Monetizing Your Blog Beyond Banner Ads
I’m speaking at BlogWorld East in New York at the Jacob Javitz Center. Blog World has quickly become one of the best conferences for networking with well known bloggers, celebrities and internet marketers. This is the first time the event is being held in New York, and there will also be a Blog World West later in the year in Los Angeles, California.
Today I’m speaking on a panel with John Chow, Syed Balkhi and David Risley as the moderator. We will be covering the basics, advanced methods and additional tips and tricks of monetizing a blog beyond the use of simply banner ads.
If you weren’t able to make it to Blog World this year, I wanted to provide a detailed post on what you may have missed!
Top Blog Monetization Methods
- Banner Advertising
- Blog Review Posts
- Contextual / Text Links
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Memberships
Bonus Blog Monetization Methods
- Donations
- Guest Posting Services
- Write a Book
- Public Speaking
- Consulting
- Sell Merchandise
While many blogs do generate some form of revenue, they are not always monetizing their traffic to the best of their ability. Testing and combining different monetization for your blog, while not lowering the quality and experience of your content is what’s important.
You can view the slides below which gives examples of different web sites using each of these blog monetization listed above. Should BlogWorld release the full video of the session, I will add that to this post as well. Without audio or video, the slides don’t give the same impression, but still list working examples of each method.
Feel free to mention any other blog monetization tips or questions you might have.
I think you hit the nail on the head saying that it's the testing that is important. Every blog is different with a different set of readers who respond in unique ways to changes. Finding monetization strategies that don't upset your base is HUGE!
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It's surprising what can swing a landing page or blog in terms of conversions and profits. What you might think looks the best, actually could convert the worst.
Hey Zac, I believe one of the best is affiliate marketing, I know I'm a little biased because I deal with affiliate marketing mostly, however, I found again and again that you can find affiliate offers for pretty much any niche out there, and the affiliate portions of my websites beat every other form of advertising that is out there. I believe most people are profitable from banner ads and paid reviews only because those are the easiest type to stick up besides maybe Adsense.
Also, I think while this may not necessarily be a form on income, building a mailing list on any website/blog is extremely important. Because I've found that the earning potential through mailing lists can sometimes be more powerful than that of just your blog or website. Aweber of course is the big player out there and they are definitely the best, but once you build a list, affiliate marketing can earn you a crap load of cash though your email list!
True I agree Affiliate marketing always has and always will be the most profitable way to make money off your blog. Just got to know how to do it right.
Definitely. Affiliate marketing is one of the best because it gives you the opportunity to promote quality and relevant products to your audience. An email list is also extremely important and effective!
The big three lol …. Very good people to learn blogging from that’s for sure. I hope the people that are lucky enough to run into you guys are lucky enough to pick your brains, and learn some valuable tips. Blogging is a business and it can get tough at times but stick with it beginners. You will eventually succeed with the right work ethic, and knowledge.
Alex J
CEO & Founder
https://www.clickforliving.com
The panel went well. A decent amount of people stuck around afterwards to ask questions and talk.
I'm just wondering how much is the usual price range for a blog review post? I heard it can really be a good profit but I don't know the real value. 🙂
This can vary heavily based on the blog niche and how many rss/visitors the site gets. Join SocialSpark and ReviewMe to see what others are getting paid to write about.
yes, we should not follow only banner ads. It is important to have some other methods mentioned here. Thnx for sharing.
First time visitor and inspired by design of this blog.
Banner ads work great, but get a bad reputation when used too often.
Once you have traffic, blog monetization becomes interesting. I too thought that adsense or banner advertising are the only monetization methods but I was wrong. I've read someone saying that blogs are worth far less then static websites (which is somewhat true) but one of the advantage of blogging is that opportunities of monetization ( I like the paid reviews option) John Chow will tell you just that.
Google Adsense can work very well on small niche web sites, but for anything with a lot of volume and authority, managing your own ads is the best option.
Great tips, thanks John!
Thanks Zac! 😛
Really Great Post!!! I just want to know from where can I get resources for Contextual / Text Links??
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Check out https://zacjohnson.com/infolinks. They were also at blog world as exhibitors.
I've bookmarked this and will hopefully get to watch the video later. I currently make money on my blog from adverts and blog review posts. 🙂
My recent post 5 Simple Ways to Make Money Blogging for Fun
I checked the room while speaking and it looks like they didn't record it, however I think John Chow got most of it recorded.
Great post Zac, I agree that there are different campaigns so you should do the trial and error method to look for campaign that work for your business. I think Self Managed Banner Advertising would be great. Contextual Advertising is common on Article Marketing. Overall, great presentation zac.
Thanks, appreciate it. I use a combination of them all across my sites and blogs, so it's always good to provide examples of each.
Webinars is another great way to monetize a blog. While I suppose webinars stand apart from the blog, blog posts are still an excellent jumping-off point for launching a webinar.
Zac, when I click on "read more" or "comments" for this particular post, the post content is not appearing. It does appear properly in other posts though.
Also, the introductions were quite entertaining. 🙂
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The comments seem to be working fine.
John and Syed both has fun with their intros 😛
– How we make money blogging ?
– Maybe if we bore enough people they'll start paying us to stop….
:-)))
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Great article. Yeah there are so many different way of monetizing the blog. Once your blog is getting good number of visitors then monetizing is the next steps to be managed skillfully. mailing list is great help for affiliate marking.
My recent post How to find Do follow Blog and How to make Do follow links No follow
Great article. Yeah there are so many different way of monetizing the blog. Once your blog is getting good number of visitors then monetizing is the next steps to be managed skillfully. mailing list is great help for affiliate marking.
My recent post How to find Do follow Blog and How to make Do follow links No follow
Always great to start building a mailing list as soon as possible. John had a great presentation on how whole email funnel process.
Great tips, thanks Zac
Zac,
Thanks for some great tips on monetizing your blog. I have learned some great tips which will help me grow my affiliate marketing venture. A newbie like me always appreciates any advice from an expert like you.
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Really Great article with great information about monetizing blog using banner ads. This is really a great way to monetize any blog. Specially for those blogs which are getting tons of visits daily. Thanks dude 😉