Lisa Dempster

Guest blogger Karen Andrews talks about her decision to carry ads on her blog, and a little about the process involved in getting it all running.

There comes a point once you’ve been blogging for a while, and the length of time differs from person to person, when it’s understandable to ask the question: can I start making money out of this?

True, it helps if by this point you’ve developed an audience and respectable traffic statistics; but they aren’t the be-all-and-end-all, and I had ads on my blog before I had achieved either. The ‘problem’ with the subject of monetising your blog is that there are so many experts on the subject, often with conflicting advice, and once you start reading up on the subject you have the real chance of being left overwhelmed. I am not one of those experts; I can only tell you about how I’ve muddled my way through thus far.

My frank opinion on advertising on blogs is this: I feel that once you reach a certain point you can’t not do it. Especially if you’re self-hosting with Wordpress, when you’re outlaying money for a domain name and DNS hosting. And I’m assuming you have your own computer that never breaks down. Or needs upgrading. Oh, yes, and then there’s your internet connection. That said, even if you’re not spending a cent on your blogging (for example, if you’re using Blogspot or Wordpress.com), that doesn’t mean you’re less entitled or able to start making money.

So what can you do to start looking into this? Well there are several ways. There are several advertising networks you can join, and by doing so they provide you with the code that is usually an easy job to insert into your blog template. The biggest, and best known, is Google Adsense. Others are Nuffnang Australia, BlogHer, Amazon and the list continues. Some of these I use; others I don’t. Some will work for you; others won’t.

And you won’t know unless you try.

What I’ve found particularly successful is personally selling advertising space in the form of 125 x 125 ‘buttons’ on my sidebar. I’ve done this several times this year (and might do more of if I were a more aggressive salesperson) and it’s quite a satisfying autonomy to make money on your terms which, for example, as writers, we’re often left without right to negotiating what cents-to-word ratio rate of pay we get.

I should stress here that I don’t make very much money. I could make more if I paid greater detail to SEO tactics, or by being deliberately controversial just to drive up traffic, or posting several times a day, every day. But none of those interest me (and believe me, posting five times a week – which I do – is exhausting enough). Even after over three years of blogging, I’m still learning about it. The process continually intrigues me.

The decision whether to monetise your blog or not is a personal one. Perhaps it’s even difficult. But do you know what? If you discover ads aren’t for you, you can take them down again. Problem solved.

Good luck!

*If you’re interested in carrying ads on your site, Problogger is worth a browse for info on monetising blogs. I don’t read it often, but there is some invaluable info on the site like an introductory guide to help you Make money blogging, which includes articles like Should I blog for money? and How quickly after starting a blog should I put ads on it?.

*Photo by emdot.

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