Monetizing Your Blog: Part 2 – Direct Income

In the first post of this short series on monetizing your blog, one of the distinctions I mentioned was between direct and indirect income:

On direct vs. indirect income, many blog posts about monetizing blogs, or even whole blogs dedicated to the subject, are focused on direct income, such as from advertising.

But how to do it well and effectively? That’s the question.

A quick check with the search engines will show there is no shortage of material available on making money directly from blogs. How can you sift the wheat from the chaff?

It’s not an area I specialise in, but there are a few people who have written about this who make particularly good sense to me.

One person pre-eminent in this field is Darren Rowse, author of the very popular Pro Blogger site, co-owner of the b5media network of which this blog is part, and co-author with the small business blogging expert and best-selling author Andy Wibbels, of Six Figure Blogging. If you Google “make money with blogs”, the number one item that comes up is still Darren’s post of December 6, 2005 How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs. For anyone who wants a regular supply of hype-free, no-nonsense, valuable information and advice on monetizing blogs, the RSS link from Pro Blogger is a must.

Chad Randall and Yaro Starak also share valuable information from their own experience.

Chad, Director of Sales for b5media network and who blogs at Advertise Space, set out his preferred sources of direct income, in his March post on The 7 Levels of Revenue for Your Blog. He listed them in descending order of preference, i.e. with the least favoured by him at No 1 and then in order to the one he favours most. He explains each, and the reasons for the ranking he gives them:

Level 1: Google AdSense
Level 2: Affiliate programs
Level 3: Ad Networks
Level 4: Automated text link ads
Level 5: Fixed text link ads
Level 6: Graphical banner ads
Level 7: Fixed monthly sponsors

Yaro at Entrepreneur’s Journey responded to Chad’s post, setting out his own ranking, based on his experience, in the post My Top 7 Blog Monetization Methods.

In view of the fact that his is a response to Chad’s list, it’s a little confusing at first, insofar as it is in the reverse order of favour, compared to Chad’s which starts from the least favoured and works up.

Yaro’s list, beginning with his most favoured (he supplies examples of each) is:

1. Recursive Affiliate Income
2. Direct Ad Sales
3. Text-Link-Ads.com Brokering Service
4. One Time Affiliate Income
5. Paid Reviews
6. Google AdSense
7. Miscellaneous Programs

For anyone wanting to draw a bead on this whole business of direct monetizing of blogs, Chad’s and Yaro’s posts will repay careful reading, but two comments by Yaro are particularly worth highlighting:

The important thing is to test and find out what works best for you. Don’t assume because something is best for someone else’s blog that is the case for all blogs.

and

I suggest you not think about monetization for the first few months of blogging, or until you get to at least 100 visitors a day, preferably 500. Once you hit that first milestone, slowly roll out some monetization tests, perhaps starting with an affiliate promotion to your readers in the form of a product review and then work your way through the list above to see what works best in your case.

Good advice. And if, like me, you wonder what price to set on advertising space for when people come “knocking”, as they surely will if you keep building your readership, note Yaro’s very helpful advertise page.

I should mention here that, although I’ve been thinking for some time now that I should post something about making money with blogs, for the immediate stimulus to do the series now and for sharpening my focus on the “direct/indirect” distinction I’m indebted to blogger Chris Garrett and his excellent post Indirect Profits, Business and Corporate Blogs. That post is more about the indirect aspect, which I will address in the next post of this series.