Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Blogging For Money?

You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:

1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.
2. Updated regularly.
3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)
4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and
5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.

Get the above criteria in place and Yeehaa... You are ready to Make Money Blogging.

Top 5 Ways to Make Money Blogging

Lets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:

1. Google Adsense
Google Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads.

Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.

2. Amazon
Amazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.

3. Blogads
You can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks.

Alternative Services:

• Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues.
• Tagword – It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price.

Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website.

4. Affiliate Programs
Your affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions.

5. Text Links
Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don’t have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Google Adsense Program

The way Google’s Adsense program works is that Google places its ads on your page relevant to your context, someone interested in that ad clicks on it and you get paid. It’s that simple! Let’s suppose your website is about gardening, Google content reader will detect your content by certain keyword and displays the ad relevant to that subject. The advertiser, in turn, is hoping that you will buy the product they are displaying. But don’t think that you can just click away on you own ads.

If you think about it, Google must protect the integrity of this process. Let’s suppose you were the advertiser and your ads were being arbitrarily clicked for the purpose of gaining revenue, at your expense! Don’t think you can get away with asking friends or family to do the dirty deed for you. Google has a way of tracking ip addresses and will detect any unusual activity. Remember this process is designed to benefit both you and the advertiser so best to keep it on the up & up than risking being banned by Google. Once that happens, you cannot get your publisher number back.

The best news of all is that it is not necessary to “cheat” If you just go about you business and play by the rules it is easy to make money with Google Adsense. Of course you cannot just throw up any old thing and expect to start raking in the big bucks. Just like any good site, you must have good, interesting, and relevant content. It is a great concept that you can totally benefit from.

Remember, it is important to keep you site fresh and interesting. It is best target high paying low competition keywords to maximize your earnings. Some people prefer to target high volume low paying keywords; however this will only work if you have a ton of visitors coming to your site. Don’t rely of friends and family to click! This has no place in the Google Adsense program.

Think about it, If you spend the same time providing fresh relevant content to your site, you will be building a solid foundation for long term growth. When you put good relevant content on your site people will want to come back again and again. This is your long term goal. This good, fresh and relevant content will drive your referral program up and keep you excited about your site.