Cyberlink Internet News and Views

Blogging is a growing phenomenon that engulfs our everyday life online. With over 700 million blogs and growing every day, it’s not surprising that blogging can be seen as a lucrative income stream.

Over the coming 7 posts I will look at a number of revenue generating opportunities, their features and benefits, while seeing how they could be used within a blog.

• Adsense
• Sponsored blogs
• Affiliate marketing
• Contextual advertising
• Sponsorship
• Paid for links
• Advertising within feeds

Is advertising always good?
Adsense for example is not necessarily the best income stream for a website – in fact it can have a negative effect on both your income and the traffic to your site. Very few of the top blogs in the world actually use Adsense for revenue.

You need to consider the impact of advertising. For example if users are clicking an advert – are they in fact leaving  your website to go to another. Is that what you want or need?  If you have a blog on a corporate website – are you better keeping users within your corporate site in order to promote your product / service? Each case is different but its worth considering.

Target Audience / Choosing the right ads
It is also important to choose the right revenue stream to match your target audience. If your blog is about computers, don’t select advertising which is going to promote washing powder! Make your choice topical and relevant and you’ll find the number of clicks is much much higher.

Introducing advertising
Carefully consider how you introduce advertising into your blog. If your blog has a loyal readership, what will happen if you suddenly introduce advertising? Will then suddenly stop reading? No readers could mean no advertising revenue! It’s a careful balancing act. Make sure you measure impact and be prepared to react. Maybe introduce things subtly.

Adverting Overkill
Don’t make the mistake of going all out to make money online. How many sites have you been to where it seems like nothing but adverts. Make sure the content of your website is still most prominent and advertising doesn’t distract from that. Remember if people don’t read your content – they wont come back which means less advertising revenue!

I’ll be posting more blogs explaining different advertising opportunities over the coming days and update this blog with a link to the new posts.