OK, so this past month or two I branched out and added some advertising to my site. It doesn’t seem like a popular thing to do as I’ve never seen anyone talk about it but I’ll share what I made and why I removed Google Adsense and AdBrite from my site.
First, you have to understand my stats before you can compare. According to my sitemeter account, I average somewhere around 40 hits a day. I know, baby stats compared to some. And even though this blog is somewhat old established, I just recently even started trying to get any readers. It’s always been about having a place for me to journal/vent (and it still is). I also have anywhere from 10-24 feed subscribers depending on what day you visit.
So based on that, here’s what I earned this month in order of what I added.
#1 BlogHer. BlogHer isn’t just about advertising. It’s about a community of bloggers and I like that you can find other bloggers in their text links. The banners are nice-looking and I highly recommend them. This is my first full month with them and it looks like I’ll close out at around $9.
#2 Text-Link-Ads Since I have BlogHer, I have to be careful about what graphic ads I add and found Text Link Ads to be perfect. I enrolled in a system last month where they sell my posts. Or something like that. My site doesn’t actually have any links on it from them. And yet, this month I will make $11.48. When I have a full month of the same ads, I will make $13.50.
#3 Google Adsense – .46 in a few weeks just wasn’t enough to have any hope. They’ve been removed
#4 AdBrite – .08 REALLY wasn’t enough to take up so much of my sidebar.
All in all, I averaged around $20 this month to blog. I’m sure it will go up and that’s really cool. I know some people literally live off their blogging income and while that’s not my goal (although that’d be COOL) , I’m glad my domain and maybe some Starbuck’s is now financed from me sharing what I want to share anyway and from you, my lovely readers, for visiting. I don’t even have to ask you to click anything. Although I’m sure the advertisers at BlogHer would really appreciate a couple clicks on those pretty banners they make.
And, as always, if anyone has any suggestions on advertising, let me know. There are a few things that BlogHer doesn’t allow, so I’m limited to somewhat on what I can and can’t do.
Expect a big post from me about this on Monday or Tuesday.
You could make nice chunk of change by working with Pay Per Post, PayU2blog and other sponsored posting companies. Seriously, you could. You have a page rank of 3 so you would have no trouble getting the good opps. However, Blogher doesn’t allow blogs that do sponsored posting in their ad network.
Just to give you an idea, I made around $400 last month doing sponsored posts. I could have doubled that if I had really buckled down. This does not include Google Adsense, TLA, and other companies I work with. Just sponsored posts.
Remember watch for that blog post next week!
I’ve thought about doing the pay-per-post as well. May look into it more.
I also make money online other ways. I do reviews at epinions.com and earn money for my ratings there. I got a $38 check a couple months ago and am due for a $20 check in another month or so. It’s small, but helpful.
I also get referral bonuses for people that sign up for my hosting service- I’ve had four people sign up and at $65/signup that’s awesome money once a quarter or so.
I also do Amazon Associates links for every movie or CD that I talk about. I get referral money for anyone that uses my amazon associates id to make a purchase. It’s very slow to earn, but I did manage to get a $16 gift certificate the other day that allowed me to buy a DVD off my wishlist for free, basically.
Again all those don’t add up to huge amounts, but it’s still a nice perk every couple of months to get SOMEthing.
I’ve looked into the Pay Per Post and maybe Allison – I’ll do that on Scott’s web site or start another blog just for that. I guess I wouldn’t have a good rating though to get the good opps. $400 is mighty enticing vs. $9 from BlogHer. But like I said, I like BlogHer quite a bit.
How did you find my page rating?
Jayne — The epinions is definitely something I should look into. Wow, that hosting service referral is AWESOME!
Amy, I have the Google toolbar installed in Firefox and it displays page rank. You don’t have to have any page rank to get opps through PPP but your blog does have to be at 90 days old before they will approve it. Again, Blogher will not allow you to run their ads on your site if you do PPP.
You could create a review blog and build it up and submit it to PPP later if you didn’t want to use this one.