I’ve often talked about not making any money off this blog. Well, it’s a little different with one of my other blogs. On my finance blog, I get plenty of advertising. I can’t say I’m turning into a mogul on that page, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s doing pretty well, and combined with the Adsense money I make off one of my other sites I’m not doing all that badly.
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The thing about accepting advertising, though, is making sure that whatever you accept fits in with what it is you want to accomplish with your blog, or how you want it all to look. I thought I’d talk about this a little bit because you can find yourself gushing with a little bit of pride the first time someone comes to you asking if you’ll accept an ad without thinking about how it might eventually affect the look and structure of your blog.
For instance, when I first had advertising on this blog, I hooked up with Text Link Ads. And I made money; one month I made almost $100 while I was accepting it. Then Google learned about it and I lost my page rank. I wouldn’t have cared except it seems those advertisers stopped wanting to advertise on this blog because of it. And since my Alexa rank wasn’t as good as it is now I didn’t have anything else to keep them interested, so that was that.
These days, I don’t accept link ads on my blog except within a post. I also don’t accept any advertising that doesn’t have anything to do with the topic of the blog or website. That’s actually the most important thing you have to look at if you decide to accept advertising; relevance. Now I know I’ve said this blog will be about almost anything, but I do concentrate on a few things here and there. So, unless I’m popping up one of my own affiliate ads, you won’t see shampoo ads on this blog. I almost said you wouldn’t see Duncan Hines ads on this blog, but y’all know how much I love cake. lol
Okay, maybe not so much for this blog, but for my finance blog if the ad doesn’t concern something financial or business related it’s not going on there. I don’t accept any advertising on my business blog except for my affiliate ads. On my local blog I don’t have any advertising there yet, not even Adsense; I’m going to have to take care of that one of these days.
Then there’s the types of ads one will accept. I don’t accept any text link ads on the sidebars or on the first page, but I do accept banner ads of some type. If you decided to check out my finance blog you’ll see there’s this neat widget at the lower left. I get paid well to run that sucker and it’s finance related, although it’s geared towards a UK audience, which is one of the strangest anomalies for me. Most of the advertisers are from there, but they pay well and quickly and I don’t mind all that much, though it’s still confusing.
I also will allow someone to buy into an article, or write an article and pay for their ads to be in it. That’s one of the best parts of allowing guest posts there, and it’s the type of thing that can bring in cash here and there. For instance, yesterday I had a company ask if they could write an article about their website and their product. That’s a first, and the reason I turned it down was that it wasn’t a company geared towards an American audience, though it was financial. Since the blog is geared towards Americans it didn’t quite fit. However, I’d have gotten paid nicely for that guest article, which would have been a total advertisement, and I’m not above that.
I do allow ads within posts as long as they’re related to whatever the topic is on that post. I allow that kind of advertising on my other websites as well. Though I’m about to remove the links in a week because their contract is up, I have some linked advertising on my anti-smoking site, which ran for a year. Of course, the rate’s going up for anyone else who might want to advertise, but I’d grandfather them in for now.
Anyway, the overall idea is that money can be made on blogs or websites in more ways than one. It helps to think about your advertising rates and the type of advertising you’d like to accept if you’re ever asked. I hope you get asked as well; trust me, it’s kind of cool. 😉
