It may come as a surprise for many webmasters and bloggers, but the truth is that waiting for advertisers to come to you is generally not a good idea. Unless you already have a famous site, of course. If you aren’t that lucky yet, it’s time to realise your site won’t be easily found by prospects. So, having an “advertise here” page won’t be enough. If you really want to make some money by selling ads, you will have to approach potential buyers. Read the rest of this entry »

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So, you decided that you aren’t going to wait for advertisers to find your site. Instead, you’ll take the initiative to look for them and offer them a good advertising spot or package. That’s great! But now you must be wondering where those ad buyers can be located.

There are several places where you can find advertisers for your blog or website, but today I’m going to focus on the following ones:

1. Your own site

Yes, your own site can help you compile a list of prospect ad buyers. Here’s how: install AdSense (or other contextual ad network’s code) on your template. Wait a few days, until Google learns what your site is about and starts showing appropriate ads. Now visit the sponsor sites (don’t click on your own ads; type their URLs on your browser) and see if they are indeed relevant to your audience. If the answer is positive, these are ad buyers you may want to offer a deal to. Read the rest of this entry »

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We may be living in the fast-paced world of online marketing, but when it comes to reading, sometimes it helps to pamper ourselves and take things slow. While there are tons of ebooks out there about this industry, some of which I already wrote about in another post, there are also great old-fashioned paperbacks and hardcovers you should try to check out. Here are just some of the best out there on the topic of social media marketing: Read the rest of this entry »

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A lot of bloggers use several ad services for their site, and sometimes, managing all of them can get pretty messy. Thanks to the awesome developer community, there are a number of available plugins for WordPress that can turn your dashboard into a control panel, to customize and control your ads from most of the leading publishers. You also get the ability to insert them inside posts themselves, which help tremendously in increasing the click rate. Listed below are just some of best plugins in this category. Read the rest of this entry »

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Direct ad sales are among the best monetization methods that a blogger or webmaster can use. However, I’ve seen a certain mistake being made by numerous site owners. They don’t seem to realise how harmful this can be to their monetization strategy. But I won’t let you become one of them. I’m going to draw your attention to this problem and teach you some simple solutions to this.

What’s the main mistake made by webmasters and bloggers who sell ads on their pages?

No one will be getting too many interested advertisers while their site or blog isn’t popular. It’s only natural. Most advertisers are interested in either branding or direct traffic. The exception to this rule are link builders seeking for favourable Google rankings, but they’re out of this article’s scope. So let’s go on analysing only the typical ad buyer. Read the rest of this entry »

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Putting all your eggs on one basket don’t always work. If you’d like to expand your blog advertising beyond Google’s AdSense, you have several options to choose from, each with its own pros and cons. If you’re site is product-oriented like, say, about digital cameras or mobile phones, one good ad program to try is Widget Bucks. Read the rest of this entry »

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When AdSense for RSS feeds was announced, a lot of people cheered. FeedBurner’s ad network was OK, but it catered to select publishers who had reached a certain number of subscribers. AdSense on FeedBurner meant even the little guys could now monetize their feeds. However, from the feedback that I’ve gathered, the service leaves much to be desired. Critics have been especially vocal the past few days. Read the rest of this entry »

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At the end of my article about link shops I promised I’d show you a few more ways to monetize your sites and blogs. That’s what I’m going to do today. You’ll see that besides the 4 basic business models presented in the previous parts of this series, there are several alternatives and mixed plans that you can use to make money online.

1. Article marketing

You choose a good product to promote and select appropriate keywords. Then you write articles optimised for the search engines and publish them on article directories. People will read your articles and hopefully click on the links in your resource box, which will lead them to a sales page on your chosen product. Read the rest of this entry »

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The good thing about social media is that it’s more than just a buzz word – it’s a useful platform and I’ve seen a lot of people make money out of it. Internet marketer Chris Brogan recently made an exhaustive list of social media marketing techniques and I found them quite enlightening. Other people picked up on it, among them Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester. He reorganized the list into five categories and then some, which makes it all the more readable. Let me share the list with you. Read the rest of this entry »

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My previous post dealt with a business model especially aimed at service providers. Today I’m going to write about a type of site that also provides a service, but in a very specific manner and for a very specific audience: link shop sites.

1. What is this monetization model about?

Sites and blogs whose main purpose is to sell links to interested webmasters. A little bit of traffic may also be sent to link buyers. However, this is not a priority in most cases. Read the rest of this entry »

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