Making Money Through Blogging - Part 1 - Pay Per Click Networks

You can make money by blogging - believe it or not!

Making money by blogging is a very controversial topic in the blogging community, but the fact remains - several people have made a lot of money blogging (up to $US 1000 per week - which is a LOT of money in some countries).

If you want to start a blog for free (or you don't know anything at all about computers) - go to www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com and start a blog on one of the networks - for free - all you have to do is create a new user, choose the template you want & then you're ready to go - no money down!

Done? Good - Now, you can make money on your blog in several ways :

a) Advertisements on Blogs (Paid per Click) b) Affiliate Marketing (Paid per Sale or Lead) c) Writing a Blog for a Specific Company (Paid per Blog)

I was going to place all of these points together, but when writing point a) it got so large that I decided to split it in 3. So..... in this post I will discuss Advertisements on Blogs.

A) Advertisements on Blogs

This is probably the easiest way to make money blogging because you don't have to do anything - once you've set the ads up (placed them in your template), they are always there. So each time you publish a new blog, people see new adverts. Several companies offer advertising for your website or blog, some of the popular ones are discussed below.

Most people do not make a lot of money from this form of advertising on their blogs. You need to have high traffic websites - that is - blogs that get a lot of people visiting. But.... remember that it is money for nothing - so if you have a website, or a blog - you may as well have some form of advertising that you don't have to touch.

The good thing about this form of advertising is that there is no "waiting period" - so you can start a blog today - and straight away put advertising on it (as long as you have been accepted by the advertising company that is). You can also start getting clicks (and earn money) the day you publish your blog - you don't need to wait for someone to go away, come back, go away again, come back again & then decide to buy the product - this could take a few weeks.

The main companies that offer advertising options are as follows:

Google Adsense (Worldwide) - Adsense is good because it is content driven - so the ads will change to reflect what is written on the blog (for example if you are writing a blog about making money, the ads will be about making money, and if you are writing a blog about confectionery, your ads will be about confectionery). To put it basically, you will be paid depending on how much the advertiser is willing to pay for the keyword - so.... some words are worth 2c and other words are worth $2. The minimum payout is $US100 - this can take a fair bit of time depending on how much money you are making!

Yahoo Publisher Network (U.S. only) - Yahoo is very similar to Google Adsense, but they are currently only accepting publishers from the U.S.

Adbrite (Worldwide) - Adbrite is not content driven - so you may write a blog about money, but get ads about clothing. When publishing Adbrite ads you decide the price. So.... if you decide that each ad is worth 50c, that is how much a publisher will need to pay to advertise on your website.

Chitika (Worldwide) - Chitika offer a different form of advertising to the above advertisers. They have minimalls (where you see a product, & have the option of buying the product), or cloudtags - (a cloud of keywords which are relevant to your blog - you are paid each time someone clicks on one of the relevant keywords). The ads can either be content driven (that is - they will adjust the ads to match your blog like google), or non-contexual (which means that random ads are shown - like adbrite).

Bidvertiser (Worldwide) - Bidvertiser is very similar to Adbrite in that the Ads are not content driven. Bidvertiser will automatically put the highest paying ads on your website or blog (so if one advertiser bids 10c and the other bids 15c, you will have the 15c ad showing on your blog). The minimum payout for Bidvertiser is $US10, so you will be paid much sooner than other advertising networks.

Try one, or try them all - it is good to have alternatives (so sign up for more than one, and then you can change quickly if you need to). Some people prefer google, some people prefer Yahoo. The thing you need to remember is that some ads will work well with your blogs, whilst others won't - take a little bit of time, experiment, and find the "residual income" that earns you the most money - for.... not much work!

Once you have written your blog, don't forget to "ping" the blog networks. Go to www.pingoat.com to do this - this will send your blog to several networks at once - that way you optimise your chance to make money (the more that people see your blog, the more chance you have of making money).

You can also submit your blog to www.netscape.com, www.digg.com, and www.reddit.com - people will review your blog and vote on how good it is - the better it is, the more votes it will get - the more people will read it (swings & roundabouts).

And that.... as they say.... is that!

Enjoy your money making experience - let us know how it turns out, and which network suits you best.

By: Shirlene Moore