Online Marketing

In the beginning…

Blogging, or Web Journaling as it was originally known, really came to prominence in the early 1990s, primarily as a way for writers to express their personal thoughts, in a diary format, with the world . As is the case today, most of these blogs were read only by the individual’s family and friends. Before long though, a few of these blogs slowly began gaining a broadfollowing. As with anything on the Internet, a few of these writers started to question whether there could be a way to make money for their blogging efforts.

Enter Google AdSense. I’m assuming that you’ve heard of Adsense, but if not, it’s a Google product that lets you opt in to have small advertisements that are supposedly unintrusive placed wherever you choose on your website or blog. Before long, anyone who wanted to  make money with a blog was throwing Adsense ads all over their pages.

Some bloggers actually made a bit of dough from this. However, there are some big concerns that I have with using Adsense, or ads of any kind on a blog.

• People are much more wary of adsadvertisements, though, in today’s highly connected and media saturated world. If you can get a 1% click through rate, you are way ahead of the game.

• You have no say over what ads are shown to your readers. Do you really want to take a chance on having R or X-rated advertisements displayed on your portfolio website?

• Ads make a blog look untrustworthy. They turn off your readers and make them question your intentions.

• Every time someone does click on an ad, they are being directed away from your blog. Is sending people away really a good strategy?

There are much better ways to make money with a website.

There is the method that seems to be very popular at the moment, which consists of creating high quality information products such as e-books, webinars, and web courses. There are a lot of bloggers who are making a lot of money this way. It requires a large time investment, but the payoff can be quite high.

Another way is to put together a subscription site. This is amazing in that people are actually paying YOU to come to your site every month. Again, though, there is a large investment of time required, and your readers will demand a very high level from you.

In addition, there are times where you can  make cash with their blogs for someone else. In these types of setups, you are usually a so-called business blogger, writing on behalf of a ncorporation on the topics that you are assigned.

All of these have their good points and their drawbacks. However, they are all much more effective than plastering ads all over your precious blog. If you really want to become an expert in how to make money with a blog, you should investigate each of these opportunities carefully.