One of the leading motivations of putting up and managing a blog is earning money from it, especially if the website is envisioned as a business. A business isn’t a business without a profit. Agree?

So how do you monetize a blog and really make money out of it?

Before I tell you how to make money from a blog, you should realize that the effort of your monetization should only emanate after you have established your site and that this effort delivers value to your intended audience.

In other words, you need a great value proposition for your audience to “buy in.” This proposition can be an irresistible product, your services, or in this case, your blog’s great content.

The quality of your proposition is important because, for example, Internet users will not visit or read your blog if they feel that it isn’t worthy of their time. Hence, regardless of the amount of energy you exert and the number of strategies you use in your blog’s monetization, you cannot easily achieve your goal.

But if you have a remarkable blog and perseverance, earning money from it will materialize one way or another.

Now that the prerequisite has been already set, let’s focus on how you can make your blog a source of revenue.

Early warning and general monetization tips in blogging

If you do all the work yourself, preparing for a definite amount of losses at the beginning is ideal. These losses include your physical energy, time, and missed opportunities of earning from other types of work.

But if you are capitalizing with a team or a staff, you should manage your blog as a business. This approach necessitates business plans that involve monetary investments, employee checks, and sustainability from the early losses.

Let this article be your reminder that attaining a blog to succeed monetarily is achievable. However, the road to success is not easy and may require time.

Similar to the advice of many successful bloggers, you have to research, experiment, and implement as many options as you can. Try each possibilities intelligently, and study the outcomes thoroughly.

Keep a comprehensive record of your actions or campaigns and the results they have created. A strategy that automatically fits to your condition does not exist. Sometimes a combination is the best, other times it’s not.

Reviewing your monetization approaches means you have the chance to refine your concepts, do some works, and replace those that are not effective. So don’t be afraid to experiment, and learn from it.

Let’s start cashing in money from your blog. Shall we?

Earning money from a blog can be done in several ways. But I shall focus only with one approach: advertising or selling ads.

The most popular way to earn money from a blog is through advertising, simply because doing so is very easy, and various options include the following:

  • Banner ads
  • Text ads
  • Video ads
  • Audio/podcasting ads
  • Network or private sales

However, before you get too excited to implement this revenue method on your blog, realize that this method is not as simple as it may seem. The rates of some ads gradually decrease because of a large number of ad spaces in the Internet.

The sudden occurrence of web programs and ad networks, such as Google AdSense, allows any web administrator and site owner to initiate management of adverts, thereby giving advertisers a ton of choices on advertisement placement.

However, the preceding scenario does not mean you can’t earn money from advertising. As a matter of fact, several big-time bloggers utilizes ads as their prime source of profit.

Let’s dig further into this monetization method.

You need to overcome two things to make this monetization approach successful: traffic and audience.

Advertising rely hugely on a site’s volume. To make this point clear, here’s an example: An advertiser agrees to pay you $2 for every 1000 times the ad is viewed. For you to earn $100, you need 50,000 page views.

This rate, namely, $2 for every 1000 page views, is actually pretty decent for an ad spot. But for an AdSense block, the usual advertising fee is just a fraction of a dollar. Can you now picture how much volume or site traffic is required to produce a significant income stream?

For the second factor, that is, audience, we can stick to Google AdSense as our example. There are some blog niches where Google can deliver great returns (these are called high profitable niches). However, most of the time, these ads are too general, unattractive, or irrelevant to target audience.

If you can catch either a very direct audience or an exceptionally high volume website traffic, or, if possible both, then you can earn incredibly well with advertising.

Common advertising terminologies you need to be familiar with

  • CPM – Cost per mille (Latin for thousand). CPM impression is one of the typical methods of pricing in online advertisement.
  • CPC – Cost per click. Advertisers pay you each time an advert is clicked by a visitor. WARNING: Most program advertisers, such as Google AdSense, can detect if a click is legitimate or not. So beware not to fake your clicks.
  • IAB Ad Sizes – These are sets of standard advert sizes for ad networks, such as 728px × 90px and 300px × 250px. You can find more about this at Internet Advertising Bureau’s article.

Advertising solutions: Ways to sell ads and different networks

1. Google AdSense/Double Click

AdSense is the most popular advertising network/platform because it has been proved to help several bloggers and online startup companies in their search for online revenue, possibly because you can set up almost instantly and start earning in no time.

Plus, you can choose with the various ad sizes and options that fit your need, such as text-only ads, image-only ads, or a combination of both.

Related: How I Earned 190,957 PHP (US$4,062.93) on a Single Blog

2. Niche Ad Networks

Niche-specific ad networks may yield outcome better than that of the universal ads simply because the adverts are targeted to a specific audience. For example, Fusionads is preferred toward new media or web-tech industries, whereas Fantasy Sports Ad Network is marketed toward male audience and is inclined with sports.

The best way to determine which ad network is appropriate for you is through research. You can try Googling terms, such as “Ad Networks for x,” where x is your blog’s niche.

3. Direct Sales

Direct sales approach has a pro and con. With direct selling, you cut the commission of the intermediary, given that the ad network’s chargers can range from 25% to 50% or even higher. Just imagine how much savings you can gain

By contrast, you have to prepare yourself the bother of managing the adverts yourself (analytics and other numbers). In addition to that, unless you blog is very popular, companies may not place a spot on you blog site and you’re the one chasing advertisers to buy your ad spot.

4. In-line Text Adverts

These ad networks offer in-line advert services. Meaning, the words on your blog content/article are turned into roll-over ads. Popular in-line or in-text advertising programs include Infolinks and Linkworth

5. Product Ads

These ad networks display a range of products in a widget or a single ad spot on your content. Shopzilla and Chitika are some of the popular companies that offer this monetization approach.

The following are several other ways to earn money through advertisements:

  • Display ad networks
  • Self-serve ad marketplaces
  • Ads on screencasting or videopod
  • Rich media adverts
  • Ads on images
  • Ads on RSS Feeds
  • Text link ads
  • Podcasting advertisements

Conclusion

The options in earning money through selling ads are plenty. Determining which one’s going to work or not is a bit intriguing. As I mentioned earlier, the optimum tactic is to experiment intelligently.

Also, information is just a search away through the Internet. Research as many as you can. As a matter of fact, you’re on Step 1 by landing on this piece of gem.