More Easy Ways to Make Money From Your Blog: Free Advertising Solutions

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( Photo Credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

Over the last week or so, I’ve gotten a few more questions submitted about making money with a blog - which on the surface seems like a pretty easy thing to do, especially in the affiliate marketing space, right?   Note – that does not mean INTERNET marketing space – a much tougher slog in my opinion, and well worth staying away from if you are just starting out.  Why?  Because for the most part, you are just going to get caught with your pants down and your hand in the cookie jar, which is quite an uncomfortable position to be in especially if you look bad naked.  I can spot someone who doesnt’ have a clue who is passing him or herself off as "expert" of one type or stripe from a  mile and a half away and I’ll bet you can too.  So make your bones as they say selling the low hanging fruit – ( Clickbank products, contextual advertising, Commision Junction, Azoogle, etc) and when you are pretty sure you can walk the walk, jumping in with the proverbial Internet Marketing tips sort of site is ok, and par for the course.

Some of the people who responded to my last post regarding Elizabeth’s question ( and my answer) thought the response was a bit too abstract and difficult to follow – and are just simply having a hard time selling ANY affiliate products from their blog sites – a few people told me they have GREAT traffic numbers ( much better than MINE!) yet aren’t making one stingy cold red cent for their efforts.

So here is a good idea for you – and one I’ve implemented myself, both here – and in several other sites I want to monetize through less traditional means – and as most of the very best ideas are, it is absolutely FREE!

Check out OIO Publisher for WordPress.  Again, it’s a free plugin for WP that essentially allows you, with a few SIMPLE clicks of the mouse, to sell and manage your very own advertising empire from your admin panel.  You simply download the plug-in, upload it to your WordPress Plug-in’s directory, activate it, and then within your WP admin section you can start to price your ads for public consumption.  Pretty nifty, huh?  Well – it get’s better!  You can change up and modify different size ads, different rotational schemes ( for multiple advertisers in same place) it is completely widget driven ( or you can simply cut and paste the code into your template if you aren’t using widgets)set times and expiry options for ad length, you can sell video ads, text ads, banners, etc – and all the prospective advertiser needs to do is click on your "advertise here" icon ( see my rudimentary example on top left) and it kicks up your ad fufillment page, where the advertiser can pay for the ad and specify their ad image, slogan, etc right from your site!  Folks, this is SUPER powerful stuff, and if you have the traffic, but CAN’T CONVERT to save your life, this is a really, really ( really!) easy way to make some bucks and do it quickly.  Like today.  I’ve already installed this powerful FREE plugin on several sites, including this one, and expect to add several more to the mix very soon.

Now – if the above was ALL there was to sing about, it would still be a pretty impressive song…..But – not only is this a beautiful solution to taking your advertising options into your own greedy green hands ( rather than outsourcing the whole thing to a text-link ads sort of middleman operation which has been the defacto choice for selling link space for the little guy thus far) OIO Publisher  also has a built in marketplace for publishers and advertisers within the community – offering a natural link ( no pun intended..;-) between bloggers like you and I and advertisers who want to reach our audience.  And that boys and girls, is the piece of the puzzle that is so CRUCIAL to the success of these sorts of endeavors, as it gives you an easily accessible and natural companion audience for your blog ( across MANY different categories – NOT internet marketing centric) – there is a rating system, traffic figures, etc – to establish clear metrics for both advertisers and publishers in determining worth and potential across the network.  They offer some paid review sorts of services as well, where if you write about dogs let’s say, an OIO advertiser partner would pay you X amount of dollars to blog about their dog food – you would preferably NOT have to eat the food of course for the cash.  These can be a bit more squirlier issues ( ie – paid blog reviews) and while I did sign up for this as well – I have a more difficult time picturing how I can properly integrate it into my own marketing process, mostly because I have a problem playing well with others, especially if they are paying me to say nice things about them.

Anyway – no more excuses – you CAN do this.  It’s free – and probably wont’ be forever.  You can make money with your blog – you just have to be resourceful and pro-active.  This is one step closer to getting you there, and if your content is quaility ( I don’t care if it’s a blog about parakeets or the north korean nuclear crisis) you CAN ads to others.  The guy behind the operation seems like a smart coder type and I spent a few minutes checking out his blog, and struck me as a solid citizen as well ( it’s worth checking out his thoughts on reading the latest, greatest, offer of the week/month/year from a very well known internet marketer – who as you would imagine, is just selling more meaningless drivel into the already flooded with foolish, farsical nonsense newbie dash for cash internet marketing space, which is very sad, and a bit sinful as far as I’m concerned.  And considering I’m pretty lackadasical in what I consider sinful, that is not a good sign for him.

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Can you imagine if there is a god up there who is pretty laid back but just HATES internet marketers who sell slop?  I’m not religious, but I would pay to see some of these guys get a pitchfork up the ass.  But that’s a different story for a different blog.

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One last thing – I have a ton of sites that I monetize with selling ad space.  Lots of them use Adsense and Yahoo Publisher ads.  My main sites are quality, white hat, well intentioned, designed and pretty – just like me.  Adsense is a dying business monetation model.  It’s just one irrevelant guys opinion, but I’m seeing my earnings go so far down on my adsense sites, that I literally emailed Google over the weekend to ask what is up?  The payouts I’m getting are close to nothing on some clicks – and when I say close – that means REAL close.  This site is a year old –>http://gotokeywest.com .  I paid VERY close attention to the numbers on this one over the weekend as I’m heading down there for about a month right before Christmas – and along with a partner living down there, we plan on selling space directly to the local business community as a logical alternative to contextual ads.  This is not a giant site, but it looks good, has solid content and according to my adsense channel stats – I am making anywhere from 1 penny to 5 cents per click.  I honestly couldn’t believe it when I looked at the numbers.  Those are "splog" site payouts.  Obviously I could have all of the traffic int the world, and an excellent click through rate and all of that fun stuff – yet, if the ads are only paying you 3 cents a click, you are NEVER going to quit flipping fajitas at taco bell.  And Yahoo ads on the same paid about 50 times better, ( literally on some ads) yet are so HIGHLY IRRELEVANT to the site content that my CTR was in the toilet.

So for me, taking control of your own ad revenue, while always important, is now even moreso – and OIO publisher should give me the sort of leverage I hadn’t really explored up to this point.  I’m excited at the potential and hope you are too! 

Any questions, as always, be sure to let me know.:-)