Internet is a maze through which you have to make you way up, the real hard way. Take the case of Zach Patton and Clayton Dunn, the duo behind ‘The Bitten Word’. The two bloggers based in Washington write about recipes. The site was launched in 2008 and currently has close to 150,000 visitors every month.
Pay per click Google ads help to earn decent sum
So how do they monetize the traffic? The two manage to make roughly $350 every month from pay per click Google ads, apart from commissions earned from Amazon.com when blog readers happen to follow links to cooking gadgets as well as books and popular magazine subscriptions that they recommend.
Mr. Dunn underlines that the idea has definitely worked, as they are further sumptuously compensated by loyal readers who even send them delicacies such as Hawaiian ginger syrup and fresh avocados.
Go for have contextual ads for additional revenues
For those who are keen to generate even greater revenue on their blogs through advertising, one handy piece of advice is to have contextual ads. These are actually highlighted words in individual posts, which give links to a relevant product or service vendor. A fixed commission is paid on subsequent sales.
Make use of video based content
Another idea to generate interest and revenue is to add relevant video to a post. You may record succinct video walkthroughs of your tutorials and may upload the same to a video sharing service like Blip.tv or for that matter YouTube. Just like the latter, Blip.tv provides users with the option of running advertisements before, during or after the video views. These can generate an income of $1 to $10 per 1000 views, which depends on the advertiser.
Many vloggers (video bloggers) do make good money this way. Sheila Hollins-Jackson based in Farmington, Michigan manages to make nearly $200 every month from over 60 videos related to beauty treatments that she has hosted on YouTube. Selling merchandise on your personal website, a vlog or blog can be even more profitable. Darren Kitchen from San Francisco makes $5,000 every month selling T-shirts, hoodies, stickers, baseball caps etc on his site that hosts a video show every week about computer hacking. He claims the site has over 250,000 monthly viewers.
Provide user friendly and quality content
Requiring users to pay for some material is another way as Collis Ta’eed of FreelanceSwitch has discovered. It offers advice to freelancers. Tuts+ gives tech-related tutorials that generate impressive revenue from premium content like tutorials and e-books.
The point is users are willing to pay for quality content if you can offer them authentic information that is of value and some use to them. But don’t run a blog only to make money. That’s not the way to go about it.
