Earlier this week I posted about monetising your blog, and introduced a few key strategies bloggers can utilise to begin generating income online. One of these strategies – and possibly the most popular among bloggers – is the incorporation of advertising in the form of banner and sidebar ads, and in-content ad links.
Below are some of the best-known blog advertising services. Check them out and consider which will most closely match your monetisation goals, and then trial your top choices to see which offers the best results.
AdSense
Google’s AdSense is one of the best-known and well-utilised advertising systems, and has long been used by bloggers to monetise their blogs and generate income. As self-described by Google, ‘AdSense is a flexible, hassle-free way to earn revenue by showing relevant and engaging ads alongside your online content’.
AdSense works by matching relevant blogs with the highest bidding advertisers. Bloggers make ad space available on their site, choosing where they want the ads to appear, and then advertisers bid for their ads to display on your designated spaces, with the highest bid winning the ad space. Once an ad is placed, that advertiser pays the blogger on a Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) basis.
Being a Google product, one of the key benefits of AdSense is that it has a database of millions of businesses and organisations looking for relevant blogs and websites to advertise on.
BuySellAds
BuySellAds matches publishers with advertisers. To utilise their system, you’ll need to signup to be considered as a publisher, and once approved, create a listing in the BuySellAds marketplace for advertisers to review. Like AdSense, you’ll designate ad spaces on your blog, and then sell those spaces, with BuySellAds taking a fee for their services.
Qadabra
Qadabra is a self-serve banner ads platform, where bloggers copy and paste an ad tag on to their site to allow them to be matched with a relevant Qadabra advertiser. This platform is compatible with AdSense, pays on a CPM basis, and supports all geographic locations.
Kontera
Kontera is based on a philosophy of understanding and activating the world’s content, with an aim to monetise and syndicate content in ways that are ‘least disruptive to the user experience’. Based on a Pay Per Click model, Kontera’s in-text ads are completely user-initiated, so readers don’t see ads ads unless they hover over the links.
Infolinks
Infolinks offers a range of in-content advertising options, including: InSearch, which only monetises search traffic without disturbing return visitors; InText, which is designed to break through typical banner blindness; InTag, which is developed to recognise the most valuable keywords relevant to your content and display them in a tag cloud; and InFrame, which aims to monetise unused screen margins and frames your blog’s layout with display banners relevant to your content.
Blogads
Blogads is another popular monetization service, with a few key differences. First, you have the power to accept or reject ads, you choose your own prices, and you can fully customise the appearance of ads on your site.
Sell Your Own
If you don’t mind dealing with the logistics, selling your own ads can be a great way to earn income from your blog. It means you have full control over who advertises on your site, and you reap the full financial rewards – meaning you don’t have to share your advertising revenue with a third party. You’ll need to be super organised to make this option work, and it doesn’t hurt to have prospects already contacting you directly about advertising to prove there is an existing interest.
Want to give it a go? Include a link in your main navigation to a dedicated advertising page, and outline how potential advertisers can promote themselves on your site, directing payments via PayPal.
Which blog advertising platforms and services are you already using to monetise your site? Share your feedback in the comments section below.
