Blogging Tip of the Day: Vol. 122

Today's Tip: Let's talk about something most bloggers care about, and a lot of bloggers don't, advertising. If you are one of the people who doesn't care about advertising, please feel free to sit this one out, and we'll try to cover something that effects you next time. For those of you that want to make the big bucks like me (currently about 3$ a day if I am lucky) then you might want to continue along. Even if you don't want to make the big bucks you may want to continue along because one of the things I have learned over the years, even if I don't want advertising, advertising does make a blog look professional. It can also make a blog look cartoonish, so please read carefully.

First let me talk about the myths of blog advertising. Unless you create the product and are using your blog to sell it, you will never get rich selling things for others. I see this a lot where someone puts Amazon or Walmart links in their blog, hoping for that 2 to 10% commission. Think about this for a moment, but when was the last time you were reading a blog and said, "Wow there is a place called Amazon?" Yeah the big problem is 99% of people already know about these sites and just go there. Your links look like a nuisance. Also anyone who is selling you on selling their stuff, probably already knows that you are just building up their brand for free. People see the ad, they remember the name of the company, they don't click it, and you don't get paid.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, the best way to do it is to just use an ad farm. Google Adsense for example, but of course there are ones that pay more if you can prove that you are elite. Adsense of course will take anybody and they have the metrics to maximize you and them making money. In any regard, by creating ad space, and allowing an ad farm to serve ads to your website or blog you have not only the best opportunity to make some money but also look professional. Avoid the ones that insist on adding pop ups or have a reputation for seedy ads (porn ads or pop ups will probably end your blog faster than grow your income) and then just sit back and promote your blog. In the end the amount of people that look at your blog will drive income, or popularity or more importantly YOUR brand (meaning you) and spending any time worrying about how your ads work interferes with that. It will happen for you, it always does.