In This Chapter
Checking out the advertising options
Blogging for money
Putting products on your blog with affiliate programs
Advertising on your blog has never been easier. Many different advertising systems offer bloggers a free way to place ads on their blogs, and businesses have picked up on the fact that blog advertising can really work. Putting an ad or two on your blog is an easy way to earn a little money doing something you enjoy. You can turn a pretty penny and even earn a living from advertising.
Ever since Web sites came into existence, there have been online advertisements. From the first Web banners of the early Internet to today's contextual advertising systems, ads have run the gamut from wildly successful to being a waste of precious bandwidth.
In some cases, this has more to do with the readers than anything else — on some topics, blog readers are willing to look at ads and even click them, but audiences on other blogs just don't have the patience to wade through advertisements that clutter their reading pleasure. So rule one is to know what your audience can tolerate before you accept a big sponsorship!
Turning your blog into a retirement savings plan won't happen overnight, and the addition of advertisements to the average blog shouldn't be taken lightly. It all requires planning, patience, and a faith and trust in your readership. Depending on your readership, you might need to request input from them about the advertisements you choose to employ on your blog.
Banner ads (rectangular ads usually placed along the top of a site) once dominated ad slots on the Web, but they have become less important as people have learned to tune them out. Then animated and blinking advertisements generated a few clicks, but ultimately managed to generate a massive backlash. Many of these moving, beeping, and blinking ads just proved to be an irritant rather than a successful advertising method.
Today's contextual advertising tools are actually intelligent; ads are matched by subject to the words and phrases you use on your blog. Generally, the result is ads that better suit your readers' interests, making them more likely to click the ads.
The first thing to do is decide whether your blog is meant for an advertising campaign. Many blogs can benefit greatly from advertisements. However, you should think about a few things before diving in:
Does your blog have a design that's ready for ads?
Does your blog software support the advertising system you've chosen?
Will advertising earn you any money?
Will your audience put up with ads?
Answering these questions isn't easy; in fact, it might be impossible to do unless you jump in and try using some advertising and observe the results.
You can use several kinds of advertising methods to turn a blog into a place where you can make a tidy profit. The last few years have seen an explosion of companies that want a piece of the action in the blogosphere, and these companies have come up with some creative ways to make ads easy to use, simple to implement, and easy on your readers' eyes.
If you're a new blogger or just new to advertising programs, it's easy to latch on to the first advertising system you find and commit to using it. Although this isn't necessarily a bad thing to do, you might want to take a look at some of the different ad systems out there and find out about how advertising tends to work in the blogosphere before you start using ads.
As you do your research, keep in mind that, if you decide to make that leap into monetizing your blog, you should choose software that allows you to control your advertising so that it doesn't overwhelm the blog audience you worked so hard to build.
A multitude of advertising companies offer bloggers simple solutions to monetize Web sites. Most of these programs work in similar ways but have unique delivery methods. Advertising programs range from text‐only ads to flashy animations and even full‐page advertisements that really get your readers' attention! As a blogger, choosing an advertising program that works for your audience can make the difference between an increase in readers and turning off your existing traffic.
You can deliver ads to a blog audience in four different ways. Additional methods are available, but most don't work as well in a blog. The most popular advertisement formats are
Text‐based ads: These ads are text‐only and feature a link or links to the advertiser's Web site or service. Each ad is very plain, and most advertising systems limit your ability to customize their look and feel.
Graphical banner and button ads: Banner and button ads can be static or animated images. These ads usually have pre‐set sizes but can be customized to fit your blog design.
RSS ads: Ads are a new addition to RSS feeds; as the format has taken off with the public, advertisers have jumped on the bandwagon. Such ads can be text or images and are linked to the advertiser's Web site straight from your RSS feed. See how this looks when the RSS feed is viewed in a newsreader in Figure 16-1 . If you want to find out more about RSS, see Chapter 11.
Pop‐up ads: Pop‐ups tend to be everyone's least favorite type of ad, but oddly enough, pop‐up ads that open in a new window are still quite successful at getting people to click an advertiser's Web site. The readers might be fairly irritated by the time they get to the site, but they do click.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau makes recommendations each year about ad sizes and standards. You might find the recommendations useful in planning for ads. Visit www.iab.net/standards/adunits.asp to see what the options are.
Most ad programs today — with the exception of sponsorships — use contextual advertising that coordinates ad display with related editorial content. So, a blog post about skiing might be accompanied by ads for ski shops and resorts. A blogger who posts about say, blogging, ends up with ads for blog software and tools.
Contextual ad systems search your blog for keywords that match products that the advertisers have in their inventory. These ads are then displayed beside the topic keywords and, in theory, apply in the context of the Web page they appear on.
Contextual ads about blog polling tools appear on the Smiley Cat Web Design blog, as shown in Figure 16-2 .
Figure 16.2. Figure 16-2: Contextual advertising puts blogging tool ads next to a post on the same subject. Courtesy of Christian Watson http://www.smileycat.com
Money can flow from the advertiser to the blogger in different ways. Always read the terms of service for an ad program, because each advertising company has a different idea of how bloggers should be compensated. The usual business models for online ads are
Cost Per Impression: In this model, advertisers pay for the number of times a page displaying the ad is loaded. The advertiser might prefer that a reader click its ad, but it recognizes that simply being visible on a blog also has value.
Cost Per Click or Pay Per Click: The blogger makes money only when a reader clicks an ad and goes to the advertiser's Web site. This type of ad is very common in contextual ad programs, as well as on search engines in the sponsored results section.
Cost Per Action: In this case, the advertiser pays only when the reader actually takes action after having viewed and clicked the ad on the blog. This can be anything from signing up to receive more information to actually purchasing a product.
Sponsorships: When an advertiser wants to be actively associated with the content of your blog, it might offer to sponsor the blog or some part of the blog. A sponsorship is usually played up with premium advertisements and exclusive ad placement, and it's sometimes even thanked in the editorial content of the site.
Lots of bloggers have had the same great idea about the ads on their blogs: “I'll just click on these myself and send my Cost Per Click rates through the roof! I'll make millions!” Unfortunately, the advertising companies have figured out this little scheme, and they refer to it as click fraud. Advertisers spend good money to have their ads displayed, and companies that run advertisement programs go out of their way to make sure that clicks on those ads are good clicks. Make sure you understand what happens if you click ads on your own blog before you do it — some programs penalize or even ban bloggers that engage in click fraud.
Most bloggers choose to incorporate advertising programs by signing up with a company that serves as a middle man between the blogger and the advertiser. This company typically negotiates rates with the advertiser, tracks ad performance, and pays the blogger for advertising placement.
Although you can cut out the middle man and sell your own ad space, many bloggers find that the negotiation, tracking, and technical overhead isn't how they really want to be spending their time.
But even the most time‐pressed blogger is likely to find the strength to listen when an advertiser contacts a blogger directly and offers to sponsor the blog. These arrangements are typically more lucrative for the blogger (and the advertiser, presumably) and are negotiated on a case‐by‐case basis depending on the audience, product, blog traffic, and other factors.
With your planning done, it's time to put ads on your blog. The good — and bad — news is that you have dozens of options to choose from. In this section, I show you a few well‐regarded advertising programs to consider.
AdSense is Google's contextual advertising program. This program is really the biggest player in the contextual advertising space. When you sign up for Google AdSense, you choose what kinds of ads you want on your blog, from text to images to videos. You can see examples of the Google AdSense formats in Figure 16-3 .
Advertisers pay Google money when your blog visitors click the advertisements displayed beside your content, and those payments are distributed back to you. Successful bloggers with lots of traffic are able to earn a living from Google AdSense, but income varies greatly depending on the size of your audience and the how well your blog topics match the advertisers who contract with Google.
Yahoo! Publisher Network (shown in Figure 16-4 ) is another advertising system that displays ads in a contextual manner. You can customize the look of the ads that appear on your blog to blend in better by selecting color, size, and layout options. The Yahoo! Publisher Network also allows you to filter out ads from potential competitors so they don't appear on your site.
Based in New York, Text Link Ads is one of the most popular and recognizable advertising systems that bloggers use. Designed with blogs in mind, these ads are a slightly different option than contextual advertising programs that try to relate ads specifically to your content. Instead, you get only simple links that you preapprove, which are related but much lower‐key in look and feel.
You can display Text Link Ads on the same page with Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and other contextually served ads.
AdBrite is an advertising marketplace similar to the others mentioned. Bloggers can choose between text and banner ads or full‐page interstitials (splash pages containing a full‐page advertisement). Interstitials are high‐paying ads shown only once per visitor per day; they aren't as intrusive as they seem.
How do these ads get onto your Web site? Most often, the programs you sign up for provide you with a bit of code that you insert into your Web site templates. Some programs have step‐by‐step instructions for popular blog software packages, but be aware that you might need to consult your blog's documentation for help with putting your ads where you want them.
Step one is to decide just where you want the ads on your page. The best thing to do when you're thinking about introducing ads into your blog design is to make sure the ads aren't overpowering.
Don't damage your reputation or credibility by overloading the site with ads or by associating ads too closely with your blog posts and content. Aside from pop‐up ads, nothing is more annoying than having a blog design that's created around ads rather than a blog that has been designed to include ads.
At the same time, you need to place ads in spots where they will be seen. Bloggers have discovered a few truths about ads, although your results might differ:
Ads at the top and bottom of each page do poorly. Advertisements along the top or the bottom of a blog are often ignored and rarely viewed because the site content is usually in the middle of the screen. As users scroll their windows to view site content, these top and bottom advertisements might never be seen at all.
Ads in the sidebars perform well but might interfere with navigation. The left side of the Web site is a traditional place for ads. However, it's also a prime place for navigation tools and your Web site might require that such tools be located higher than the ads you wish people to view. As for the right side, not only are navigation tools sometimes placed here, but the content tends to flow on the left side of the screen, which means that some users might move windows about and miss these right‐side advertisements entirely.
Ads within the content itself get clicked. Some blogs have their ads placed within the content, and this works really well because visitors don't miss the ads. But, you need to be careful when you use advertising within your content. Remember that the content should be king, not the ad.
Try out ads in different places on your blog and see how your audience reacts, as well as how your earnings do. You might need to try several different locations before you hit on one that balances your readers' needs with your advertisers'.
There's a debate around whether RSS feeds should contain ads. RSS has been used as a way to share information and only recently has it become a place to put advertisements. You might want to consider using them because many of your blog readers might be using RSS readers to consume the content of your blog.
RSS ads are simply banner or text advertisements that appear below or above the content displayed in your RSS reading program. The ads are usually smaller than typical banner ads you would find on the average Web site because they are meant to fit within the RSS feed.
Pheedo (see Figure 16-5 ) is the pioneering company that began the feed advertising industry. In 2003, two people thought up an idea to place advertisements in RSS feeds and started Pheedo. Their business has grown into one of the largest advertising networks for RSS.
www.text-link-ads.com/feedvertising
Feedvertising (see Figure 16-6 ) is a department of Text Link Ads that places ads within the RSS feed of your Web site. Feedvertising uses a similar system to its site‐based ads for its RSS feed ads.
www.feedburner.com/fb/a/advertising
FeedBurner, a Google‐owned company, is full of feed experts. They have a program called FeedBurner for Blogs and Feeds that allows you to control the ads that go onto your blog and blog feeds. They have a significant ad network established.
Being paid to post can mean a couple of different things. For many bloggers, it means getting paid in money or products to post a review or mention a company on a personal blog. But blogging for money can also lead you down the path of the professional blogger, where you write posts for other blogs.
Some bloggers believe that getting paid to post about products or companies is a bad thing. However, blogging is hard work. Why would it be bad to get paid to talk about a product every once in a while?
Some bloggers fear that the influence of advertisers might take over the traditionally independent voice of the blogosphere. When advertisers offer money to bloggers to praise their products and services in a blog, it might not result in an honest review of the business. So, if you're paid to post information about someone else, make sure that you retain your ability to post your own honest opinion. You might even want to consider starting an additional blog to showcase content that you're being paid to produce as opposed to the content contained in your original blog.
Above all, let your readers know about products you've been paid to post about. You can head off accusations of deception.
You can either set up your own system or find a service that allows you to connect with companies that want to have their products or services advertised on blogs.
Sponsored Reviews (shown in Figure 16-7 ) is a company that connects advertisers with bloggers who are willing to write reviews about the advertisers' products and services. This company is forthright with the expectation that you as a blogger will offer an honest opinion and even give constructive criticism about the products its advertisers create.
Pay Per Post is a company that helps bloggers get paid for creating and publishing advertiser‐sponsored content. The theory behind the company is that if you're a blogger, you'll inevitably write about some products you've used in the past or are currently using. Pay Per Post believes you should be paid for those kinds of posts.
Pay Per Post, shown in Figure 16-8 , works somewhat like a job board where you accept bids to write about a certain product or service. The amount of money you get paid is determined by the advertiser and the amount of traffic you report.
Another way to offer your blogging services to those who might want them is to make a small business for yourself as a professional blogger. Believe me; companies are often looking for competent writers they can hire to contribute content to their blogs. This decision might take time away from your personal blog, but hopefully additional practice can help you to become a better blogger!
To offer up your service, check the blogger‐wanted ads on job boards and see whether you're interested in writing about any topic. Also, be sure to post about your availability on your own blog's sidebar and in your blog. (You can read more about sidebars in Chapter 12.)
Two job sites where you can start your search for blogging jobs are
Jobs.Problogger (http://jobs.problogger.net) is a popular Web site that provides help to bloggers so they can monetize their Web sites. The job board is highly active, and it's a popular place for blogger jobs to appear.
Performancing (www.performancing.com) is a Web resource that was established as “a home for professional bloggers.” If you want to find out job postings for new bloggers, you can check out their job posting forums.
When you begin blogging professionally, you're expected to keep track of any progress you make. Typically, this includes tracking either the number of posts that you create or the number of site visitors over a period of time. You can organize this information in various ways, but the tracking needs to prove that some interaction occurred between you and your readers.
If you ever blogged about a product you really like and just knew that you were helping the company who makes the product make a sale, you can now make some money from that sale with affiliate marketing.
Popular retailers have set up affiliate marketing programs, most notably Amazon. You sign up with an affiliate program, and when you blog about one of its products, you include a piece of identifying information that the company gives you. You earn cash when readers of your blog click the product and buy it.
If you find yourself blogging about items others might buy as a result of your recommendation, check to see whether the company that makes the product has an affiliate program and get yourself signed up.
In short order, your blog can contain links to books, DVDs, or other products that provide you with a commission on each product bought with your identification number.
Amazon is the most recognized affiliate program available, and it's arguably one you're likely to benefit from using because many bloggers mention books and DVDs they've enjoyed.
Amazon Associates works by letting you create specially formatted links you can use on your blog to drive traffic to the Amazon Web site. Anything that gets purchased by a visitor who clicks your link earns you a percentage of the sale as a referral fee.
www.linkshare.com/affiliates/affiliates.shtml
LinkShare is another affiliate program that calls its program a pay‐per‐action marketing network. You can place ads, both text and graphical ads, on your blog and make money from any sales that come from the reader sales.
Sponsorships are advertisements by companies that have either requested to be an advertiser or you have sought out to advertise on your site. Such sponsorship can mean one of two things:
Sponsors might pay you to put their ads on your Web site.
Sponsors might simply provide you with free goods or services in return for advertising on your Web site.
You need to think carefully about whether to take on a sponsor because not all sponsorships are equal:
Prominent placement or exclusivity: A sponsor is different from the usual ad on your Web site because sponsors like a prominent placement on your blog — possibly including the exclusive right to advertise on your blog.
Acknowledgment: You might be asked to use the phrase “This blog sponsored by . . .” or some variation of it to let your readers know that your blog writing is being funded by a specific company. Thanking your sponsor occasionally isn't a bad idea either.
Time commitment: Sponsorships often run for a set length of time, usually much longer than a standard ad would run. Sponsorships of several months to a year aren't unheard of.
Getting sponsors interested in your blog is probably the hardest advertising strategy, though it's also the most lucrative. To find a sponsor, you need to “sell” your blog from the design to the content. You need to make the sponsor want to post its advertisements on your site — not someone else's. Keeping your blog dynamic, on topic, and written well is critical when you're seeking sponsors.
As hard as it is, however, one of the best things sponsors do for your blog is legitimize your work. Many bloggers might be viewed by the public as just “another blogger” within the static of the Internet. But, with sponsors that believe in what you're doing, you can attract other professional relationships, like speaking engagements or press interviews. Being regarded as an authority is always helpful.
Urbanmoms.ca Kitchen Party (http://urbanmoms.typepad.com/kitchen_party) is an example of a sponsored blog. This site for Canadian women who like to cook (and who have kids) is “hosted” by Cuisinart. Cuisinart gets some billing in the blog's header and in one of the sidebars.
Sponsors can be demanding advertisers. Unlike developing your own monetization plan, sponsorships can change the way you advertise on your site. Some sponsors demand exclusivity — that means they're the only business of that type on your site, and you might have to turn away other potential sponsors. Others might demand that you always write about their product or services in a positive way. It can be a true balancing act. But the rewards can be worth the work.
Here's my recipe for a successful sponsor/blogger relationship:
Be clear on your topic. Know who you are and what it is you're writing about. Nothing is worse than having a blog that isn't clear about its subject when you're seeking sponsorship. Sponsors want a very clear idea about the content you're creating and about what you can do for them.
Keeping your blog on topic is more important when sponsors are actively using their brand identities on your site. Make sure that they're aware of everything you might write about and so that there are no surprises or objections to editorial content.
Be clear on what you're promising. Be sure both you and your sponsor understand exactly what influence and control — if any — the partnership offers the advertiser. You should be very clear about how you'll handle both content and advertising placement of the sponsor; the advertiser should be up front about its expectations of you.
Know your audience. Educating yourself on your audience is critical if you're seeking paying sponsors for your blog. With increased sponsorship, it becomes imperative that you address the question of who your audience is. You need to document the activity in your community, track your comments, and analyze the information from your Web statistics. (Check Chapter 15 for information on Web statistics and traffic software.)
Create a report of your statistics to prove to any sponsors that you have the numbers that you claim you do. Don't use any guesswork when creating this report — your sponsors want to see solid numbers with data to back up your claims. Creating statistics reports is often required for sponsorship arrangements; the simple fact is that if you want to make money, you have to do some data gathering.
Another way to collect data from your audience is in the form of contests, polls, and other interactive experiences. There's no harm in asking your audience members who they are — and if you approach it in a professional manner, they might be happy to reveal a little bit about themselves.
Banner placement and visual cues. If you've been accepting advertising for a while, you already have a good idea where ads appear to good effect on your site, and you probably also know what types of ads work best. One good thing about this is you can demonstrate the benefits of placement and ad types to any potential sponsors.
However, if you've never had ads on your site when you first seek a sponsor, be prepared to offer some ideas and suggestions for adequately highlighting the sponsor's ads and branding. Providing a design mock‐up or some kind of visual representation is a good idea. Or you might even consider creating a demo Web site that actually shows the ads in the positions and formats you think will work.
Limit other monetization methods. Some bloggers find that if they use other advertising systems at the same time as a sponsor, it dilutes the effectiveness of the sponsorships. Many sponsors ask to be the exclusive advertiser on your site or that you limit what other kinds of advertising and advertisers are used while they sponsor you. This isn't unreasonable, especially if you have a lucrative sponsorship agreement that compensates you for the loss of those ad spots.
Jumping to the professional level in the blogging world poses a few potential pitfalls and requires ongoing reinvention on your part. Set up and keep to some simple rules about what your professional limits and intentions are, and don't be afraid to write those down in a document you share with sponsors and your readers.
You also need to be ready to say no. Some sponsors might want more than you're willing to give. It can be a great thing to earn some money from your blog, but don't forget the reason you're blogging in the first place. Your blog is your territory and not your sponsor's. You are renting the sponsor space on your site, access to your audience. You aren't signing up for someone to tell you what to do. You already have parents for that!
Don't jump at every offer that comes in the door. It might be hard to do this when you're seeking your first sponsor, but you need to maintain a high level of professionalism — not just for yourself, but also for your audience. Just as you protect your audience from nasty comments and spam, you need to be sure that you give them an appropriate experience with your sponsors and advertisers. Protect the integrity of your blog and avoid sponsors that demand more time, editorial control, or space on your blog than you're willing to give.
Many companies offer news media access to products and services in order to generate press attention, and increasingly, bloggers are being offered the same goodies. After all, some blog topics are so specific that companies absolutely know that the blog's readers will be interested in their products. For example, a blogger who writes about cell phones might be targeted by a mobile phone company and be offered a free product or money in exchange for some kind of online review or feedback.
This kind of exchange can be a tricky situation because some bloggers regard the gift as some kind of bribe, or obligation to write something positive about the product in question.
In fact, that isn't the case. I know bloggers who accept products for review on the condition that they will say what they really think about it, and most companies are perfectly satisfied with this kind of arrangement. In addition, most bloggers who do these kinds of reviews are very up front with their readers about how they obtained the product in question and what agreement there is with the company that provided it.
If you're getting these offers, you would probably benefit from establishing such a policy. Most bloggers would agree that they don't want to be seen as taking bribes or favors from companies that just want the bloggers to say nice things about them. Your policy needs to lay out how you plan to deal with such situations.
Here are a few things to consider when you start to get product review offers:
Be clear about what you will do with the product. Be clear with the product maker that you won't write a positive review if it isn't warranted. Make sure you're very specific about what you'll provide in return for the gift (if anything).
Be prepared to return gifts. A lot of bloggers, especially those who are incredibly geeky, would love to receive a gift from a company with the latest and hottest product. However, if the demands are unreasonable or don't match with the blogger's vision, perhaps the right choice is to return the gift.
Donate what you receive. One way to avoid an ugly scene with your audience or any sponsors of your blog is to take the gifts you receive, write your review, and then give the item away. You can send them to your favorite charity or hold a contest for your audience. This generates all kinds of goodwill from your community while avoiding any accusations of bias.
Keep to the core of what it is that makes your blog great. If you get an offer of a free product, think about it first and don't accept it right away. You can even go to your community members and see what they think if you require some advice. It really depends on you.
Advertising is a hard game, and the rules are always changing. If you make a dollar or two in the first few months of posting advertisements on your site, you're ahead of the game. But be careful, and be mindful of your audience. It isn't uncommon for blogs to lose readers and influence thanks to being overwhelmed with advertisements.
Don't make your blog a destination for ads; maintain it as a destination for blogging and the best content that you can create.