How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

In my first juicy post, I am going to touch on a few of the basics.  Darren Rowse wrote an article about how bloggers make money a while back with the same title.  I am going to re-invent this post in my own words and hopefully give a lot of you newbies out there a better understanding of how bloggers make their money.

Advertising Programs

If you plan to make any money with your blog, you’re going to need to sign-up or enroll with an advertising program out there.  Well, here is a list of the most common advertising programs available to bloggers today.

Google Adsense
Google offers an advertising solution for publishers allowing you to place textual ads on your site.  Typically, this is the choice for most new bloggers.  Here is a little bit of info you might want to know before you enroll with Google Adsense:

Pros:

• Google’s text ads don’t destroy your website with unwanted banners and images.
• You get paid per click.
• Easy tracking allows you to see your money roll in.
• The ads serve relative ads to what content is surrounding them.

Cons:

• You are given a limited choice of ad block sizes.
• Google always has to brand everything, including their ads.  A small logo is shown.
• Limited to three ads per page.
• Per click payments vary, greatly.

I highly recommend using Google Adsense if you are a new blogger.  Until you get a large readership, you will not benefit from many of the other revenue streams very well.

With Adsense out of the way, I want to name a few of the other programs out there.  Some I have a bit of experience with and others I have never used but hear very good things about.

YPN - Yahoo Publisher Network
Still currently in beta stages, this network is not as easy to get approved when compared to Adsense but has been known to work well with websites on certain topics. (Ex. MySpace, Arcades, Celebs, etc.)

AdBrite
Another textual advertising option like Adsense and YPN but without all the branding.  Advertisers bid in a marketplace to place their ads on your website.  The ads from this program tend to lack relevancy to your content but can convert well if used strategically.

Kontera
This advertising program lets you insert a piece of code into your pages which then highlights and double-underlines several keywords which are then linked to advertisers pages automatically.  You are paid when someone click on these double-underlined words.

Other advertising options include Text Link Ads, WidgetBucks, Chitika’s eMiniMalls, Azoogle Ads, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Clicksor, Pheedo, Bidvertiser, Valueclick, and TTZ Media.