Monetize the Blog

Monetizing the Blog for Beginner's When I acquired this blog address at the end of 2004 I was relying on income from corporate clients who paid me well to design their websites, saturate the market they needed saturation in, and to promote their content. As a result, blogging was just something I wanted to try for kicks. Over time, I outgrew Blogger for what I wanted to do, but not before I did something that would change my life. I discovered monetizing. Before I abandoned this blog to die the slow death that never seemed to come I had signed up for an AdSense account under someone who probably had a blog and a referral ad - like I have now. Following the easy copy/paste instruction that Google would generate through my new AdSense account, I copied and pasted the javascript into my right columned Minimalist theme I had at the time. Now with New Blogger templates and the Widgetized drop ins, there's really no excuse to not Monetize on Blogger - even if you have no HTML knowledge. Benefits of Monetizing Of course, now there are plenty of other networks out there offering ways to make money from blogging through ad networks but AdSense was my first and the integration of the widget into Blogger makes it simple. The benefits of Monetizing is of course, to generate a little income from those who would visit your site. Your posts would generate different ads from AdSense and the ads may interest the reader enough to click on it. If so, you bank. Not a mint - but you bank. And the more people, the more potential. Notice how I didn't say "The more Ads, the more potential." Even if your income is your motive, your income is not your readers motive Income can be your motive, sure. People are quitting their day jobs to blog. But hey guess what? Your income is not your reader's motive. Ever. And if you start confusing this fact, you will not have readers. And sure, fine. Have lots of ads. But make it worthwhile to your readers and ask yourself one question as you're plastering your blog with ads all over, and popping them up and getting in the way of the content... "If I weren't me would I stick around for this?" 8 Healthy Ways to Insure Monetized Failure Begin offering irrelevant, copied, or poor content. Do this all the time! Insure that your motive for the content is to inundate readers with ads. Make sure your articles or posts lack substance or credibility. Make sure that the entire point of the blog itself is to force ads. Pop-ups? All the time! Do not miss an opportunity for these gems! At every opportunity spam your blog to other blogs! In comment sections, and in mass emails and in every newsgroup and forum you can find! The more inappropriate the better! Sign up for every single ad network and make sure to use them all on every single page! Always make sure to have so many ads and such little content that the reader can't help but to click an ad in order to escape! When any of the above begin happening, readers will quit being interested and they may even blackball the blog. I use StumbleUpon, and many people - me included - have begin thumbing down and publicly announcing the blog as a spam blog or the people who spammed them as spammers. In my opinion it's a clear case of underestimating the readership. Lesson #2 on blogging: Don't underestimate those who would visit your blog. Ever. Technorati: monetize, adsense, adbrite, make money, blog, blog for profit, earn money blogging, referral program, entrepreneur, netrepreneur, make money online, monetizing, content is king, blogging for beginners, good idea