If you ask people about the countless ways to make money online, blogging will probably top the list for several individuals. Legions of entrepreneurs all around the world are using a blog to create a steady stream of income, and for many of them, advertising is the primary method of choice. The main reason it is so popular is because blog advertising comes in a variety of forms, most of which have proven to work quite well.
For example, you have:
Contextual Ads
These are a form of targeted advertising units that are delivered in accordance to the content on your blog. The idea is that the more relevant the ad content is to your own, the more likely your readers will be to click and further explore them.
Pay Per Action (also known as Cost Per Action)
These units pay you every time a visitor clicks on an ad and takes a specific action. That action may be purchasing a product or subscribing to a newsletter. Direct response advertisers consider this the optimal way to buy online advertising, as an advertiser only pays for the ad when the desired action has occurred.
Pay Per Click (also known as Cost Per Click)
These units pay you a certain percentage each time a visitor clicks an ad on your blog. The simplicity of the format has made PPC one of the most popular options with bloggers.
Pay Per Impressions
These units pay you every time they appear on your blog. Sounds easy, but this format can be trickier than most.
Text Links
These units are incorporated into the hyperlinks of specific text in your posts. Most of these programs pay out on a pay per click basis.
As you can see, there are quite a few types of advertising for bloggers to choose from. Right now, we’ll dive take a look at some of the programs the blog community is having success with.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is not only one of the most well known ad programs out there, it’s one of the best. AdSense advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google, and they can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis, making it a visitor-friendly option with high potential to generate a decent amount of change. One of the many things to like about this program is the ability to customize ad units so they coincide with the look and feel of your blog. Over time, AdSense alone could easily pay for any hosting fees you have and potentially more.
Infolinks
Infolinks is one of the companies leading the charge in the world of text link ads. The concept here couldn’t be any simpler. Place the ads into your posts as you would when creating anchortext, get paid when readers click, and aim to maximize your revenue by driving the most clicks you possibly can. This program works extremely well for blogs that have a large number of loyal readers. Infolinks has gotten such a great response, that bloggers are now coupling it alongside other popular programs like Google AdSense.
BuiltinText
This Infolinks competitor is quickly turning heads in the blogging community. Hence the name, BuiltText allows you to promote ads by embedding them into your text. While the program is text-based, it has features designed to enhance the strength of those sponsored words. For example, you can choose formats that incorporate elements such as double underlined keywords and Flash to make your ads stand out. BuiltinText also shares 30% of advertising revenue, which makes it one of the most generous programs of its kind.
AdBrite
The last program we’ll look at is AdBrite, hailed by many as the best AdSense alternative out there. AdBrite uses a combination of extensive data and sophisticated algorithms to determine what ads will work best for your blog, and more importantly, its audience. This program offers a variety of interesting formats, providing site-level transparency, display and video capabilities, and an open platform for data providers and real-time bidders. Among other reasons, AdBrite is an attractive option because it supports many regions AdSense doesn’t accept, which has made it a big hit with international bloggers.
Conclusion
There are plenty of ways to make money online and there certainly are several ways to turn a blog into a monetizing machine. Be that as it may, some bloggers are eating good off ad money alone. While many people find those pop-up banners and iframe offers annoying, online advertising continues to be a highly profitable industry. According to IAB, ad revenue in the U.S. reached a whopping $9.3 billion from July to September in 2012, which marked a new quarterly high. A mere crumb of that pie would probably feel nice in your pockets, wouldn’t it?