by guest poster: Murray Newlands

I help other bloggers make money on the Internet through content monetization. As a blogging expert, I’m always trying to stay a step ahead so that I can help others understand the current business climate. That’s why I’m sharing these three ways to monetize your site’s content!

Banner Ads

Initially, advertisers would pay websites for each month their banner add ran, and this model is still used today to a lesser degree. It’s leftover from offline billboard advertising where advertisers pay the billboard owner for each month the billboardd is up. These days online, however, much more people usually use Google AdSense to host banners. This is because Google’s ads are dependent on users’ browsing history, meaning they can be more targeted. On top of that, Google’s ads are usually less “noisy” than other banner ads (they don’t allow flashy, animated GIF’s). Kontera and adBrite are other popular banner hosts.

Link Insertion

In-text ads (inserted links) are Web links that produce to a small pop-up and also link you to a product page. One of the biggest draws are that they monetize existing content (text) that can’t otherwise be easily monetized. It’s possible to make your own basic in-text link ads by using affiliate links but it’s usually better to find a company dedicated to link insertion to do it since they can target individual readers better.

Imagine you have the word “shoes” somewhere in your blog. A rancher might get an ad for cowboy boots, but an athlete will get an ad for the newest Adidas cleat model. Most link insertion companies focus on only a few types of websites based on what the site’s content. INTENTclick is a popular system for websites about coupons and making and saving money online.

Sponsorship

When a company sponsors your blog in essence you get paid to put up their logo or write blog posts about them. The logo option is particularly appealing since all you have to do is copy and paste a few lines of HTML code into your site, and you don’t even need many viewers. However, whole sponsorships can be very rewarding, they can also take a while to set up. Companies will contact you themselves if they’re interested in sponsoring your blog, so keep a valid email address somewhere on the site. If you’re worried about spam, put the email address in a format that’s hard for bots to read, like putting your email address in an image.

However, if they’re not contacting you, try calling or emailing their public relations and marketing divisions. When you talk to their media buyers, make sure you know what you’re talking about: Know how many visitors you get per month and be able to tell them what your target demographic is. In general, blogs with more targeted demographics gain more money per viewer from sponsorships than ones with very broad, hard-to-target viewers.

I wrote Content Monetization. It’s an eBook with more in-depth information about content monetization.

Guest Post by Murray Newlands

Disclosure: I work with INTENTclick.