Making money in blogging?

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Leva

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I just thought I'd do a quick run-down of affiliate and advertising programs beyond Adsense and Amazon that I'm aware of and have had personal experience with. There's a lot out there, and some have better deals than Amazon.

First off, a word about Linkshare -- they currently pay every week and they pay for any amount over $1. I honestly think this is the best deal among any of the big affiliate companies.

Linkshare is an affiliate *network* and they handle affiliate sales for a number of major companies. You have to be accepted by each affiliate individually but Linkshare handles the payments in most cases and you only have one site (Linkshare) to log in to and one interface to make your ads in. (Edit to clarify that Disney, iTunes, etc. linked below all go through Linkeshare.)

-- Disney -- though they're picky, they just accepted me and Firefox News has been around two years in a pro format.

-- iTunes -- 5% per download, which isn't much, but iTunes is an "impulse" buy for a lot of people. Spending $.99 for a song is a lot like buying a candy bar. It's instant gratification and pocket change. iTunes has, besides the obvious, movies, audio books, and TV episodes. If you're blogging about a TV show or movie it might make more sense to link to iTunes than Amazon.

-- Netflix -- $9 per person you manage to convince to sign up last I checked.

-- Lego! *Grin*

-- KB Toys

-- Walmart

-- And a huge number of other name-brand companies. That's only a tiny sampling.

Next is Allposters. I will say I've never sold anything from Allposters. (I also haven't tried that hard.) However, the ads have very pretty pictures that are much larger than Amazon's little ads, with unobtrusive links to buy the posters. Lots of celebrity photos, movie posters, etc. You might make the occasional poster sale and they're pretty pics to put on your site in the interim that are royalty free. I'll probably be making more use of them in the future on my site ... Allposters.com. They pay 25%. Their prices have come down a bit, so sales may be more possible through them.

Buy.com also has an affiliate program similar to Amazon, but their prices on merchandise are sometimes better.

Commission Junction (cj.com) has a program similar to Linkshare, with bunches more "name brand" retailers.

Now, fo pay per click or pay per view ads, besides Adsense:

-- Yahoo has a similar program called Overture -- it has some stricter criteria to get in, but I did get an approval for my site. You can't run Overture and Adsense together, but some people claim Overture pays better. Some people say it's worse. I suspect it's content-dependent.

-- Adbrite.com -- lets you sell ads directly. i.e. an advertiser wants to buy a spot on your blog; you can sell an ad to just that advertiser on Adbrite, and control exactly where the ad appears. They also have a contextual network that sucks (and can't be used with Adsense) and inline links (that also suck). If you have an advertiser who wants to buy ad space on your site, however, they might be a better choice than Adsense, because you can better control the ads. (Or you can just sell the ads directly, but then you have to deal with things like, oh, collecting payment.) I'm not a big fan of Adbrite but they have their uses.

Kontera.com -- I like Kontera. It's a nice supplement to Adsense. They just do inline links (highlighted words) in your text. Payout varies depending on content but Firefox News has been averaging around a buck a day from them and I'm in a low-paying niche. Payout is at $100 like Adsense but if you've got a busy blog it might be worthwhile. Kontera's customer service is fantastic.

Now ... if I could just find an affiliate that sells anime and manga other than Amazon.com ...
 
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flashgordon

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Great list, I only use Adsense and Amazon now. I'm very hesitant to add more as I don't want the sites to be spammy, and I have a pretty low tolerance for spam. If I do another, I might think of adding another affiliate.

What about TextLink and Clickbank?
 

Talia

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another option is feedburner

They insert adverts in your feed and also on the first post of any blog. They pay every month even if the amount is only a few cents. You can approve or decline any adverts that aren't relevant. Today I declined a finance company because it doesn't fit with my audience
 

Talia

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I just thought of another... blogherads
They pay on impressions, not clicks so they're a good source of revenue
 

Leva

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Ooh, I got stickied. *grin*

Regarding Clickbank, I have no information. Never used them. They're probably a legitimate source of revenue as they have their own forum on Digital Point (which is where the people who make a living from web sites hang out -- ranging from the big shots to the lowlife scammers). But I can't speculate beyond that; no experience.

For Textlinks, if you mean Textlink Ads, my personal jury's still out.

The Issue with Text Link Ads (text-link-ads.com) -- TLA -- is that they're selling links, not advertising. And Google hates link selling. Seriously. They are waging open war on sites selling links.

Google's stance is they determine the credibility of web sites for search engine rankings by the number of other sites linking to them. Therefore, if a site buys a bunch of links they have artificial rank -- they're gaming the system. Google tries to weed these sites out, but it's a resource drain and expensive for Google. Therefore, Google is hitting the sites that sell links with a reduction in their page rank.*

The reason people want to buy links is that they want to increase the google rank of their own site. And they'll pay good money. Sometimes, real good money, if you have a high-PR site.

The downside is, you lose PR and search engine rank yourself by selling links. And once your PR goes down TLA would presumably pay less.

*Also, you might get less search traffic -- I say "might" because I'm hearing conflicting things on how much page rank corresponds to actual search rank in Google. PR is a measure of how much credibility you can "give" to other sites by linking to them. Search rank is how well you do in search engines. They are closely interrelated but not identical twins. Google may be penalizing PR without penalizing search rank.

Note that this is all about Google. If Yahoo, Live, Altavista, Ask, etc. are also penalizing sites that sell links I haven't heard it.

... Bottom line? Text links from TLA or another company can make you some good money. However, it could very well be a temporary windfall. You might lose search engine traffic. However, you might make enough money that losing the search engine traffic would be worthwhile. This is particularly true if most of your traffic comes from other sources than Google.

Out of pure morbid curiosity, I e-mailed TLA today to ask them to give me a rough estimate of what I thought I could make. We'll see what they say, if they'll even disclose that.

-- Leva
 
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Talia

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I asked for the post to be stickied! It answers a lot of questions that bloggers tend to ask

I haven't considered TLA but I do like BlogHerAds. They pay 30 days after the end of the month although it takes a few days for the echeck to clear. Did you see on Problogger someone saying they've made more money from TLA since the google PR reshuffle?

Feedburner insert advertisements in a banner at the bottom of your feed. Adsense is a new option for Feedburner and YouTube, in the past it was advertising from any company that wanted to pay. I've seen ads from finance companies, some new fangled Blackberry and the like
 

Leva

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TLA hasn't returned my e-mail, but I suspect they're a bit, um, preoccupied right now. There's enough $ in linksales that I expect the lawyers will be summoned shortly and they're probably quite busy at the moment.

I'm not all that sympathetic with Google; their stance is a little unrealistic, IMHO. And my personal opinion is that the whole "links determine the worth of a web site" is getting to be an outdated method of determining search engine rank. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

My suspicion? Eventually, something bigger and better than backlinks will come along to determine search engine rank. This might involve artificial intelligence of some sort, or a human factor. Google apparently is already using human beings to rank web sites to some extent.

*wanders off to Problogger*
 
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Leva

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TLA never did respond to my e-mail, either.

For what it's worth, I'm fairly impressed with iTunes through Linkshare. They pay 5% or better (they extended me a private offer after joining) and people are willing to download episodes. Currently, I'm donating 100% of affiliate sales revenue on Firefox News to support the writer's strike, so that's skewing the numbers, but there was ample evidence beforehand that it's a viable source of revenue.

iTunes has both music and TV shows*

So if you're blogging about a TV show or musician, you can link to their work on iTunes. If the reader's curious they can download an episode or a song -- it's instant gratification for the reader & only costs them a buck or two. Selling an entire season of a TV show through Amazon is hard. Convincing a reader to cough up $1.99 to check out the TV show you just gushed about? Not so hard.

The nickles and dimes you make can add up to lunch money pretty quickly if you have enough readers ... and Linkshare pays weekly, and has no minimum, so you actually see your money right away.

Amazon Unbox is another possibility. They're currently paying 20%. However, the user interface has some navigation issues (Apple is simply better at making things sleek and streamlined) and I think that cuts down on sales. Also, they don't have as many titles.

(*Yes, digital downloads are one of the hot-button issues in the writer's strike. The writers ARE getting compensated for iTunes downloads (at the same rate as DVDs), so I don't have a moral issue with downloading iTunes. Other than the oogy feeling of believing they're not getting paid enough, but then, that's pretty much the truth for all writers everywhere. What they're not getting paid for is FREE video downloaded from network web sites.)
 

Ravenlocks

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Probably a stupid question, but I wasn't aware until today that it was possible to make money on your blog through Amazon, and I can't figure out what to click on Amazon's site to get to the info about how to do it. Can someone tell me how it works?

TIA
 

jawar

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Make Money Online

Outside Adsense, affiliate programs and my ebooks I also use video revenue sharing sites to make money online.

What is working for me is a full organic integration of Adsense, affiliate, ebooks and video to monetize my web presence. In addition, I tend to maintain a number of websites, blogs and webpages that allow me to leverage cycles in traffic across various subjects. Below are a few of my videos, so you may see hot it works.

JaWar, Author of the Music Industry Connection Books talks about the new Music Business Record Label and using tools to make money online while creating multiple streams of revenue in the music industry. To view the Music Business Make Money Online Video by JaWar Click Here.



New Music Business Model by Video JaWar

JaWar
, Author of the Music Industry Connection Books talks about the evolving New Music Business Model, music publishing and licensing and business to business opportunities for you to make money in music industry. To view the New Music Business Model Video by JaWar Click Here.




 

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I hope no one minds the newbie stickin' a nose into an old post but Yahoo's program is actually called Yahoo! Publisher. I've used both YP and AS; YP definitely has a higher pay per click. BUT they have fewer advertisers right now so their ads are going to be less targeted, especially if you have an extremely tight niche. Also, they have few ad formats available so you're going to have to make do without formats like AS's link units.
 

Leva

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I hope no one minds the newbie stickin' a nose into an old post but Yahoo's program is actually called Yahoo! Publisher. I've used both YP and AS; YP definitely has a higher pay per click. BUT they have fewer advertisers right now so their ads are going to be less targeted, especially if you have an extremely tight niche. Also, they have few ad formats available so you're going to have to make do without formats like AS's link units.

People will refer to Yahoo's program as Overture, because that's what it used to be called.

Like a lot of things, your mileage may vary. I tried Yahoo a few years ago and the payout was significantly less for my niche. (Entertainment news.) I have some good reasons for staying with Adsense at the moment, and no practical way to experiment, so I have no recent experience with Yahoo.

One of the important things with advertising online, however, is to experiment. (If practical. In my case, I can't.) It's very possible someone with a specific niche might find Yahoo to be more profitable than Adsense. Just depends on the site.

-- Leva
 

JacobWorld

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Hi mate

I have to say thank you for the list I will have a website and this will help me a lot
I reckon first I will go with google adsense and then I will c
I am not a big fun of a mezon and I wouldnt like to have too much advertizing on my site but as you know you have to compromize
Hopefully one day we would do without adverts of any kinds .
 

razibahmed

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nancy sv

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Adsense question

Does Adsense sense how much traffic you have and adjust ads accordingly? I seem to recall reading somewhere that the amount we get per click is based on how much the companies agree to pay - I'm wondering if there is something in there where companies would be willing to pay more if there is a lot of traffic? I don't know if this even makes sense, but it seems to me that I read something like this before.

If they don't work it like that, how do they figure out how much you get per click?
 

Georganna Hancock

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No, it doesn't work that way. You can control the type of ads that appear, to a degree, both in how you set up your account and by using keywords in your content. AdSense is especially sensitive to the words in blog titles.

Your pay is determined by how many clicks an ad receives, and it takes thousands to add up to a very few cents. This is why we emphasize building traffic. Very few of the visitors click on the ads. AdSense is really a waste of real estate for websites with low traffic.

I think you're confusing the pay-per-click with the auction that advertisers participate in, bidding on keywords.
 

nancy sv

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But I've noticed the ads pay different amounts. Sometimes I'll only get one click a day and I'll get $.02. Other time I'll have one click and get $1.50. How does that all work? Do the companies say, "We'll pay X for each click"? Or what?
 

razibahmed

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Adsense earning depends on a number of factors. Google will never give you the exact figures but it is thought that the earning per click depends on keywords. Keywords related to auto, finance, gadgets bring more money than many other topics.
 

flashgordon

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Yes, when a person decides to do a pay-per-click campaign, they go to AdWords and designate how much they are willing to pay per click to bring someone to their site. These ads are then served via Adsense (on your site) and thus depending on what the ad publisher agreed to, you get that amount. If there is little competition for those keywords that the publisher (ad person) is targeting, they can designate only say .02 cents per click.

Google IS working on bringing in traffic numbers into their ad sales algorithm. Their goal is to give advertisers a better service by not only placing the ads close to relevant content, but also by rating the sites that ads are being served on. So, if you are not getting much traffic, they will give your site a lower rating which will impact how much publishers have to pay for a click from your site. This is officially not in place yet - but this is the direction Google is heading.

Either way, it all boils down to you having more traffic and good content. The nuances are changing, but the basics are still the same.
 

eScotty

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Hi,
I've been considering starting a blog, but I'm not sure it's a good investment of my time. I don't want a blog in order to promote my "brand" or provide an outlet for my thoughts. My interest is purely financial: can it be a significant new revenue stream for me? Hope that doesn't sound crass, but I treat freelance writing as a biz. So I'm wondering if bloggers, except for a select few, make any serious money - say, $500 a month - from ad and affiliate revenue?

Cheers. ;)
 
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