Earn Money from your Blog

Romasha — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 07:12:00 GMT

Blogging takes up a lot of time and after all the effort you put into writing you can expect to earn some money from it, to help you pay for your domain name, blogging service, hosting fees , your valuable time and host of other costs associated with this expensive passion.

So, I am going to help you answer just that one question “How to Earn m o n e y from your Blog”.

Here's a look at different ways bloggers can make money:

Google

As one of my friends once said “Google makes the world go round”, I’ll show you how…

Google AdSense

“Ads by Google” have grown rapidly throughout the blogosphere and websites and is probably the best known way to display ads and make money from the content. The beauty of Google AdSense is that the ads are “Relevant” to the content on your blog and are not disturbing as they have a variety of sizes for the banners as well as an option for image ads. Above all they are easy to implement, all you have to do is add some java script to your template and you are all set.
When a visitor clicks on a Google AdSense ad, you get a small fee which is a portion of the revenue Google generates from the advertisers.

Matt Haughey, who runs PVR Blog, is an inspiring story of a blogger who gained some success in using Google AdSense.

Google WebSearch

Google WebSearch is an ad-on tool to its AdSense program. Just place a Google search bar on your blog and if someone clicks on the sponsored search results, you earn a commission. You can either search your site content or the web (or both).

Google has a few Program Policies, due to which a few bloggers wouldn’t be able to display adverts on their blogs. So we look at other ways of making moolah.

Adhearus

Adhearus is another pay-per-click program which also like Google gives you a choice of text and image adverts. They also give you an alternative to put up your own ads, just upload them and specify how often you want them displayed. You can even rotate in other advertising companies.

They don’t have as many restrictions so u can start putting up ads as soon as you register and start earning!!!

Amazon.com

Amazon’s Associate Program is the most popular affiliate program and another way to generate some income. As an Amazon associate, you place a link to the items selected by you from their online catalogue, on Amazon.com from your site and if someone clicks through that link and buys the book, you get a commission from them.

Best of Associates are paid upto 10% of the selling price of qualifying items that are sold through these links.

Barnes & Noble.com

Barnes and Noble is another site that has an affiliate network, you link to them or have banners on your blog and if a visitor clicks and buys from their site you earn referral fees upto 8.5%.

Blogads

One company that operates as a network of bloggers that accept advertising is Blogads. Blogads takes a very reasonable 20% commission of ads it places on your blog.

Advertisers order, manage and renew fixed-period ads or sponsorships on your blog and only ads you approve run.

Also see Advertising Networks for Blog Publishers to check out more ad services available.

If your blog is really popular then you can put up an ad to sell space on your blog and strike a deal to your advantage.

Signing up for all the above mentioned programs is absolutely free but u must read the policies in advance. The success of these programs is highly dependent upon your content and the level of traffic you get to your site; your popularity on the Internet (which is going to be my next blog post…so watch out!!).

And now the key question…should one place ads on their weblogs?

The presence of advertisements on the blog contaminates the idea of blogging and makes it more like writing for money and not for ones love for the same. But a few small ads which do not distract the visitor and make you earn some change will not do any harm to anyone, infact it will encourage you to write more to have more hits on your site and then earn more and it goes round and round.

If you know of any such programs or any other suggestions feel free to put them up in the comments…Thank you :)

The perfect blog

Romasha — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:13:00 GMT

I've recently created my blog and while i was in the process of designing i questioned myself what would i want my blog to be like. I came up with a few basic things like the design and the content. But just that wouldn't be enough, so i twisted the question to what do i want from my blog...that's when things fell in place.

I concluded, my blog is going to have my seal on it. It is to be my face on the Internet, a place where i proclaim myself to the world. I spent quite sometime in making the design, so much time that i didn't post at all only worked on the design. Then realisation struck, I was wasting time in something that the blog is not meant for; blogging. That's when i quit on the design and left it the way it is now...

A few things, according to me, that make a blog “perfect“

1.People visit a site because of a link, but its good content that makes them come back for more. You might have an amazingly designed site but nobody would come again if it lacks good content. There is a lot of stuff available on the net, why would somebody waste time in reading about what you think unless you haven't thought much.

2.Debatable, but i feel a good design just adds to good content. And yes the much mooted question about how it should look attractive or just about presentable.

3.The blog is where you put your opinion on various topics but the information/facts put up should be true and should be linked well to related stuff.

4.There should be a personal touch to your blog, when somebody comes to my blog i would want him/her to know what kind of a perosn i am, my likes, dislikes...that's the idea of a blog isn't it?

5.Branding yourself. You are not going to make a blog and feel happy about posting and updating it unless you have people coming to your site, posting comments, reading and appreciating your work. For that, you have to give to others what you want, visit other people's blogs, put feedbacks, put a link of their sites on your blog, even reply to the comments on your own blog. Personal Branding is about being authentic and true to your values and communicating this to people around you.

I guess most of you will disagree with what i have just stated...its an unending debate...the content, the design. People come in for the brand value your name has or for the content. I think its a combination of both of them, coz if you don't have good content then even your brand wouldnt help you sustain your popularity for long and if you are not popular then your content wouldn't matter...you dont have anyone to read it!!

It's now 1.10a.m....very sleeeeepy...me shall now sleep{Now that's me thinking aloud...would you want to read a lot of thoughts like that??}