Google Adwords and Adsense are two of the services that Google offers to businesses both offline and online. Their inclusion in any marketing campaign can generate a lot of revenue for very little investment. Even if you own a small business in a small community, you can still become global using Google Adwords and Adsense. Google Adwords This is a service that allows a member (anyone can sign up), to advertise on websites across the internet. You can use as much money as you like, setup your marketing campaign based on a budget, days you want it to run and even how much you want to spend on each click that you get. PPC, or pay per click is how advertisers get websites to display their ads, they pay the websites, through Google and Google Adwords. This is the service in which you can show those ads on your own website and make money for every click. Really simple idea, and very easy to set up for your website. In fact, Google even shows you exactly how to do it and generates the code for you. Both of these services added to your marketing campaign can generate a lot of revenue. If you just want to use one or the other, that is fine too. Add Comment Having thought through whether you should blog for money it is now worth taking a look at some of the different models for doing so. I tend to break the different models that bloggers are using to make money from blogging into two areas – Direct and Indirect methods. Direct Income Earning Methods - these methods are where a blogger earns an income directly FROM their blog. Indirect Income Earning Methods – these methods are where a blogger earns an income BECAUSE of their blog. Most blogs tend to fall into one or the other of these methods – although there is nothing to stop bloggers experimenting with elements of both ( I’ve seen a few bloggers get into trouble with this (example: Scenario 1 in the previous post). In this post I’ll look at 8 direct income earning methods and in the next post of this series I’ll explore indirect methods. Please note that on occasion in the following post there will be few affiliate links to services that I use and have had some success with. These will be marked with (aff) after them. Direct Income Earning Methods for Bloggers 1. Advertising There are many ways of selling advertising space on a blog (this could almost be a series of it’s own) but some of the different advertising options that I see bloggers experimenting with include:
The big blog networks have people dedicated to the task of finding advertisers (often working through ad agencies) but smaller bloggers might find this worthwhile also. I’ve been selling ads on my Digital Camera Blog for two years now and as it’s grown in traffic and profile and managed to attract larger companies (who are willing to pay more) to buys space. Currently the blog features ads from Adobe who have bought a combination of banner, newsletter and text ads. The key if you’re going to take this approach is to target advertisers in your niche that have products that closely relate to what you’re writing about. There are a variety of ads that you can offer them including banner ads, buttons, text links, mentions in newsletters and even individual post sponsorships. I would highly recommend that you always make it clear to readers that your post is a sponsored one when you’re writing a sponsored post. 3. Affiliate Programs Affiliate programs are where you take a commission for referring a reader who purchases a product or service to a company. Probably the most common of these for bloggers is Amazon which has tens of thousands of products that you can link to (I reviewed it here). Other affiliate programs that represent many different companies and products include Linkshare, Commission Junction and Clickbank. Affiliate programs take some work if you want to get the most out of them (perhaps more work than advertising) but can be lucrative if you match the right program with the right blog/topic. If you want to explore affiliate programs more you might like to read 10 tips for using affiliate programs on you blog. 4. Selling/Flipping Blogs The idea of selling (or flipping) your blog is one that many bloggers have in the back of their minds for ‘one day’ but in reality it is not something that is overly common… yet (I think this is changing). Probably the largest sale is that of Weblogs Inc (a network of blogs) which sold to AOL for a reported $25 million. Of course this is the stuff that most of us can only dream of – but there are examples of smaller blogs being sold, either privately or via auctions on sites like eBay and SitePoint. One such auction was that of the Blog Herald which took place here. Starting a blog with the main goal of selling it down the track is one that I’ve heard of a number of bloggers doing but few have been successful. Rather than starting with this intention I think if you start with the intention of building a quality site that has a large readership and it’s own good income stream you are more likely to find buyers down the track. 5. Donations and Tip Jars A very small number of blogs have a history of making good money with these (Jason Kottke being one of them). To be successful with asking for money from readers you’ll want to have a large and loyal readership (and a rich one might help too). Most bloggers just don’t have the critical mass or the cult following to make it work. 6. Merchandise Another method that some blogs use with reasonable effect is to sell T-Shirts, Mugs, Stickers etc with the blog’s name, logo and/or taglines on it. This is another idea that will probably only work if you either have a brilliantly designed merchandise range and/or you have a cult-like status as a blogger with some fanatical readers who are a little obsessive about your blog. Some blog topics lend themselves to this more than others. 7. Selling Subscriptions The idea of charging readers for content is one that surfaces from time to time. While there are numerous websites around the web that do this successfully (community membership sites) I’m yet to see many (any) blogs do it well. The problem that most bloggers who have tried it have run into is that most topics that you could think to start a blog about already have free sites available. To make it succeed you would need to have some sort of premium/exclusive content and/or real expertise on a topic. 8. Blog Networks Another emerging income source for bloggers are blog networks. There are two ways to make money here. Firstly you can start a network and contract bloggers to write for you or secondly you might like to join a blog network as a writer. There are many networks out there and all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ll attempt to write a post on what to think about when you’re looking at whether to join a network later in this series. Adsense Tips for Bloggers 1 01/09/2011
How do you make money from the Google Adsense Program? What AdSense Tips can you share with us? I have been asked this question so many times in the past few weeks that I thought I should write something on the topic. It seems increasingly bloggers want to try to cover their hosting and ISP costs with some revenue from their blog – and increasingly they’re doing it and are able to make a few (or quite a lot) dollars on the side. Many are turning to Google’s Adsense program. Covering costs of my Digital Photography Blog is why I originally signed up with Google Adsense – blogging can get expensive when you have high levels of traffic and a lot of pages. Whilst the agreement you sign with Google stresses that you are not allowed to give specific information about your earnings from the program I can say that I’m glad I’ve signed up because its well and truly covered my costs – and then some. In fact I think its quite feasible to expect that Adsense coupled with other strategies for making money from Blogging could quite easily generate a decent living. It takes time and hard work, but I think its very doable. (Update: Since writing this series I’ve revealed that I am now looking at making over a six figure income this year in 2005 from blogging). So how do I make money from Google Adsense? Let me share some AdSense Tips that heve helped me. This will be the first in a series of posts on this topic. Let me say up front I’m no expert – there are a lot of people out there making a lot more money than I am using Adsense – however most of them are not telling their secrets – well not for free anyway. I’ve got no secrets to hide and am willing to share what I’ve learnt since I signed up for the program 8 months ago. If you want a REAL expert’s opinion on Adsense I’d recommend buying Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense E-Book. Joel earns $15,000 per month from Adsense and has some good things to share. I know some bloggers are put off or offended by the idea of making money from blogging so I’ll try not to let these posts dominate my blog – however if you are not interested in the topic, simply skip over these posts. I am going to assume a few things in this series to cut down the amount of introductory comments I have to make. Here is what I am assuming:
|
RSS Feed