Blog Monetization Strategies

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Last night I sat down and decided I wanted to list all the ways to monetize a blog. Not a list of websites, but a list of types. That way I could look at them all, weigh advantages and disadvantages, decide which work well together, and come up with a plan.

Up to this time, I have been an affiliate marketer. I have made a little money through Adsense, but this is nothing compared to what I made through affiliate programs. At the peak of my Adsense earnings, I was making about $1000 a month. But I used it to hedge my bets with people I drew into affiliate links. This was two years ago.

Shortly after that period, my Adsense earning dropped 90% and my opinion is about Adsense now is that it should only be used to hedge your bets unless you get thousands of visitors a day, not as your only or even main monetization method. I am looking to make real money, not pocket change and I don’t want to write about Mesothelioma to make money. I want to write about what I want to write about.

Other bloggers may not agree with me, but I don’t give a crap. My peak sales through affiliate programs was $800 in one day, $2500 in one week and close to $9000 in one month. If you have a site running Adsense or a network of sites that gets less than a 600 visitors a day and make this much from Adsense, I will accept your opinion.

Companies who have written me checks in order of lifetime profit:

  • Clickbank
  • Adsense
  • Commission Junction
  • Maxbounty
  • Ejunkie
  • TNX.net
  • DealDotCom
  • Project Wonderful

But most of this money has not been made through blogs, which is why I am breaking this down for myself and anyone who happens to drop by my blog.

The #1, Clickbank, is responsible for close to $180,000 over the last three years in gross sales, gross being the operative word. Currently I spend about $2000 with on Adwords a month to make half of these sales. I want to switch this up a little. There are a lot of ways to make money from a blog and to money online in general. I need to get out every once in a while and have a look around and I need to categorize my list of sites to monetize websites.

Here is a short break down which a plan to expand. Please correct me or add to this list with comments.

Link Details

  • No Follow - Advertisers are paying for your visitors to see the ad only.
  • Do Follow - Advertisers are paying mainly for a backlink. Seeing the ad is an afterthought most of the time, although some of these ads do a good job of both.

Payment Type

  • CPA - You are paid a commission on making a sale or getting a lead.
  • CPC - You are paid per click
  • CPM - You are paid per thousand impressions. And impression is when the page containing the ad is loaded by a visitor.
  • Per Month - Most text link and private ads
  • Per Day - Project Wonderful is the only one I can think of now.
  • Per Post - Paid reviews and the like.

Getting Paid

  • Okay, this isn’t a list but something to consider. Each company have their own payment terms. Picking a program like Linkshare or Clickbank to start with may help out newbies psychologically because they pay you very quickly. Some companies take months. It is also something to consider if you are paying for any advertising. You could rack up months of bills before you can even pay for your ads with your commission checks.

Newness and Saturation

  • Some programs are highly profitable in the beginning which is why it pays to try new things. But once they become more popular and the supply starts balancing with demand, the payments you get will begin to drop. Or the algorithm of the provider changes with time like Adsense. Or, with affiliate programs, the competition gets too fierce to even try (a home loan blog). In other words, new systems have loop holes that quickly get plugged.

Presentation

  • Banners
  • Text Links
  • Kontera Type Ads
  • Reviews

Location

  • Sitewide
  • Sitewide but varied - TNX
  • Within a post

Ad Serving

  • Contextual
  • Semi-contextual (using tags and the like)
  • Bid Based
  • Manual

Okay, that’s what I can think of right now. It gives me something to start with and somewhere to go. If you can think of anything more, leave a comment. I use do follow.

Tags: blog monetization, making money with a blog

Related posts

12 Feb, 2008  Affiliate Programs, Blogging, Make Money, Monetize



16 Comments so far »

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  1. Daily Tech Impressions said

    February 12 2008 @ 1:02 pm

    I use commission junction mainly, my blog is on new technology and gadgets so when I find relative gadgets or products I will add an additional link to the post of that afiliate product or i will put up a html picture or javascript link they can click on. I also use wordpress and I have a plugin that allows me to search for products as im writing in my post. I just drag and drop the picture or link i want and it automatically puts in my associates ID, my click throughs have increased 10 fold!

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  2. Jason Poteet said

    February 12 2008 @ 3:55 pm

    Most of my money has come from Commission Junction as well. I have been reading more and more lately about the success people are having with Clickbank.

    I actually have a to-do list item in Outlook that says, “Revisit - Clickbank”. It looks like a good time to make that a priority.

    Jason Poteet’s last blog post..Time Warner Tests Charging Broadband Users Based on Usage

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  3. Carl - Thatblogsite.com said

    February 12 2008 @ 4:21 pm

    Thanks for paying a visit to my blog and nice summarization post.

    Carl - Thatblogsite.com’s last blog post..Sunday Round-Up - Week 6

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  4. Internet Business Guide said

    February 12 2008 @ 8:32 pm

    I dislike AdSense in certain fields, in others it might be an interesting option for monetizing your site. Though, I’d never ever depend on AdSense alone, even if the payout is very high.

    Like you said, Stephan, diversification is the key. Producing and selling your own products or those of others. I’ll soon release one and sell it using Kunaki.

    ~Marcus

    Internet Business Guide’s last blog post..Do You See The Footsteps In Front Of Mount Everest?

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  5. MarketingDeviant said

    February 13 2008 @ 1:51 am

    Great insight. Which would be better, Clickbank or Commission Junction? Kontera didn’t work for me and adsense is really what you just say as pocket change for me right now.

    MarketingDeviant’s last blog post..Graffiti Marketing Campaign

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  6. Stephan Miller said

    February 13 2008 @ 6:24 am

    I like CJ too. The main reason I got involved with Clickbank first is the high commission (up to 75% of products priced from $20 to $100), I could easily have access to the whole product line (xml feed) and I started in the old school, what I like to call back of the comic book marketing.

    I have yet to make a sale through ShareASale but I haven’t really tried. I think there is a lot of real cash there. Almost every company has datafeeds. I started imported all I could one day and stopped when the records in the database reached 1,000,000. With a product line like that, you could find a product to match with anything, once I get some sort of contextual Wordpress plugin written.

    I got sort of catty about Adsense because I see so many new bloggers thinking it’s how we make our bucks here. If you get caught in that trap, you will be in a worse rat race than a day job or become a robotic content spinner.

    CJ, I say is better, for more of the general population. I have to admit there are some shady products in Clickbank and not everyone will buy ebooks.

    But there is definitely more profit potential in Clickbank. For those of you who think the people who show their Clickbank checks are scammers, I can attest to the fact that that type of money is very possible. If I could somehow double up my efforts, I would be making 6 figures from Clickbank alone. It still is work, but for analytical minds, it becomes fun.

    Also, I haven’t written much yet that fits a more hard product type affiliate program like CJ. I didn’t listen when I was told don’t market marketing products, the competition is fierce. I guess I figured that once I learned how to market this type of stuff, everything else would be a walk in the park.

    But I want to lean toward non marketing products in the future. My wife will be getting in on the action. And she has expensive and eclectic tastes. She has shown me all the cool things you can’t get at Walmart, LOL. We don’t do much tasting right now, but she sure knows how to pick winners and is a better at the social aspect of this stuff.

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  7. Who Gets A Cut | Stephan Miller said

    February 13 2008 @ 8:30 am

    [...] In my last post, I forgot to mention that probably the best way to monetize a site is with your own product. That way the only person who gets a cut is the payment processor. And with digital products like software and ebooks, there is no overhead once the product is finished, except for updates. Plus, if you sign up some affiliates, you don’t even have to cover the marketing. Of course, affiliates get a cut now. But it is much better to get 50% of the profit from 100 people promoting your product than 100% of the profit from doing all the work yourself. [...]

  8. Frank C said

    February 13 2008 @ 9:26 am

    “my Adsense earning dropped 90%”

    This indicates that your Adsense account got “smart priced”. This can happen for a number of reasons but the most common is that your CTR was consistently below 2-3%. Making adjustments to which sites you’re displaying Adsense on can quickly correct the problem. I had to do this in December when adding EntreCard to my flagship site caused my CTR to drop considerably. Removing it from OpTempo caused my earnings to jump back up in about a week.

    It’s really a matter of using a monetization method that matches the blog and niche. I have both Adsense oriented blogs and Clickbank product oriented blogs and both types earn about the same.

    Frank C’s last blog post..Someone Please Tell Me the Secret

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  9. Stephan Miller said

    February 13 2008 @ 9:36 am

    Yes, and by doing that I could make my site look more like ad central.

    Yes, and with an affiliate program for every possible ad that could run on your site, affiliate programs will still make you more, which is why I wrote my next post.

    You see, I don’t look at the way things are. I look at what they could be and then reach for that. With the way things are, I am following in footsteps and can only go as far as those footsteps go.

    Of course, contextual matching is quicker than finding an affiliate program for every page on your site. Unless, you have contextually matched affiliate programs. Did I say that?

    Yes, there is nothing like it now or at least that I consider suitable. But that is the animal I have treed now and have been working on for a little while.

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  10. Debo Hobo said

    February 13 2008 @ 10:38 am

    This is really great info, I just signed up for some of the programs you listed. I use CJ as well already, bidvertiser, 7search, kontera, and I am still making zero dollars.

    Debo Hobo’s last blog post..Must See Places for 2008

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  11. Stephan Miller said

    February 13 2008 @ 10:43 am

    It’s really a mess when you take a look at everything. And I am not one to leave a stone unturned. I hoped this post would make things clearer, not only for others, but for myself. At the end of a lot of these posts I have written I have learned a lot just through the act of writing.

    Slowly I am going to breakdown each category, starting with the post I wrote today.

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  12. Jawwad said

    February 16 2008 @ 7:23 am

    A Great revealing article Stephan for new people to this area like me. Your writing style is different(read unique) from many others that also talk about the similar topics. BTW Stephan if you have found any advantage of the Blogsphere gadget that is hanging there in the footer?

    Jawwad’s last blog post..Firefox3(beta 3): Some Observations about New Features, Problems & their Solutions

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  13. Stephan Miller said

    February 16 2008 @ 9:07 am

    Well, I like that you find it different. If readers didn’t, I probably wouldn’t have many. I just find that other bloggers tend to make articles more cut and dried. I read these cut and dried type articles when I was getting started. So while other’s are more factual, mine are real, at least that’s the tone I am trying to set. I have never really liked textbooks. “Idiot’s Guides” get closer to something I can stand. Those are still a little fake. It’s not a perfect world. Shit happens and if it happens during something I am being taught, I want to know in the tutorial and not while I am doing it. Plus I still need to proofread more. I just read the post. Plus I try to approach subjects by tearing them apart and not taking other’s words for things until I have. I think it gets closer to the newbie’s point of view. More like lab than a lecture. I learn new things as I am writing posts.

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  14. Stephan Miller said

    February 16 2008 @ 9:09 am

    Oh, the Blogrush thing is worthless. I am taking it off now.

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  15. Reward Rebel said

    February 25 2008 @ 5:50 pm

    I have wanted one of these forever! THANKS for the great work

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  16. Matt Jones said

    February 28 2008 @ 11:31 am

    That is a useful post Stephan. I just published a (free) e-book about Blog Monetization Strategies that may be of interest to you and your readers. It can be downloaded free here
    http://bloggingfingers.com/e-book/download-the-blog-monetization-strategies-e-book-and-win-300/

    There is also a $300 contest :)
    Matt Jones’s last blog post..By: David Bradley

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