How to monetize your blog
Many people have decided to become bloggers simply because they want to share their thoughts and provide useful information to readers. In this article, I'm going to provide you with information on how to monetize your blog and make an extra income on the side whilst doing what you love. Firstly there is more than one method of generating an income from your blog, many bloggers believe that Ad Networks such as Google Adsense are the only way but rest assure there are many other ways. You can in fact generate an income through affiliate marketing and referrals, I will elaborate on that later on in the article.
Five Ad Networks which I believe are the best from my experience:
Google Adsense
It's undeniable that Google Adsense is the best Ad Network to date. It's free and allows you to earn money by placing ads on your blog. The ads are reviewed to ensure they're high quality and relevant to your content or audience, even when viewed on smartphones and tablets. Adsense also makes sure that only the highest paying ads go onto your blog, allowing you to get the most out of your ads. They pay nearly $10 Billion each year to their publishers.
That being said, I only encourage bloggers to sign up for Adsense once their blog has lots of traffic as well as content, because being approved for Adsense is very difficult. They look at a number of factors such as traffic, quality of posts and number of posts, though if you do get approved you will enjoy great earnings. Adsense is particularly known for CPC Ads and CPM Ads. Sign up
Infolinks
This is probably the best Google Adsense alternative out there. Blog requirements are much better than the ones of Adsense, because there is no minimum traffic required making it much easier for applicants to be approved, but content will still need to be of good quality. Infolinks is also very competitive when it comes to earnings, but obviously not as good as Google Adsense. They work with some of the biggest advertisers in the world such as Facebook, Amazon, eBay and Microsoft. This Ad Network mainly uses CPC Ads. Sign up
Pros: Very easy to use and less competitive when it comes to approval.
Cons: Doesn't always show relevant ads.
Propeller Ads
I have mentioned two very good Ad Networks but the disadvantage of those is that not everyone will be able to get approved, which is why I have decided to mention Propeller Ads. There are many new bloggers out there who either have very low traffic or content but also want to monetize their blogs. Now Networks such as Adsense will definitely not approve them which is why I personally believe that Propeller ads is one of the best Ad Networks available. They approve almost anybody giving new bloggers the chance to earn a little something from their work.
Propeller Ads pays for every 1000 ad impressions making it very attractive. An impression is a term that refers to the point in which an Ad is viewed once by a visitor, or displayed once on a web page. So unlike CPC Ads where you only get paid when an ad is clicked on you can actually earn money from simply displaying the ads.
There are of course a few lay backs to using Propeller Ads such as their pop under ads which visitors often find very annoying, so this could in fact chase visitors from your blog. Propeller Ads also doesn't support Paypal payments, so that's something that many people might find very annoying as well. But overall propeller ads is a great choice for beginners. Sign up
RevenueHits is a CPL, CPA and CPM Ad Network for publishers. Again this is a very good Ad Network and it also has immediate approval, so you are guaranteed that they will approve you. It has over one billion Ad Impressions each day. RevenueHits is also a Geo Targeted and Contextual Ad Network, so instead of you bringing in the traffic an advertiser requires it adjusts according to the traffic your blog brings. I hear of some bloggers making around $5-$10 a day with RevenueHits despite their level of traffic. Payouts are made through Paypal, Wire Transfer and Payoneer. The minimum amount is $50 which many bloggers may find difficult to accumulate since your earnings will always fluctuate, some days you will earn as much $30 and some days even nothing but oh well that's life. I still very much recommend RevenueHits. Sign up
Chitika
Chitika's Ads integrate seamlessly with your content, that means no stress and no hassle. I believe it's a great Network when it comes to maximizing your blog revenue although when I tried it out I didn't have the best user experience. The reason why I say this is because Chitika required me to add an HTML code to my site in order for them to start showing ads on my blog so I did so, then it told me to wait for a couple of hours for them to verify that I added the code to my blog. After hours of waiting they still hadn't verified so I waited longer and hours turned into days and they still hadn't verified so I decided to remove the code and work with other Ad Networks. Maybe it was my fault maybe it was theirs, but oh well I can never know for sure now.
I still do encourage bloggers to try it out because from all the reviews I see about Chitika users are very satisfied. Chitika is compatible with Google Adsense so you can in fact show ads from both Networks at the same time meaning double revenue, and I personally believe that this is a great advantage. Chitika also has very easy approval mainly because there don't have traffic requirements for your blog. One major downside is their low ad relevancy therefore leading to low revenues.
- Media.net
- PulsePoint
- Clicksor
- Adcash
"Now for affiliate marketing and referrals"
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people's or company's products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make. Referrals are the process of referring people to services such as DropBox and being rewarded if they successfully sign up because of you.
Personally I like referrals more than Affiliate marketing but only because they are much easier to generate revenue. The problem with affiliate marketing is that you may advertise a product on your blog but if people don't actually buy the products you won't make a penny, and trust me selling products is one of the most difficult tasks I have tried it myself. On the other hand signing up for a service takes little time so you are guaranteed that a number of visitors will opt to sign up for some of the services you will refer.
Heres a short list of Platforms offering referral programs:
RevenueHits
So earlier on I mentioned how you can generate revenue with RevenueHits through showing ads on your blog, but what I didn't mention is that you can actually make some good money by just referring people to RevenueHits. They run a high paying referral program of which for every referral you make to a publisher, you get up to 10% of their earnings for an entire year. For the first year you will receive 10% of the revenues made by your referred publishers who earn more than $1500 and 5% of the ones who earn less than $1500. You will first need to sign up for RevenueHits before you can start referring people. Sign up
VigLink
When you refer a fellow publisher to VigLink, you’ll earn 35% of their commission for the first year. Again this is very useful especially to those people who struggle with Affiliate marketing. To make use of the referral program you will first need to become a Viglink publisher. Sign up
Propeller Ads
When someone signs up as a Propeller Ads publisher and does so using your link, you will earn a 5% commission on all of their future revenue. This is a lifetime commission, which means you can keep growing a revenue by simply referring people to the network. Sign up
Ninja Outreach Referral Program
They offer 50% Monthly recurring commissions for each customer you refer, so it's a pretty attractive offer. Sign up
Chitika
For every publisher you refer to the Chitika Professional Publisher network who starts running Chitika ads on their site, you will earn 10% of their revenue for 10 months, starting on the date you refer them!
Note: In order to become a Chitika Referrer, you must have a Chitika Publisher Account. Sign up