Making Blogs Pay Their Way

If you have read My Rich Pickings before then you will know that I have a keen interest in making money online, and that includes income from my other websites and indeed this very blog. This is achieved primarily from website advertising and promotion of affiliate programs. But which ones are the most successful?

As I have been maintaining My Rich Pickings for almost a year, I am now in a position to offer some practical advice about which ones work and which ones don’t. But please bear in mind that there is a certain amount of experimentation involved; and just because something doesn’t work for me doesn’t mean to say that it won’t work for anybody else. And ALWAYS remember that very basic rule of web advertising; i.e. keep it on topic! (I know there are exceptions, but on the whole it pays to keep your adverts in line with the subject matter of your blog.)

Now I’m not going to make a big song and dance about exactly how certain advertisers have performed, and I don’t want to single out any particularly bad performers, but suffice to say that the 2 website advertising / affiliate programs consistently at the top performance-wise for me are Google Adsense and Commission Junction. There has been some sporadic success for others, but these are my top 2 and I will keep on promoting them on my sites.

Admittedly, Commission Junction takes more work to get right than Adsense, which is basically a ‘plug and play’ solution for any content based website, but with a little experimentation the results from CJ can be far more rewarding. I suggest that if you don’t see immediate results on your own blog then it is worthwhile checking out the huge diversity of different advertiser’s banners and text links and finding the ones most suited to your blog. It is worth noting that if an advertisement offers something of value to your visitors it will get clicked on.

I believe that the ‘secrets’ of making blogs pay their way are experimentation, monitoring, updating and refinement. Never be afraid to make changes, but remember to monitor the results of any changes to see if they are positive or negative and then adjust accordingly. Once you find a winning formula then milk it, and above all, enjoy!