In the past few weeks, I’ve been helping out a few friends start their own personal blogs. I’ve keep on repeating the same advice on how to make money with blogging so I’ve decided to just write a post that sums up everything I know about how to monetize your blog. By no means are all the methods I’ll mention are exhaustive. If you have other tips and ideas, feel free to share and leave a comment. The ones I’ll list down are just the ones that I’ve used and earned from in the past 3 years of my blogging.
Before we get into detail about the tools you can use to make money, here are some basic questions that I think I have to answer first.
How much money can I make?
It really depends on your blog niche, topic, and traffic. This applies especially for Adsense and a lot of the tools I listed below. Note that putting up your blog is just step 1. Applying the ads would be step 2. Step 3 would be the most important – building the community of your blog. You have to learn how to market your site so that you get a lot of readers. There are so many ways to build traffic, especially with the rise of Social Networks.
How do I get paid?
You will either get a check, withdraw via Western Union, or get money through Paypal. If you’re going to be in blogging for the long haul, I strongly suggest you get a Paypal account. It’s basically a medium for you to get money and then withdraw it to your bank of choice (5-7 working days processing time).
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let’s get into the tools that will make you money online. Below are the things I used to earn from my blogs. This is based on personal experience and like what I said above, there are more ways to make money and I can’t cover everything. If you have any tips or suggestions, feel free to post a comment below.
1. Google Adsense
This is what a lot of people us to monetize their blog. Basically you just sign up, create ad units, and embed them in key sections of your site. You earn mostly from the clicks on the ads. Note that Google can see if you’re clicking the ads yourself so don’t even bother trying. You’ll just end up getting a suspended account. By the way, the earnings from Adsense really vary and can be unstable sometimes. My only concern with relying only on Adsense is that you’re really at the mercy of Google. It’s advisable that you also look for other income streams for your blog.
Author’s Note: Monthly earnings from Google Adsense has been paying for the amortization of my car for the past year.
2. Text Link Ads (TLA)
The major problem with TLA is that you’ll get penalized for your Google Page Rank. The good news is I don’t think there’s any relation between your PR and your actual placement in the search engine pages. My other blog used to be at PR5 and got blown to 0 because of text links but it’s still ranking high with the key words that I’ve worked on. What’s weird though is that the income you generate from TLA is also dependent on Page Rank (WTF), haha. Anyway, I still have this on my gaming blog and it’s been doing well for the past 2 years.
Author’s Note: TLA earnings bought me a Macbook sometime last year.
3. Local Ad Network: Nuffnang
Due to the popularity of blogging and digital marketing becoming a buzzword, people decided to make local blog ad networks. Basically they are the ones who will look for advertisers for you and when they sell your space, they get a slice of the revenue. One of the newest blog ad networks in Nuffnang. They’re actually very strong in Malaysia and Singapore and they just started here in the Philippines almost 1 year ago. For Nuffnang, there are 3 kinds of ad units which you place on your blog. Note that while there is no active campaign running, you don’t earn anything.
4. Local Ad Network: Blog Bank
I believe this blog network was started by Jayvee Fernandez. Anyway, it functions like Nuffnang. You apply, get the code, and you place it in your sidebar. You’re paid for every thousand impressions on the ad units. I only joined Blog Bank recently so I don’t have a gauge yet of how effective this is. I’ve seen 2-3 campaigns run already on my food and politics blogs so I hope that adds up to something.
5. Local Ad Network: Red Sight Media
Another network that was started by another famous blogger, Abe from Yugatech. This one has no website and admin panel though so you’ll have a hard time monitoring the progress of your ads. I think this is also run by Havoc Media (re-seller of Friendster in the Philippines). Anyway, my only concern here is that I’ve been running ads from Red Sight for over a year now and I haven’t gotten paid a single centavo. Am I the only blogger who’s experiencing this?
6. Local Ad Network: Mad Crowd Media
Mad Crowd Media got a lot of flak because their business model is pay-per-post. Basically they’ll ask you to cover an event, review a product, or anything that leads to you writing a blog entry about their client. I’ve done 2-3 campaigns with them and they pay really well and they also turn over the cash fast. They haven’t been active though in the past few months, maybe because of all the problems they had with some of the top bloggers here in the Philippines.
7. Kontera
This used to be in my gaming blog and it earned quite well but I decided to take it out after I got so many complaints from my readers that it was annoying. Kontera is in-text advertising, which means that they transform several words in your post into links for their advertisers.
8. Amazon Associates
Another simple money maker – you sign up, get the code, place it in the part of your blog where you want the ad to be displayed, and wait for someone to buy the product being shown there. You get a cut from the sales. In all honesty, I’ve only earned peanuts from Amazon Associates but mostly because I don’t think I’ve tried to really promote it and maximize it in any of my blogs. I’ve heard of several success stories already with this program alone and I’m seriously thinking of ways on how to integrate it into my blogs.
9. Click Bank
Click Bank is similar to Amazon Associates. You sign-up, get the code, and put it up on your blog. You get % sales from the revenues. Please note that I personally haven’t used Click Bank myself but I decided to put it here because I’m thinking of putting it up on one of my blogs.
10. Sponsored Post
This is like Mad Crowd but on a global scale. Advertisers put up topics and reviews that you can bid for. You get paid through Paypal after writing the review/post. I’ve done about 4-5 of these in the past 3 years across my blogs. Here’s an example of a post that I did on my gaming blog about Warhammer Online. By the way, you might also want to try checking out Review Me. I haven’t gotten any jobs there yet but I heard of several bloggers who’s making good cash from this one.
Author’s Note: I know it’s not much but through this channel I’ve was able to go to a romantic date with my girlfriend in Discovery Country Suites in Tagaytay, haha. Thank you SponsoredPosts.
11. Direct Ad Sales
This has the biggest potential but would be one of the hardest to pull off. If you grown in traffic and influence, you’ll start getting approached by direct advertisers. They’ll ask for your advertising rates on your blog. Their ads can be in the form of text links, banners, reviews, or whatnot. In the course of blogging for 3 years, I’ve only gotten offers for direct ads around 4-5 times. They were profitable but it was hard to manage since the advertiser started asking about CPM/CTR rates instead of monthly fees.
And that’s about it. I’ll write other posts later on especially on traffic generation and community building. There’s so much to blogging that 1 post really can’t capture everything about it. I hope you guys find this short guide useful. 
Good luck in your blogging!
Nice tips! I’ve never knew that you are already “old” in blogging. I’m a newbie in blogging. Before I used to blog in blogspot before transferring to wordpress but I just blogged about just anything.
Now I now have my own niche.
Hi Tyrone, yup I’ve been blogging for a while now. I still make time to update my gaming blog at least 4 -5 times a week since it has the biggest traffic among all of my sites, hahaha.
Cheers bro!
i’ m new in blogging. I found out that i have a lot of things to learn.
Your tips will be a good way to start.
Thank you.
Google AdSense – Anyone can sign up for this service and 100% free to use. Google will display ads on your site and pay you when they get clicked on. This is by far the easiest way to make money with your site.
My savior!
Nice post. Wonder why I never saw this before?
Thanks for the post!
Uhmmm “TLA earnings bought me a Macbook sometime last year.” Really? Does that mean you have a million hits? naks galing!
@workingdude: Not sure about the hits but Waukster Online was making roughly around 80,000 unique hits monthly. TLA pays around $25-$30 USD per link. There was a time I had more than 5 for several months.
This tanked later on though when Google hit me with a PR Penalty for doing text link ads. After that I only get $15 per link per month.
I think they use Alexa and Google PR to determine how much they will pay you.
Wow 80k hits! That’s a LOT!
$25-30 per link? How does it work? per impressions? or by click? I cannot see the TLA ads in your gaming blog, I can only see adsense/Globe ads there.
I just saw this yesterday
http://nachofoto.blogspot.com/2007/12/nachofoto-offers-adsense-revenue.html
Its seems ok… can be integrated with google’s adsense
There’s another one online survey I know personally someone who received a check already and a test product(but in Canada). There’s also one pinay in one of the forums out there who received a cheque from a survey… for the link! pls click below toinks!
http://technophobia1.blogspot.com/search/label/earn%20money%20online
Thanks Wauks! I might try TLA…hehe
It’s in the “Links” section of the sidebar. They give you a monthly rate based on your alexa ranking, technorati, google PR, etc.
Warning about TLA though, Google will really slap your PR down to 0. I was already at PR6 then I suddenly got downgraded to 0 because of TLA.
di co mshadu mgetz but im willing
please a rely want to know how i dont have any idea about blogging
Ohh ok so i don’t need visitors clicking any link… but as of now which one are you using? hehe thanks…
I cannot use TLA I still don’t have my own domain…
uhmm what host provider you use? Thanks…pm na lang po sa facebook… namimile po ako now e… ano pa kaya alternative hehe thanks!!!
I’m still using Text Link Ads (www.textlinkads.com). For the host, I have a friend who has a hosting service and I just get from him. You may want to check out http://www.tahanan.net as well.
Very useful. Ive been looking for this kind of tutorial. short and simple. Many thanks! -beeps
Hi,
would like to add blogsvertise, and blog4reviews.
Great Post!
Have you tried putting CPA offers (those that allow banners) on your site? I’m a member with some CPA networks and the offers are great. A simple zip code or email submit pay $1-$5. still new with CPA and blogging though.
Nice tips here. Thank you for sharing these things with us. I have been blogging for two years now and I am yet to receive payment from ads on my blog.
My problem maybe is niche.
Making money with blogging is not as complicated as many seem to believe. Running a blog only takes dedication and hard work, and before long you will have a market leading blog.
Um, just a quick question, how can AdSense send the money if you’re in the Philippines? And can you like, just have a simple blog, like about your daily rants to have as an income?
making a blog in any blog site was very nice because you can share your thoughts to other people…