#bloggingedumacation: How to Make Money Blogging (part 2)

Who wouldn’t be excited to make a little bit of money from their blog? Get paid for doing something you love? Sign me up. 😉 ha! Now, rolling in the dough does not happen over night. You have to start with building a community and generating great content before the money will start showing up at your internet door. Pageviews and Unique Visitors to your site are important aspects of what kind of money you might make. And those two things increase when your focus is on your content (it’s got to be good!) and your community.

So let’s get on with the next thing in the Blogger Toolbox of making money…Ad Networks. You can find Part 1 in the “How to Make Money Blogging” series, which talks about Affiliate Programs, here.

Here on Pink Heels Pink Truck, I use a couple of different ad networks. My main ad network is Google AdSense. You can see a leaderboard ad above my header, a sidebar ad and a between post ad. These 3 ads are run through Google AdSense. Now there are rules to using Adsense. You cannot have more than 3 ads running on your site, otherwise you are in violation of the TOS. And trust me, you do not want to be in google jail. Read about how to set up Custom Channels on Adsense to target ads from brands in your niche.

Side Story…not long after I made the WordPress switch and brand relaunch, I was working on some blog graphics that required me to refresh my blog over and over in one sitting to see the changes I was working on. Not long after that, I received an email from google stating that my AdSense account had been permanently suspended due to “illegal clicking” or something closer. I was shocked. I couldn’t for the life of me think of what I had maybe accidentally clicked. Thankfully Google has an appeal process. Unthankfully, you can’t speak to anyone live to discuss your infarction(s). So, I filled out the appeal and explained that the only thing that might have caused the incident was my refreshing of my own site while working on my design.

And then I had to wait…and then I forgot about Google Adsense. And then one day they magically replied to me and said that my account was reinstated and after further investigation it turned out to be an error on their end and not mine. PTL. Google jail is no fun. But even though my story worked out, I know of bloggers who were making excellent money from Google Adsense and were put into Google jail for reasons unknown to them and never recover their account (even after their appeal…which there is only one chance at an appeal). Their income gone. So word to the wise…be careful with your ad networks. Do not engage in any kind of illegal clicking etc.

So back to Ad Networks. I’m also using CPMonly. I use their ad network to backfill for Google (meaning when an ad isn’t showing from Adsense network, CPMonly fills in one of their ads) and Lijit Ad Network. I do have a couple of CPMonly ads running as well.

See that Modcloth ad? That’s actually an Affiliate network ad. The Amazon ads you see are also Affiliate network ads. So that’s another route you can go with ads…look to see if your affiliate network can provide you with banner ads.

Here is a list of Ad Networks that are popular amongst bloggers: (each network has their own set of “requirements” to gain access…some are easier to sign up with than others)
1. Google Adsense
2. CPMonly
3. Lijit
4. Rivit
5. BlogHer
6. FoodBuzz
7. Federated Media
8. Glam Network
9. Izea
10. Advertising.com

To give you an idea of what kind of money you might make with Ad networks, you can make $0.50 to $15 per 1000 pageviews. (ie that’s based on a CPM network…cost per mille (fancy for 1000). CPM is actually the cost per 1000 impressions. An impression is a single ad shown to a viewer.
There’s another type of ad network…CTR (click thru rate). CTR’s is calculated based on how many times your ads are clicked.

It’s important to know what kind of ads are running through your networks…whether they are CPM programs or CTR programs. CPM’s have the advantage of your pageviews whereas CTR’s require someone actually clicking on the ad before you would get paid.

What ad networks do you use? Any you like or don’t like?

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