AboutBlogging.Info - Making Money Online

Making money blogging is not a pipe dream. When I began my first blog in June this year I was skeptical of the idea that it would be possible to make money from it.

I now see that it is perfectly realistic to be able to earn a second income from blogging. At the moment I am trying to push things to the next level and make a living from blogging alone. While I’m not at that level yet I have found it possible to earn money blogging with just a handful of blogs and a still small level of visitors.

Here is a list of the money-making affiliates I have tried. My total earnings to date (since October 2007) using a combination of these affiliates has been $1,051.68.

I will update this list and keep you posted how I’m doing with them as time goes by.

Adsense

The first way to make money online is the ubiquitous Adsense. The reason it is everywhere is because it does actually work. When you place an AdSense unit on your page Google will scan the page and deliver ads which are usually a close match to your content.

Since the ads are designed to be of interest to people who are reading your page that makes them more likely to click on them than if they were not relevant. You are paid every time someone clicks your ad. It’s a pretty simple idea. All you need to make money from this is to have people who want to visit your site to read your content.

The earnings will be pretty low to begin with. In my best week with AdSense I made $11.07 and in my worst week I made 32c. Now while I have made more money some weeks from my other affiliates there have also been weeks where I have made nothing with them.

At least AdSense consistently delivers me something and when you are getting involved in the business of monetizing blogs and making money online you need that little encouragement to help you keep going.

On the downside AdSense doesn’t payout until you reach $100 which will take a while to reach when you are just beginning. But once you have achieved sufficient level of visitors it should be easy enough to hit that on a regular basis.

Also AdSense are always on the look out for fraud. If they suspect that you are clicking your own ads or encouraging others to do it they will suspend your account and freeze your earnings.

Amazon

The benefits of Amazon are that firstly everyone knows them and they are trustworthy and secondly that they have a huge and diverse range of products.

They also have a wide range of options for affiliates. Apart from links and widgets that you place in your pages you can also create your own aStore which like a mini-Amazon store that you can stock with selected Amazon products that are directed to the specific interests of your blog.

The aStore sounds like a great idea but it has problems. The first one is the question of why people should shop in your scaled-down version of Amazon when they can just go to the real thing. The fact that the default design of the aStore is quite basic and that there isn’t that much room for customization means that they can look quite amateurish, especially compared to the real Amazon.

Since I joined the Amazon program eight weeks ago I have only made $5.59 from it. And $4.20 of that was in the first two weeks! Since then something has gone wrong.

Interestingly some of the commission that I made from them was received due to the sale of an item that I didn’t promote in my links or in my aStore. I simply received the commission because it was bought as a result of someone entering the Amazon site via my link.

Like AdSense, Amazon.com pays out when you reach $100. There are other country specific Amazon affiliate programs. For example Amazon.co.uk will pay out once you reach £10. To date I have had no sales whatsoever with Amazon.co.uk. One customer did make an order but as it happened that item seems to have been out of stock and wasn’t shipped.

Clixsense

Clixsense is a web site which pays you to click on links. The pages that load are usually loud and garish advertisements for casinos or get-rich-quick schemes. Effectively you are being paid to view an advertisement.

The payment is small, usually 1c per ad for a basic member and the number of ads you can view per day is limited to around ten. When you open a link you must keep it open for a minimum of 30 seconds to get paid. There is also a referral scheme (10c per referral) which helps to speed up payout somewhat.

Payout, which is by cheque, is when you reach a minimum of $10. Unfortunately there is a handling charge for the cheque which is deducted from your earnings so you don’t get the full amount.

Clixsense is not a get rich quick scheme but it is a way to make a few extra cents per day. You can even have it open in a separate tab if you can’t spare the 30 seconds!

Two similar sites are Adbux and Bux.to. There are lots of others. I’m joining them one-at-a-time as I read a bit about them and establish which ones are reputable and pay up. Since you could expect to average around 10 ads per day on each site it might start to add up to a bit if you’re signed up to several of these sites and have other people referred as well, for which you get a bonus. The difference with Adbux and Bux.to is that they pay via AlertPay (similar to PayPal) which is handier than cheque.

Another site again is EuroCentBux. This also pays by AlertPay. The difference is that it trades in Euros, so a click here is worth 1 Euro cent, which is worth about 1.4 US cents at current exchange rates. Payout is at €10.

Commission Junction

My next affiliate is actually a collection of affiliates all operating under the umbrella of Commission Junction. When you signup with Commission Junction you can then go looking for links from a plethora of companies. You can be pretty sure that you will find a company in there offering product links that will be suitable for your site.

So far I have only signed up with one partner on Commission Junction. I have only made three sales, one of which was reversed. This affiliate operates on a pay per action basis as well but unlike AuctionAds the statistics do seem to track my impressions and clicks accurately.

You can set up for Commission Junction to pay directly into your bank account or by cheque and amount you need to earn to receive a payout can be quite low; €10 in my case.

Helium

Before I started blogging I joined Helium. This is really how I first got involved in blogging and also in the idea of earning money from it. Helium is a site where you can submit short articles on a variety of topics. You are paid a portion of the advertising that the site receives from it.

The downside is that it’s a very small portion. Since I started writing on Helium around June last year I have only made $4.84 from it. Payout is via PayPal when you reach $25.

While you won’t make a fortune from Helium it is still a nice site if you enjoy writing There are also active forums where people discuss ways to improve their writing skills. I’d recommend it as a fun site in itself from which you might eventually get $25, if it sticks around long enough!

PayPerPost

PayPerPost is probably the best known of the sponsored post sites. It is certainly the first one I heard of anyway. All sponsored posts sites work in approximately the same way. Advertisers promoting a product or web-site will offer an opportunity via the site. The blogger takes that opportunity provided they match the criteria of the advertiser and write a review of the product. They place this review on their blog with links back to the advertiser. Once the advertiser is happy with the way the job is performed the blogger is paid.

To be eligible for PayPerPost your blog must be at least 30 days old and it must have at least 10 written posts within that time. PayPerPost also requires that at least 50% of the posts must be your own non-sponsored work and that at least every second post in your blog is non-sponsored.

The amount you earn for writing a post will depend greatly on your blogs popularity as measured by factors like PageRank and your Alexa Rank.

Writing sponsored posts is a very simple idea which some people object to, saying that it sullies the blogger who takes money to write a review. Personally I have no problem with it.

So far, since November last, I have made $419.50. This makes it my most successful money-maker to date.

There is a potential downside with signing up for PayPerPost or any other sponsored post site: Google will be out to get you! Because I promote PayPerPost as well as several other sponsored posts web-sites I have been penalized by having my PageRank reduced to zero. There are ways around this of course, if you really want to. Personally I don’t mind that much. I’m still making money blogging and that’s why I’m here, not for PageRank.

Smorty

Smorty is another sponsored post site. It’s main requirements for blogs are:

- Your blog must be indexed by Google and Yahoo
- Your blog must be older than 3 months
- Your blog must not contain any violent, hate related or adult content
- Your blog must be active and have a history of minimum average 2 new posts per week - The blog must not have duplicate posts or excessive duplicate content

The acceptance process is pretty rapid. I was accepted within 24 hours. When I logged in for the first time there were four $6 opportunities for me to accept. I took three of the opportunities available to me and dashed off reviews.

Once you accept an opportunity you must complete it within three days. You can only accept one opportunity at a time. Once you publish a post on your blog and submit the link to Smorty it then goes for review. Once it is accepted you are credited the money and payment is weekly by PayPal.

Note the requirement that your blog must be indexed by Google and Yahoo. PageRank is not necessary for this to happen. If you want to check if your blog is indexed, just go to Google or Yahoo and type your blogs url into the search field. If it brings up your blog then you know you’re indexed.

SponsoredReviews.com

Sponsored Reviews is similar to PayPerPost with this main difference: It only took a day to be accepted into Sponsored Reviews. When I submitted my blogs an automated checker graded my sites and gave me marks based on a combination of my Alexa and Technorati ranks and my Yahoo link count. Then after a short wait I was approved and I was free to start making money with my blog.

Once you are approved you then set the price that you are willing to accept to write a sponsored post. The obvious thing here is not to set the price too high so that no-one will accept it and not too low so as not to be worth your while. It helps to look through a list of the other blogs to see what they are charging to get an idea for what the market will bear.

The next thing you have to do with Sponsored Reviews is to go out and chase advertisers. You can browse through the list of available opportunities and place bids on opportunities you want to take. You can only bid on opportunities which fall into the price range that you set for yourself.

Once you place your bid you then have to wait and see if the advertiser accepts the bid or rejects it. If the bid is accepted you receive an e-mail to notify you of this and you then have seven days to complete the review.

The criteria to get your blog accepted are:

- Your blog must contain at least 10 posts with 200 words of unique content each.
- Your blog must not be completely automated or appear to be created solely for search engine traffic.
- Your blog must have at least a 2:1 ratio of non-paid to paid content.
- You must complete all accepted reviews within 7 days.
- Your blog must have a minimum number of incoming links and traffic to qualify.
- Your blog must have a professional appearance.

Payment is by PayPal every two weeks. This is a good site to visit and write for while you are waiting to be accepted into PayPerPost. After that you are better off placing your bids in the medium to high rather than the low range. The requirement of a 2:1 ratio of non-paid to paid content means that the one post you write for Sponsored Reviews has to be worth it, so make your bid reasonable but not rock-bottom. You can do your $6 or $7 dollar posts for sites that settle for a 1:1 ratio.

A frequent complaint about Sponsored Reviews is that it often takes an eternity for the advertiser to respond to your bid and that sometimes they never respond. This is a bit annoying all right. Since I signed in November last I have earned $58.50 but this is less than a tenth of the jobs that I bid on.

Apart from the uncertainty of when or if you will get a reply from an advertiser I have found Sponsored Reviews to be a good site to use.

I should also add here that their customer support is very prompt. I have found a couple of times now when I have needed to ask a question of customer support that they have replied within literally just a couple of minutes which really impressed me.

WidgetBucks

Another recent advertising widget is WidgetBucks. This is a Pay Per Click / Pay Per Thousand Impressions model so that you get paid something when people click on an ad and also when you have a lot of visitors. When you sign up with them there is a $25 bonus and the pay-out is $50 which makes them sound like a good deal.

The drawback is that the products promoted on WidgetBucks are concentrated in the area of technology. If you have a blog where you write a lot about mobile phones or digital cameras or lap tops this might be a good widget for you. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up for it but unless you have a suitable site you’re not going to make a lot of money from it. On the other hand people who do have suitable sites claim to be doing great with it.