Ok, so I have mentioned many times that I earn a fair amount of money from blogging. But, I am small potatoes compared to some of the big blog earners in this world. Did you know that there are regular people like you and me who earn tens of thousands of dollars per MONTH just from blogging? It’s true! I am not in that camp, but I do earn as much just from blogging as I did from my full-time job when I lived in the States. You can too! It’s really not that hard if you are willing to spend the time doing so.
One thing that I have thought about lately is that I need to diversify the ways that I make money from blogging. The KING of money earners for bloggers is Google AdSense. I would have to say that AdSense is the number one earner for bloggers in general. However, lately, a lot of bloggers are starting to talk about needing to diversify with other advertisers or other ideas of how to earn from their blogs. Do you think that the only way to earn is by having ads like AdSense and others? Think again! I’ll get into that later in the article. For, now, let me give a few ideas on Advertisers, though.
Right now, I use AdSense, Chitika, Widgetbucks and a few other advertisers on my various sites. However, about 75% of my earnings are from AdSense. About 20% or more is from Chitika. The rest of from about a half-dozen other advertisers. From that breakdown, you can see that AdSense and Chitika are the big earners, though. My goal right now is to bring my Chitika advertising revenue up to the point where it is equal or at least close to parity with AdSense. How do you do that? Well, you look at the things that Chitika does well and emphasize those things. For example, it is well known by bloggers that Chitika performs great if you blog about products. For example, on this blog, I am blogging about how to earn money. That’s not product related, it is information related. However, I have started thinking about what other topics I can blog about that are of interest to me, where I have some degree of expertise, and also are product related. I can start those kinds of blogs, emphasize Chitka on those blogs, and hopefully dramatically increase my earnings from Chitika. I have several ideas on this and will start one later this week. We’ll see how the results are!
Now, I mentioned earlier that you can make money on your blogs without even having ads, right? Just how can you do that? Well, you can use your blog to gain a following of people, raise your profile and become an expert. Once you achieve that status, you use your profile to make money. For example, let’s say that you are a great painter. You start up a blog about painting. You talk about how you paint. You show photos of some of your art. You talk about your achievements in the field. After a while, people think of you when they think about painters. You start offering courses on how to paint. You start endorsing other painters and make a commission when they sell art. There are lots of ways that you can earn money when you are an expert or a respected authority on a subject. Use your blog to become the respected authority that you should be!
Next thing to think about here is that you don’t have to limit yourself to either doing ads on your site or building your profile. You can do both! Try to build more than one source of income from your blogging. It works!
Hi Bob,
Great article! I have just made the decision to blog and use adsense. I am still at the point where I am deciding what to blog about. This article really helped me to focus on what I love and know about.
Thanks for your help here.
Hi Dustin – Happy to help! Good luck with your coming site!
Hi Bob,
I have a question about adsense:
How do I stop all the dating/escort/soft porn ads from displaying on my site?
thanks for your help
Hi Dustin – If you go to your AdSense account, then click on “AdSense Setup” then click on “Allowed Sites” you can list any sites that you don’t wish to accept any advertising from. That should clean up any sites that don’t fit in with your preferences.
Bob,
Been a while since I last visited your site. I am looking into starting my blog(s). At any rate I just wanted to say thanks again for the great articles. I know you have posted it before but, what was a good website for starting and maintaining blogs?
Hi Mike K. – Nice to see you! When you say a “good website for starting and maintaining a blog” I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean you want to put a blog on one of the public free blog sites like Blogger or WordPress.com? If that is what you are asking, I recommend against those. Put up your own blog on your own domain – that way you own it yourself and are not writing content for somebody else to own!
Bob,
Thanks for the info. I have done that and it seems to work.
I like your advice about putting the blog on your own domain. I have started on blogger just because I am unfamiliar with all that is necessary to start and run a website and I am not proficient in HTML.
Is it necessary to be “fluent” in the code to start a website? Would mind doing a post about the basics of starting your own site on your own domain?
Thanks, I enjoy this site and Mindanao.com
as my wife also is from Bukidnon
Hi Dustin – If you want to blog on your own domain, you don’t need to know a thing about code! Many hosts offer a one button installation of WordPress, you click the button and you are ready to go. WordPress is so easy to use, you can go to a site and choose from thousands of free themes that you can install on your site! Honestly, a 5 year old kid could do it, it’s so easy! You don’t even need to know what HTML looks like, because there is no need to use it!
Good luck with your site!
Bob,
Wow, Thanks for that info. The more I learn, the better it gets! lol
I am going to find out about getting my own domain then. What is necessary to copyright the content? Is that a legal/lawyer thing, or does the host usually include copyrights?
Hi Dustin – Under US law, once you publish the information on the web, it is automatically copyrighted. However, unfortunately, that won’t stop people from swiping it! It will just happen!
OK Thanks again Bob. I will keep reading this site and Mindanao.com to glean more info from your success.
Right on Bob…Thanks for the advise. Working on my content now. Maybe one of these days I will be up and running…
Hi Mike! Nice to hear from you. Good luck on the development of your site!
Hi, Bob. Love the re-post plugin—I think it’s a great tool! I have applied just recently for chitika—it was something I read over at a different site that I follow about blogging and re-enforced from this site.
I know I missed the boat from that site becasue back 2 years. That site generated a lot of traffic—but guess what! Not monetized at all!
It was a gaming site and I think chitika would be good for it instead of adsense when I finally—fully set up the site and start rolling in the contents.
But I also use a clixgalore because there’s one site there specifically for our region that sells and ships out games to our local market and has got a 1 year cookie retainer! (but would I suppose be pointless if they are like me who automatically deletes all history when you close your browser.
Hi JC – If you have a site that once generated a lot of traffic, I am pretty certain that you can get the traffic back… you just have to work hard and provide fresh content.
Yes, I hope so. What I need though is inside information—there’s quite a handful of websites that are established already and they seem to be getting an inside scoop of things. That’s what I really need. Otherwise I do have other content—good enough content that readers can read on.
Hi JC – There really is not any “inside information”. You just have to work hard. Use every avenue you can to promote the site (social networks, etc). That’s all I can say. Providing good content is very important too.