free ways to Make Money
Do you want to make money blogging? If you do – you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging – there are tens of thousands of bloggers who make money blogging.
How to Make Money Blogging
In this page I want to share some information for beginners on how to make money blogging.
I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.
What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though – keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others – the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.
The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.
I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.
1. AdSense
Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.
2. Chitika
Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They work best on product related blogs although their recent announcement of their Premium ad unit is exciting as they now offer ads with a non product focus that I’m hearing great conversions on (I have one reader who is getting $28 CPM on this ad unit).Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me – mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars – I can’t recommend them enough!
3. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships
Private ad sales directly to advertisers have continued to grow over the last few months and as a result they’re now my third highest income stream. I expect them to overtake both Chitika and AdSense in the coming months. This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two at Digital Photography School.
4. Amazon Associates
Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it grew even more than previously as a result of continued growth of DPS where I recommend books, software and cameras.
5. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs
I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include – - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program (about to open the doors again), SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource) and the excellent Teaching Sells course (which just continues to grow in what it offers to it’s members in terms of content).
The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!
6. Shopzilla
As I wrote recently – Shopzilla has really impressed me with how it’s performed over the last few weeks. It’s actually doing well enough to debut in this list at #6. The ads are similar to Chitika but the click values have been higher for me to this point. They don’t offer quite as many options as Chitika does in terms of types of ads but for a new ad network there’s definitely promising signs. I’m looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop!
7. ProBlogger Job Boards
The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.
The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.
8. WidgetBucks
Another newcomer to this list is WidgetBucks – another ad network that ProBlogger readers will be familiar with.
WidgetBucks is similar to Chitika and Shopzilla in many respects and works well on product related sites. It does best on sites with US traffic (the reason I’ve not used it as much as I get a lot of international traffic) so if you have a product related site with a US audience it’d be a no brainer to try out WidgetBucks. I’m hoping they’ll continue to expand their offerings in terms of ad types and visitor location.
Disclaimer – WidgetBucks are an advertiser on ProBlogger
9. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs
I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here – and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include ShoppingAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me – not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).
I think that that covers most of it although it’s worth mentioning that last time I did this list I also included TextLinkAds which used to be every bloggers favorite way to make money blogging by selling text links. I’ve stopped using them due to Google cracking down on them (read more about this here) but it’s worth noting that many bloggers still use them successfully – I advise to proceed with caution. Disclaimer – TLA are an advertiser on ProBlogger
Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging
A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there – but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.
Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.
Read more...