

1. ) Google Adsense in Blogs
Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve content-relevant advertisements in blogs. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the blog, the website owner is credited for the referral. Webmasters need only to insert a Google-generated java script into the blog or blog template. Google's spider parses the AdServing blog and serves ads that relate to the blog's content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served.

2. ) Affiliate Programs (Product Endorsements)
Affiliate Programs work when an affiliate web site receives income for generating sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant website. Generally, bloggers will mention or endorse specific products and if site visitors purchase the product, bloggers will receive a portion of the sale.

3. ) Product Promotion
Businesses use blogs to detail how specific features or product add-ons can increase functionality and save time. Content-rich product promotion will help with search engine placement.

4.) Banner Ads
While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn decent revenue by selling banner space.

As the Internet evolves bloggers will continue to seek out ways to monetize their opinions and thoughts. Daily journals and online blogs have become more than just a communication means to many.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com , and http://www.small-business-software.net

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[danephillips]

I have a great idea for a blog business but not a programmer ....

[Jake Jarvis]

I have Google AdSense on my blog and it's been working great. Excellent customer service, also.

[Crichey]

Jake, what kind of profit are you generating? (if you don't mind me asking)

[webyourbusiness]

adsense in general makes a lot of sense (or cents) for many content providers - while pure commercial sites see little value in providing links to potential competitors, the way adsense is setup, so that low volume providers are NOT penalized, or lose valuable click revenue in "maintenance" fees, it makes a lot of fiscal sense to most content providers to simply sign up and throw the cut-and-paste code onto the relevant template.

I'd certainly like to see how Google and other click-thru advertizing revenue source providers evolve - as I'm seeing a significant DECLINE in click-thrus on most of our ad-sense enabled resources, even though traffic is steadily INCREASING.

[eCommando]

yea, adsense is great for content sites. for ecommerce sites, it may not be a good idea. Also, I think it's against their terms to talk about how much you make.

[younghistorians]

Yes, it is against the TOS.