6 Ways To Monetize A Website

While not everyone that blogs does it to earn a living, many people seeking location independence often turn to blogging as one of their sources of income as it not only allows you to work from anywhere in the world, it also lets you be creative and design something completely bespoke.

But how do you make money from blogging? I think making money ‘here and there’ is the easy part, but actually earning a living or replacing your full-time income is a little more tricky – but with patience, hard work and learning the tricks of the trade, it can definitely be done!

Here are 6 of the most common ways to monetize a website.

Banner Advertising

This is considered the ‘holy grail’ of blog advertising due to the large price tag associated with it, however banner ads are also one of the hardest kinds to secure. To be considered for banner ads you will need to have high traffic to make it worth the price for the advertiser, so get working on building your audience and keywords. Generally banner advertisers will find you rather than the other way around, so if you focus on building traffic then have faith that they will eventually come.

Another different approach to banner advertising is a site called Technorati which once you are approved allows you to add blank ‘ad space’ to your site which advertisers can select and pay for without you doing any of the work – which is what all of us bloggers want isn’t it?!

Text Link Advertising

This is one of the most common kinds of advertising on blogs, and is one that works well for me. Basically you sell keyword-targeted links either within your sidebar, or within a post, and you can charge for these on a monthly basis which means more money in your pocket all year round!

Caution does need to be exercised however, as if you are overloading your page with links and not also adding content along with it then Google may see your site as a ‘link farm’ and de-list it – so be careful!

If you are interested in text link advertising on your site then you can approach advertisers directly or sign up to various websites to help you find advertisers – I like Digital Point, Linkworth and Text Link Ads.

Paid Reviews

Paid reviews are pretty self-explanatory – a company will pay you or provide you a complimentary service for reviewing their product or service in your blog. This could be for anything from a backpack right through to a group tour, so can prove quite lucrative if you are reviewing a wide range of products.

I think this kind of advertising can work well for some people, however always make sure that your credibility is not compromised with your audience if you are providing a large number of reviews each month.

You can either approach a company directly, or use a website which pairs bloggers and advertisers – SponsoredReviews.com and BuyBlogReviews.com are two of these such services.

Sponsored Blog Posts

Similar to paid reviews, sponsored blog posts are slightly different in that they may be a post written by an advertiser, or one written by you endorsing a product/service within it. For example, you might be writing a post about planning a round the world trip and endorse a certain airline or tour provider in exchange for a fee, or you may choose to include a ‘guest post’ written by someone from a company in exchange for their fee.

As with paid reviews, always put your audience first and think about your stance on blog credibility before agreeing.

Affiliate Advertising

Affiliate advertising is great in that you can choose which schemes to sign up for, and you have full control, but the tricky bit comes from marketing your affiliates and actually earning money from them! I have recently started signing up to a few schemes and my advice would be to research affiliate marketing and then join a site like Commission Junction where you can browse schemes and select the most appropriate for your site.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click schemes like Adsense or AdBrite can work well on blogs if you have targeted traffic, although one of their criticisms is that they can ruin the ‘reading experience’ of blogs. I personally think that pay-per-click ads have their place, and as long as you are not plastering them on every page then they can work well – just make sure you research the best places for them and make sure you add them to only targeted pages, otherwise you are unlikely to make any money from them.

So there are 6 of the most common ways for people to monetize their websites – what do you guys think – which are your favourites and why?

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