More than just a display of their wit and knowledge, bloggers are now
taking their blogs to the next step: blogs as a source of revenue. Many even
turn their blogs into their main business! However, creating a blog is easy;
turning it into a money making machine is a different story.
Business 2.0 Magazine recently had a very interesting article
“Blogging for Dollars,”
mainly through advertising. You’d be surprised to know that some of the top
bloggers nowadays are raking in huge income from their blogs! Boing Boing,
PaidContent.org and Fark.com are among those likely to earn a million
dollars in ad revenues this year. TechCrunch, a one-person blog ranked by
Technorati as the 6th most popular blog, earns $60,000 a month in ad
revenues. Just by posting a few paragraphs everyday, these bloggers are
earning big time.
So how do you turn your blog into money making online business? Here are
the steps you need to take to earn millions from your blog:
Adopt the Right Strategy.
Many bloggers start their blogs to share and talk about their passion.
Sometimes their blog catches on and generates huge followers, while some lay
in a dusty alley in cyberspace.
If you are thinking of starting a blog or using your existing blog to
earn money, you need to be more strategic in your approach. Here are several
factors to consider:
- Does this blog -- given its type and subject matter – has the
potential to attract a huge audience?
- Is this a blog that advertisers would want to be seen?
- Do I know enough about the subject matter to engage the readers?
- Am I using the right venues to generate income for the blog?
Select the Right Income Generating Approach.
There are various ways and avenues to earn advertising income from a blog,
and the right partner or approach can spell the difference in earning $100
or $10,000 per month.
In terms of advertising models, consider if you will use cost per
impression (CPM) advertising where you earn per thousand-ad impression. Or
you can go through the cost per click (CPC) approach where you earn every
time someone clicks on the adverts you show. Another approach is cost per
action (CPA) where you can get paid every time a visitor follows through
with the action desired by the advertiser, such as qualified lead, purchase
or subscription. Or you can decide to use all three advertising models in
your blog (making sure that your blog is not too cluttered with ads).
There are several ways you can proceed to start earning through
advertising:
- Participate in contextual advertising networks. Contextual adverts are
text ads delivered based on the content of the web page using an automated
system. They are mostly cost per clicks, but some such as Adsense
incorporates both CPM and CPA advertising revenue models
- Google Adsense https://www.google.com/adsense/
- Yahoo! Publishing Network http://publisher.yahoo.com/
- Intellixt http://vibrantmedia.com/site/web_01a5.htm
- Quigo Adsonar http://www.quigo.com/adsonarexchange.htm
- IndustryBrains http://www.industrybrains.com
- Commission Junction Evolution http://www.cj.com
- Kanoodle Brightads
http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.html
- Clicksor http://www.clicksor.com/affiliate_programs.php
- Contextweb http://www.contextweb.com/
- Bidclix http://www.bidclix.com/
- Use advertising networks that cater specifically to bloggers. This is a
very new segment and very few companies are selling ads specifically for blogs. They typically work with high-traffic and high profile blogs.
Examples are
- An up-and-coming company funded by the New York Times Co. and eBay
founder Pierre Omudyar called Federated Media http://fmpub.net is at the
forefront of serving as the advertising broker for bloggers. They represent
some of the most popular blogs today. Their advertisers include big names
such as Absolut, Adobe, Apple, Budget Rental Car, Citibank, Dreamworks, GM,
Intel, Microsoft, Sony, among others.
- FeedBurner Ad Network (FAN) http://www.feedburner.com
is an invitation-only ad network for bloggers. They consider those blogs
using FeedBurner services such as feed management, size of your blog’s
readership and consistency, and frequency of content publication.
- RSS advertising where you can put ads on your RSS feeds. Google
Adsense offers the capability to put ads in RSS feeds (provided that the
feed has at least 100 subscribers).
- Sponsorships. Sell advertising for your blog directly. This is admittedly a more
difficult route for a small business site wanting to earn advertising
revenues. But hey, as they say: "no pain, no gain!"
(article continued below ...)
Target the Right Audience.
If you are thinking of starting a blog to earn
money, you first need to have the “right kind” of blog. The “right” kind of
blog is a blog that appeals to advertisers because it attracts the audience
they want.
For example, a blog that caters to techies will attract more advertisers
compared to a blog for squirrel enthusiasts. Advertisers prefer blogs whose
audience includes those who have the penchant to buy high-end products
compared to blogs whose main audiences are families and friends of the
author. The more attractive the blog is to advertisers, the higher the
income of the blog.
Think of the audience you want to read your blog, and whether you can
pitch this audience to an advertiser.
Generate Tons of Traffic.
Building a larger audience for your blog is the
surest way to succeed with an advertising revenue model. It is important to
build a strong and wide readership base for your blog. Whether you are
running cost per impression or cost per click advertising revenue model, the
amount of traffic can significantly affect the level of income. To increase
traffic to your blog, here are some steps to take
- Create great content – everything starts with great content.
- Update
the content regularly – make your visitors come back again and again to your blog by providing daily updates (even multiple posts per day!)
- Submit your blog to blog directories – use our
Resources for Marketing Blogs
- Network with other bloggers – comment on their blogs, read and link to
other blogs and request them to link back to you
- Email other bloggers –
pitch your post to other bloggers and hope that they will link or mention
your blog
- Use techniques to showcase your blog – examples include meme
games such as the Daily Meme http://thedailymeme.com/ or carnival such as
the
Carnival of Entrepreneurship
hosted by About.com
A Nielsen Buzz Metrics Blog Pulse report that there are 32.9 million
blogs on the Internet today with 850,000 new posts a day. It’s high time to
think of how you can make money from your blog.
About The Author:
Nach Maravilla is the Publisher and CEO of PowerHomeBiz.com. For
information on starting a
home business ,
visit PowerHomeBiz.com
Copyright 2006. PowerHomeBiz.com LLC
