Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Make Money With Your Blog

As promised, I'm delivering a few quick and easy ways to make money with your blog. These are just two ways I've discovered...AdSense and Amazon.com. They are both simple, quick and free (three things I like a lot!!!).

As far as AdSense goes, it's the easiest when you sign up for a Blogger.com account. Just sign in and Blogger.com automatically creates an AdSense account for you.

Then all you have to do is go under your template link, click on the page layout buttons and Blogger.com walks you through adding AdSense ads!!

It's quite simple. I don't know a great deal about web site creation and I could do this in just a few minutes.

So those are the AdSense pros..I see two basic downsides to AdSense. They are lack of control on your part. You don't choose which ads they run on your site. They simply pick up certain words in your entries and run corresponding ads.

Also, you can't call attention to your ads. You'll notice I haven't ever talked about my AdSense account before this post. I can't ask you to check them out or cl.ick on them for me. So again you don't have much control in determining your earnings from AdSense.

Amazon.com is just one example of an affiliate program. Many, many web sites are running similar offerings.

Basically you sign up as an affiliate and agree to their terms (similar to the AdSense terms I listed above in the cons section of my paragraph on AdSense). After filling out your information (ie where to send the checks! WOO HOO!!!), you can choose a few different types of graphics and links to add to your site.

You'll notice I have some Amazon ads flying about.

Again, it takes just a few minutes and between Amazon.com and Blogger.com you are literally led by the hand throughout the ad installation process.

It's so easy I swear a monkey could do it..and I say that because I often feel like a monkey when trying to discern online promotion. :)

So affiliate programs are pretty hot right now and most are free, easy and painless.

The downsides to Amazon.com are the same as AdSense...you don't have a lot of control over what is displayed on your blog.

I did get to choose the gift certificates ad but the other ads are based on categories I chose. So there is more specification than in AdSense but your ads are in broad categories. Again, a crapshoot.

Those are just two ways I'm making money with my blog. Stay tuned and I'll tell you about plenty more in the upcoming days! Til then, take a peek at my ads. :)

Til tomorrow...

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