How To Make Money from Blog - Top Earners

How To Make Money from Blogs - The Top Earners
1. Chitika
While they don’t work on every blog (for example don’t use them here at ProBlogger) and there is a traffic minimum to be accepted by them Chitika continue to be the highest earner. They offer a variety of ad units and income streams - the top three are eMiniMalls, Related Product Units and Shoplincs. They continue to work best on product related sites. Place RPU units at the end of posts (they give a good option for people to click on when they finish reading and experiment with linking directly to products in your shoplinc from product reviews (of the same products) on your blogs. ’ve written plenty of Chitika Optimization tips here and here.
2. AdSense
The most popular form of advertising on blogs is AdSense (according to a few studies that ’ve seen) and it’s a reliable earner that brings in a significant level of income (just under what Chitika pulls in each month). While use referrals and their search product on some of the sites find that normal ad units are producing the best income - particularly rectangle (250 x 300 pixels) ones placed close to content with a blended design. For tips on optimizing AdSense on your blog check out this 8 part series.
3. Text Link Ads
Perhaps the biggest mover over the last 12 months in terms of the earnings has come from TLA. While they have a ceiling in what they earn per site they are another good solid earner - particularly now that they’ve added feedvertising (RSS ads) which out performs any other type of RSS ad that ’ve tried. ’m hearing from many bloggers that TLA is their biggest earner now. It works best on sites that have been around for a while - you don’t need big traffic to be accepted - but having a page rank and some search engine presence helps.
4. Amazon Associates
The forth Quarter of each year tends to be a good one when it comes to commissions from Amazon. The last quarter is a time that people are in a buying mood in the lead up to Christmas - smart placement (deep linking inside posts) can bring great conversions. The key is picking relevant products to promote. Read more tips on affiliate programs for blogs for a few other tips on optimizing Amazon.
5. Private Ad Deals
don’t do a lot of private ad deals (it’s something should focus upon more but there are only so many hours in the day) but when they come in they can be significant (if you have decent traffic). ’ve just signed two deals on the digital photography blog with Apple and Adobe for the next couple of months so suspect this one will leap up next quarter.
6. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs
The blogs have a variety of smaller affiliate programs running from them. try to find quality products that relate to the topics that can genuinely recommend - often via reviews. Some of the better converting products that ’ve recommended this last quarter included - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a photoshop product) and SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource).
7. ProBlogger Job Boards
Not spectacular earnings but growing. see this more as a service to readers than an income stream at this point - however it does pay for itself and bring in a few hundred dollars each month.
8.Performancing’s Partners Network
The now defunct ad network did bring in a few hundred dollars last quarter. was sad to see this close as it offered an interesting alternative.
9. BlogAds
don’t use them much these days but they do bring in a little each month. noticed BlogAds decrease in performance around the time they went to the new version. ’m not sure if it’s the problem or theirs but apart from one blog rarely see any sales these days.
How Much Do Spend?
A question that ’m regularly asked when do such posts is ‘how much do you spend’ to earn what you earn?
The answer is ‘very little’.
do experiment occasionally with using AdWords to promote the blogs - but don’t have the time or patience to get into it heavily (the biggest month ’ve had with AdWords ever is $100 - just over $3 a day). Other than that don’t do any paid promotional activities and the costs are really just hosting related and the normal ISP and office costs.