Although there are a few people that are blogging just for love, most of us would like to make money off our blogs. Whereas it’s unlikely that all of us will be able to retire doing so, making enough pocket money to live comfortably is not hard if one puts enough effort into it. Most newbie bloggers don’t know where to begin with regards to blog monetization, so I present you with five ways to monetize your blog.

1) Text Blocks

Most of us online will have heard of Google Adsense at one point or another… contextual block advertising is something that works fairly well on niche blogs, especially if you get a lot of your traffic from search engines like Google or Yahoo. Programs like Adsense deliver ads based on certain keywords in your content, and although they can be way off base at times (delivering ads for gastic bypass on a make money online blog as an example) they are usually pretty relevant.

Along with Adsense, similar advertising programs include Adbrite, Bidvertiser, BlgAds… there are few others, but those are the most trustable. With contextual ads, you get paid per click, and each click amount varies depending on which keyword it was for and where the click came from. While text block ads can earn you a fair amount of money on niche blogs, the problem with blogs where most of your visitors are return ones are that those visitors will get “ad blind” - they no longer look at the ads after they get used to the layout of your website, and except for accidental clicks it is unlikely that you will get many from them.

2) In text advertising

In text advertising is exactly what it sounds like… words in the blog posts will be replaced by links to related websites and you’ll get paid for them.

There are two programs you can use for in text advertising - the Text Link Ad Network and Kontera. With the former, links are randomly chosen and inserted into your posts, and you get paid for every link sold; with the latter, words are replaced by hyperlinked text and you get paid for every click. It is more likely that you will receive more clicks as depending on the quality of your post, readers will be interested to see websites that they think you have linked to - however, the payment per click can be extremely low.

A lot more money can be earned with Text Link Ads, however to make money with them you will need to have a website with a high Pagerank (more about Pagerank in a future post), something that new websites often don’t have.

3) Direct ad sales

Depending on your type of website and the niche it is in, you can make a decent amount by selling ad spots directly to related advertising companies; there are many out there and all of them want to promote their websites - while it depends on the traffic you receive, you will be able to make money through direct ad sales. This is best seen on the large websites in the industry - TechCrunch for example receives around 2,300,000 unique visitors a month, and advertising slots go for $10,000 each - with ten ad slots just in the sidebar, it’s quite easy to see that they’re banking money. With your brand new, startup website that amount will be out of the question (for the beginning, at least) but making a few hundred a month is certainly possible.

Some of the common formats used by blogs that sell advertising are the 125 x 125 square, usually shown in the sidebar; the 468 x 60 rectangle, shown below the header or even in the header itself, as well as other less common formats like the 728 x 90 leaderboard, the 234 x 60 half rectangle and the 120 x 600 hanging banner. To directly sell advertisements on your blog to advertisers, you must have a strong advertising page, mentioning all the benefits of advertising on your blog.

4) Paid reviews

Although paid reviews are sold in a similar way to direct ad sales (to an advertiser looking for exposure to his/her website), the way that they are put up on your blog is extremely different to the above. As it sounds like, a paid review is a post on your blog “reviewing” another website, one that is paid for. You can use programs like Pay Per Post, Smorty or Review Me for this - those companies are specifically geared towards providing a marketplace where bloggers and advertisers can meet. Although those companies will provide you with a lot of opportunities, you will often find that they are unrelated - a blogging tips blog being asked to review a technological website or even an oyster producing company.

Another thing that happens is that the above companies take a large chunk of the payment earned for themselves - anywhere between 30 - 50%. While you will still be able to make around $5 - $15 a post with a new blog, I’d recommend mentioning on your ‘Advertise’ page that you do paid reviews on your blog, as that will allow interested parties to contact you directly. By selling paid reviews direct to advertisers without a middleman, you will not just take 100% of the commission, but also ensure that most of the reviews you write are relevant, as you have more control this way.

5) Affiliate programs

Promoting affiliate products where you get paid a commission is one of the easiest ways for bloggers to make money; be it hosting, books or even lingerie, bloggers can make money by promoting the products they love. By writing a review on products and plugging in your affiliate link, you can make money - either a lump sum up front as people purchase something or monthly, recurring payments if people sign up for a long term program.

The vast scope of affiliate products to promote is simply amazing - giants like Amazon and eBay allow you to make money by referring customers to them, while you will usually be able to find an affiliate program for anything you can think of. Affiliate networks like NeverBlue Ads and PepperJam exist solely to show you what possible products you can make a commission off, and the great thing is that those networks usually supply you with an affiliate manager that can walk you through what to do and how to do it.

Remember, only promote products that you have had personal experience with, and be honest - waxing lyrical about something that is ultimately rubbish will not just probably lead to refund requests, but also people losing trust in your recommendations and being less likely to listen to you in the future.

Good luck with monetizing your blog and if you need any help feel free to leave a comment.