How To Add An Affiliate Banner To The Header Of Your Blogger Blog

Your Ad Here

 

If you are interested in making money from your blog, chances are you will want to add an affiliate marketing banner to the header of your Blogger blog. Doubtless you have seen plenty of websites sporting advertising banners which are creating revenue for the author by way of banner clicks. With a small amount of rather simple tweaking to your Blogger template you, too, will be in a position to boost the revenue earning capacity of your Blogger blog.

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Header of Your Blogger Blog

There are a number of good places for a banner or an ad block, but the header of a blog is by far the most prominent area. Unfortunately, Blogger does not provide an easy facility for inserting an advertising banner into the header of your blog. To manage this you have two choices:

1. Use a custom template that comes banner ready. (There are a number of templates out there with this feature built in.)

2. Customize your existing standard Blogger template.

This post focuses on choice # 2 and shows you how to go about manually editing your template to add an affiliate banner ad. By the end of this tutorial you will have the necessary knowledge to insert a banner into the header of your Blogger blog. The level of difficulty for the necessary additions is easy to intermediate, so pretty much everybody should be able to get this done in a matter of minutes. You will be adding a few lines of code to your template plus pasting in the affiliate marketing banner code.

For the purposes of this example I will be using a 468x60 banner. This specific method of banner insertion has been tested on the following standard Blogger templates:

Herbert
Rounders
Denim
Thisaway
Son of Moto
Sand Dollar

It will also work on most custom templates that do not already come with an advertising banner in the header built in.

How to Insert an Affliate Marketing Banner into a Blogger Blog

1. Login to Blogger.com and navigate to Layout --> Edit HTML.

2. On the Edit HTML page you will see the option to back up your template by downloading it to your system. I strongly advise that you take this opportunity to backup as you are about to make a change to your template where you may not be able to restore it if anything should go wrong.

3. Once you have backed up your template place a check mark in the Expand Widget Templates box.

4. Search your template and locate the following lines of code within the header section of the template (note you can search by using CTRL + F and entering <b:includable id='main'> into the search box):

<b:includable id='main'>
<b:if cond='data:useImage'>

5. Now insert the following 2 lines of code directly below <b:includable id='main'> and before <b:if cond='data:useImage'>:

<div class='ads'>
</div>

6. Place your merchant affiliate code between the lines of code you just inserted. You will need to copy the code from the affiliate program provider to your template (better still, copy it into a program like Word , piece the parts together, and then copy and paste the complete code into your template). If you have not as yet signed up for an advertising program such as Linkshare or Chitika you will need to do so before you proceed. Alternatively, you could use my banner code in the meantime to test this banner and later substitute it for your own.

<div class='ads'>PLACE YOUR BANNER CODE HERE
</div>

7. Review the code you have entered. If you have followed the steps above you will now have code that resembles this (Your affiliate code will of course be different):

<b:includable id='main'>
<div class='ads'>

<a href=https://chitika.com/publishers.php?refid=********** style="text-decoration: none;"><img src="http://scripts.chitika.net/eminimalls/logos/468x60.png" border="0" height="60" width="468" alt="Get Chitika Premium" title="Get Chitika Premium" /></a>

</div>
<b:if cond='data:useImage'>

8. When you are sure you have correctly inserted the code into the template scroll up until you find this line in your template:

]]></b:skin>

9. Immediately before this line add the following lines:

/* Header Banner
----------------------------------------------- */
#header .ads{width:480px; height:80px; float:right; padding:20px 0px 0px 0px}

10. Click on Save Template.

11. Click on View Blog to view your new banner.

Troubleshooting

• If you need to change the alignment or padding around the banner to your own specifications you will need to change the CSS stylesheet code entered in Step 9
• You can change the alignment of the banner by changing float:right; to float:left; if you would like your banner to left align.
• If you change your template for another standard Blogger template you may need to re-enter the code in Step 9.
• Sometimes the code you get from your affiliate may be incomplete. For instance, some of Chitika´s banner codes are missing the specifications for height and width. In this case you will have to enter height=".." and width=".." yourself.
• If you change the size of your banner you will have to change the specifications of the code you inserted in step 9 as well.

In this post you have learned how to insert a 468x60 affiliate marketing banner into the header of your Blogger blog and will now be well on your way to earning revenue from multiple income streams.

Good luck!

 

Related Article:

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Sidebar of Your Blogger Blog

 

Technorati-Tags: ad placement,adding affiliate banner,affiliate marketing,make money,monetizing blog,how to

How to Add an Affiliate Banner to the Sidebar of Your Blogger Blog

Your Ad Here

 

Quite a lot of people are interested in making money from their blog(s) and for this reason want to learn how to integrate affiliate banners into their Blogger blog. In this post, which is the first of a series, I shall show you how to place a banner (or, in fact, any number of banners) in the sidebar of your Blogger blog. Although this tutorial is primarily aimed at newbies, but it may offer helpful tips for anyone interested in making money by adding an affiliate banner to the sidebar of their Blogger blog.

How to Add an Affiliate Banner To the Sidebar of Your Blogger Blog

Adding an affiliate banner to the sidebar of your Blogger blog is fairly easy. Just follow these step by step instructions:

1. Join an affiliate marketing program like Clickbank, Commission Junction or Chitika and select your merchant or the products you want to advertise.

2. Decide on the size of the merchant banner or banners you wish to display in your sidebar. Make sure that whatever size you choose will fit into the sidebar space - otherwise your banner ad may not be displayed properly on your blog. Typical sizes suitable for sidebars are:

• small rectangular banners 125x90, 125x125 or 150x150
• square banners 200x200 (if space allows)
• short vertical banners 120x200
• column style skyscraper banners 120x600 or 160x600

3. After choosing your banner you will be presented with the merchant code to display the banner. Right click to select all and right click again to copy the code (Ctrl + C) to the clipboard of your computer.

4. In a new tab or window login to Blogger and navigate to Layout --> Page Elements.

5. Click on Add a Gadget in the Sidebar. If you are using a customized template you may have 2 or more different sidebars, so decide which of them you want the banner ad to be displayed in.

6. Select the HTML/Javascript widget from the Add a Gadget menu.

7. Place your mouse in the content box of the Configure HTML/Javascript widget and right click. Choose paste (Ctrl + V) to insert the merchant code of your banner ad into the content box.

8. In the title box add a Title like Sponsored Ads if you wish, otherwise leave it blank.

9. Click on Save.

10. Use Blogger's drag and drop feature to pick up your new HTML/Javascript widget and position it where you want your banner ad to show up in your sidebar.

11. Save the Layout.

12. Click on View Blog to see your new banner ad in action.

How to Add Space Between Your Banner Ads

If you want more space between your banner ad and the previous widget you can add <p> before the code you inserted in the HTML/Javascript widget. If you need even more add another <p>

How To Center Your Advertising Banner

If you want to center your banner ad insert <center> before the merchant code and </center> after it.

How to Add More Than One Banner

If you want to add more than one banner ad to the same widget you can do that by pasting the code for the second banner ad below the first lot of code. If you want some white space between the banners ads insert <p> between each block of code.

In case of trouble

Your Banner Is Not Displayed

Your banner ad should appear right away. If your banner ad is not displayed at all then there is a problem with the widget you have just created. Retrace your steps, making sure you have inserted all of the code.

Only a Placeholder for the Banner Is Displayed

If you see a placeholder but no ad is displayed then the affiliate website may be off line or there may be a problem with the code in some way. Go back and make sure you copied all of the code correctly. (Sometimes the / is missing at the end of the code. Remember: All HTML code commands must be closed with a corresponding command: <a> with </a> and so on. The providers of widget and affiliate codes sometimes forget to do this.)

 

In this post I have shown you how to add an affiliate marketing banner to the sidebar of your Blogger blog and provided solutions for two of the most common problems that you may encounter. In upcoming posts on banner advertising I´ll show you how to place banners in a variety of other spots on your blog. So why don´t you bookmark this site so you can return easily?

Good luck!

Related article:

How To Add An Affiliate Banner To The Header Of Your Blogger Blog

H2U8RVTZETHA

Technorati-Tags: ad placement,adding affiliate banner,affiliate marketing,make money,monetizing blog,how to

How to Make Money with HubPages 2: Backlinks

Your Ad Here

 

This post focuses on one very effective strategy you can use to help you make money with HubPages.

HubPages, as you may know from my previous post (if you do not, just follow the link above), is a website where you can publish content and earn money for your work.

You can write just about anything you want and have the option to edit or delete your content anytime you feel like it. One of the best things about making money with HubPages is that it enables you to earn residual income for as long as the website is around, and chances are that it will be around for a long time.

There are many reasons why publishing at HubPages is worthwile if you are trying to make money online, or have a blog you want to create links to, or just want to write content for fun and earn a little pocket-money on the side.

First of all, HubPages is a well-respected site that gets a lot of love from search engines. Writing at HubPages is like having a head start in the search engine wars. This brings up an important point: One of the main factors that will allow you to make money online is traffic. Traffic is the lifeblood of internet marketing and online business.

Look at it just like the owner of a regular store would. The more people you can convince to visit your store, the more sales you will make. This can be translated into AdSense clicks, affiliate sales, or referrals in the online environment. Traffic is a key part of the game. And the more targeted this traffic is, the higher the probability of getting a conversion or having an action (click) occur. Obviously there is a lot more to making money on the internet: copywriting, branding, actually having something of value to provide, or in this case, providing useful, well-written and highly searchable content. But high traffic numbers is how websites become online money-making machines.

One of the strategies to writing on HubPages and earning money from your efforts is to publish several “hub” on the same topic. (In this respect HubPages is different from InfoBarrel, where they do not accept several articles on one subject from a single author.) The more you write about one specific topic, the more likely you will be regarded as an authority on that subject. Obviously, to be able to write a lot of “hubs” about the same thing you probably will have to be an expert on that subject. No need to worry, you can learn as you go. Writing is one of the best ways to learn things and solidify ideas in your mind.

Writing about a single topic will also give you more opportunity to increase the rankings of similar content. Say you have a 900-word authoritative hub about the best diving resorts in Australia. You spent a lot of time researching keywords, reading about the resorts, and clearly presenting the information to your readers. This can be a very good piece of content for you. If you have three, four or more related „hubs”, then you can use them to create anchor text links to give your authority „hub” little bit of a boost and create more traffic to it.

Your “support” pages should be directly related to the main authority page you are looking to link to. In the example about diving resorts I used above, these can be pieces more specific to certain resorts or diving-suits, etc. One could be about the Coral Sea Islands and another could be about the Great Barrier Reef. If the main keyword phrases (and related ones) you are working with are also strong in these pages - and even in the title - then links out from them will be even stronger.

When you create your links you want to create anchor text using the phrases you are focusing on. In the example used here, the phrase you would want to link out to your main hub would be “best diving resorts in Australia”. It is much better to be descriptive in the hotlink you create, rather than just linking with text like “see my other article about this topic here.”

You can do this with several of your hubs to create several relevant links that will give the page you want to promote more direct traffic and relevant keyword links, which in turn will help move it up the in search engine rankings. The more targeted these keywords and links are, the more likely they will be of interest to visitors and the more money you will make online.

Websites as well as web pages that adhere to web standards of copywriting, search engine optimization, and linking practices are more valuable than those that do not. If you keep in mind what potential web surfers might be searching for and do your best to create informative, well-written content that is useful, then you will be successful.

Remember that content is king and high value content will gain more natural links from other websites and more return traffic. The more effort you put into your content on the front end, the easier the entire process will be for you. When writing your hubs, take the time to make them as helpful, informative, and unique as possible.

Sign up for HubPages and start writing and earning today.

 

Related articles:

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses 

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,writing for money,blogging,adsense,backlinks,more traffic

How to Make Money with HubPages

Your Ad Here

 

Hubpages is one of the write-and-get-paid websites where you can write about pretty much anything you want and earn money for your efforts. This is the short explanation of the site - but there is quite a bit more to it.

You earn money when there is traffic to the articles you write and the visitors click on advertisements that are displayed on the page. For this reason, traffic is one of the most important elements that will help you make money online with Hubpages. On thing is certain, making money online is not an easy feat - but there are quite a few ways to do it.

You can obviously provide a service or sell a product. You can also do online copywriting or freelance writing. But that is not for everyone. I have been watching HubPages for a while and I think that if you can learn how to use the site to make money, i.e., you learn how to create so-called “hubs” that generate a lot of traffic, convert traffic to ad clicks or affiliate sales, and rise to the top of the search engine rankings, then you will know a great deal about internet marketing. (Basically, you need to do the same things you would do with your own blog or website.) And this experience will help you a lot in whatever kind of business you plan to get into online.

In the online environment it is all about words. Words are where search engines can really dig in and find relevant information for people surfing the web. Because of this, online marketing or making money online more often than not depends on writing, good writing.

A lot has been published on the subject of writing for humans versus writing for search engines. In my mind, it is important to do both, meaning that you do have a focus on certain keywords, but you do not want to write in such a way that the content is unreadable for a human being. You always want to write for people first, and for search engine bots second. There is a lot of value in enticing people not only to read your content but to come back and read it again and/or more of it.

However, that being said, there is also a lot of value in getting visitors interested in  your work in order to encourage a click through on AdSense and affiliate links. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but if you write really hacky articles that are filled only with keywords and nothing else, your work will be weeded out by Google and sent to search results nirvana. If people cannot find your work you will not make any money.

HubPages is a good place to start your writing career because your articles immediately get a boost in search engine rankings since the site is regarded by Google as a network that produces informative and helpful user-generated content. HubPages does a good job of policing itself in terms of eliminating crap or spam content and making sure their advertising networks run smoothly and there is no fraudulent activity going on. As a result, your content will be indexed by search engines a lot faster than if you started posting to a blog of your own. It could take you months to get a few readers to an article on your own blog or website, whereas it may just take a few hours or a day or two to get readers to your hub.

How to Make Money with Hubpages

First, you have to sign up. If you haven’t yet, sign up here. Then return to this article to read the rest – I promise it will help you.

The way you earn money on HubPages is through Google´s AdSense program, Clickbank, and affiliate links through eBay and Amazon. You can also make money using an advertising network called Kontera, but do not worry about it for now because it really does not pay that well. If you are a savvy internet marketer you can also make money on HubPages with your own affiliate links to third party websites.

The revenue is split with HubPages 60/40 in your favor. It works like this: 6 times out of 10 your ID is used in the advertisements, which means you will earn on a click or sale made during this time. The other 4 times HubPages has the potential to earn money for an action taken. People sometimes think that the total revenue is just split 60/40, but that is not the case. Your ID is used randomly 6 times out of 10. It is a generous pay structure that allows quite a few people to make good money by publishing articles on HubPages.

HubPages is a good place to start writing online, and even making money online. I mentioned earlier that you will want to use keywords in your articles in order to be competitive and gain traffic to your work - because that is what you need to do if you are interested in making any money. The best way to do this is by imagining what someone would type into a search engine in order to find the information you are providing.

If you were going to write about “making money online by writing,” then you should choose that phrase as your keyword phrase and use it in your article. The next thing you need to consider is how competitive a term is. You can do this by using the Google Keyword Tool at the following URL: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This tool will show you how many times your keyword has been searched in the past month and will give you a monthly average. It will also provide you with suggestions of related terms that may be better options for you to use because they are less competitive. It may sound a little confusing at first, but you will get the hang of it after you do keyword research a few times. You also want to look at the price paid per click, which will give you a good idea of how much money ads that will display will be worth. The figure shown is not the total that you will earn because Google keeps some of the money, but you can easily see which terms are “worth” more and which ones are worth less.

In my next post I shall go into more detail about choosing keywords for your internet writing. But for now, write down or copy and paste two or three sets of terms and how often they are searched and what they are worth. Now, type the keyword phrase into Google to see how many pages pop up. This is not an exact science but it will give an idea of how much content on the internet uses the term you are searching. If 100,000,000 pages come up, there are a lot of entries about what you are planning to write about, so it may be a lot more difficult to compete and get to the top of the search engines with your page. However, if only 250,000 pages come up, you have found a niche in which you can compete and that you may even be able to “own” by getting your page to the top. This, in short, is how you make good money in internet marketing with content and Google AdSense.

If you have a specialized skillset - and every single one of us has at least one - I highly recommend you start creating content based on it on the internet. For instance, I notice that I sometimes get a few visitors to this site who are looking for ways to make money while unemployed. HubPages is one such way. Start creating content about stuff you have expertise in. It does not matter if it is plumbing, roofing, gardening, or investing. If you can create content that is useful to people and valuable in one way or another, you will be able to make money.

Sign up for HubPages and start writing and earning today.

Once you have signed up, let me know if you need some help figuring out what to write about. I’ll do my best to help you out by giving a push in the right direction in terms of keywords and ideas.

Please read my second post about HubPages called "Make Money with HubPages Part 2: Backlinks".

Good luck!

P.S.: A very nice post on how to make money with HubPages can be found here.

 

Related articles:

How to Really Make Money with HubPages

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

 

 

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,writing for money,blogging,affiliate program,adsense

How to Make Money with InfoBarrel

Your Ad Here

 

Recently, after doing quite a bit of reasearch, I decided to sign up for InfoBarrel. Although InfoBarrel is relatively new – it went online in 2008 -, it looks like a good opportunity for making money and and getting valuable backlinks.

InfoBarrel is very similar to HubPages and Squidoo where you write one page topics. But InfoBarrel has one distinctive advantage over the others: You can get up to 3 ‘do-follow’ backlinks right away. You do not have to wait until you get a certain quality score before your backlinks become ‘do-follow’.

Like many others, I first heard about InfoBarrel from Lissie at Passive Income Online. She posted a great article titled “What is InfoBarrel?“ that you might want to read. It is the best discription of InfoBarrel I have been able to find so far.

Will you get paid by InfoBarrel? No. You will receive 75% of the revenue on the AdSense ads that appear on your pages and you can further monetize your content by using eBay and other affiliate programs. I guess this means that you will have to write a great number of articles in order to make a lot of money. I won´t go so far as to say that it is impossible to earn a decent income - it is just that you will have to write a lot of popular articles. And you need to know how to trigger high paying AdSense ads with your articles.

Another similarity to HubPages is that if you refer someone to InfoBarrel you get a percentage of the impressions of advertising on their articles (from InfoBarrel´s share, not the writer’s).

Since the people at InfBarrel are only  interested in serious contributors and quality content you probably won´t be able to make money right away. The Terms and Conditions state that the first 10 articles will need an editors´ prior to publication. Fortunately, they work fast and let you know within a few hours if the submitted article meets their criteria. Once you are past your tenth article all further material will be approved instantly. I guess this measure is their way of keeping spammers away.

If you are interested in InfoBarrel visit their home page and sign up at: www.infobarrel.com.

I am pretty sure that I shall be making money on InfoBarrel in the near future. It may not be through the sharing of revenue, but the ‘do-follow’ backlinks are priceless. Moreover, I have noticed that Google seems to like InfoBarrel, therefore it is quite easy to get your page(s) indexed. I hope that Google will continue to treat this site favourably, at least for a while, because it has the potential to become as popular as Squidoo or HubPages.

I’ll be writing some pages over at InfoBarrel and check back from time to time to let you know if it is really worth your while.

 

 

Technorati-Tags: make money,hubpages,squidoo,infobarrel,affiliate programs

How to Make Money Online with Squidoo Lenses

Your Ad Here

 

Squidoo has had its growing pains in the past year or so but is still one of the best free ways to make money - for beginners as well as seasoned marketers. And you do not even need a blog or website of your own! There are people making money online full time just by using Squidoo. That´s how powerful Squidoo is.

To be able to make money online with Squidoo you first need to understand some of its qualities. Squidoo is a one page site that is easily monetized just by the way it is designed. Google has always been very fond of Squidoo - and Squidoo tries everything it can to maintain its favor with Google. Because Squidoo ran in a bit of trouble with Google about a year and a half ago a lot of marketers started to leave the site. But now things are running smoothly again and the guys at Squidoo have been optimizing the ability to make money online for their loyal as well as new contributors.

The best way to make money from Squidoo is by making sure that you have fully optimized keyword rich modules. Squidoo now has no-follow tags from Google, therefore your keywords are determined by the content provided. The tags however still produce value to the inner workings of Squidoo - so do not avoid them altogether. Squidoo members can help you with your rankings and backlinks within the site itself. And your „lenses“ (that´s what articcles on the site are called) are found by the tags you choose.

Squidoo runs its own AdSense ads and you are supposed to receive a percentage of the money they make off the clicks. This kind of compensation is widely used among so-called “write-and-earn” sites. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how high that percentage is. But I do know that it isn’t much - so I don’t even worry about it.

The best way to make money on Squidoo is by either using their monetizing modules or by using your own methods of monetizing your content. For instance, there are a couple of modules like eBay and Amazon that you are supposedly great money-makers. However, the successful marketers do not use their modules for them.

If you are an eBay or Amazon affiliate or partner you can place you own affiliate sources  within and around the content you create, thereby receiving a greater percentage of the money earned.

This is what an eBay affiliate ad looks like when inserted into Squidoo:

This will allow you to make money online from eBay for full affiliate pay instead of having to share with Squidoo.

The same holds true for Amazon. Instead of only earning a portion of the money from Amazon by using Squidoo’s Amazon Module you will earn the full commission. Here is another example:

The more of these individual ads you run the more opportunity you will have to earn money.

As I have already stated, Squidoo runs the AdSense Ads and you really do not make money online from these ads, but now Clickbank offers their own ads that you can make money with. These are called HopAds. Go to Clickbank and look for the HopAd Builder.Using it, you can build text ads or tabbed ads.

This is an example of text ads:

Your affiliate id will be integrated within the code of the Clickbank HopAds.

Squidoo stopped allowing iframes some time ago, but now there is a way to ad your opt-in forms into Squidoo. If you are among those who specialize in email marketing the opt-in form is a huge benefit on Squidoo. If you publish great content you will get a lot of traffic from search engines and inside Squidoo itself. Being able to capture these leads is a plus. Just offer a free upload or free information and you are good to go. Everyone likes free stuff!

Here is an example of an email opt-in form:

If you are interested in finding out how to add an opt-in form on your lens just follow the link. Click the following link if you want to know how to ad Clickbank HopAds. You will have to leave your email address to receive the manual for adding Clickbank HopAds. Neither one of these methods cost any money.

There are a few more things you need to know before you get start your money making career on Squidoo. Because Squidoo is a one page site, you will definitely want to be focusing on those longtail keywords. This will help tremendously with your PageRank in Google. The traffic may not be as high, but you will be getting a more targeted traffic (meaning more visitors who are looking to buy). Also, when thinking Squidoo think products. Services do OK but you will make money online faster if you use Squidoo for products.

If you are using Squidoo for link building keep in mind that not all modules have “do follow” tags. The “do follow” list includes these modules:

Introduction
Text/Write
Poll (remember you can hyperlink your answers!)
Featured Lenses
Text/Link Lists
Text/Link Plexos (although I don’t recommend that you use these because
it’s link leakage)

Squidoo has a wide range of possibilities when it comes to making money online free. Along with the ability to make money with your Squidoo lens you can have unlimited lenses. Most people start out having a lot of lenses on one account which is a big mistake. Fortunately, they give the opportunity to move lenses around to other accounts. This one of the options built into Squidoo itself. If you are seriously interested in making money you should take care not to have too many lenses on a single account.

There is another great money-maker available to you with Squidoo: Lense flipping! You cannot only move lenses around between different accounts - you can also sell lenses. Lens flipping is a lot like site flipping, but way easier. All you need to do is change one lens to a different lens account. Squidoo lenses are selling for hundreds of dollars - and they don’t even have to have high PR. You can build a well optimized lens (or 3, or 10) today and sell them tomorrow. You would be surprised at how easy this is and how much money can be made by selling lenses. This is an easy way to make money online fast. And all for free.

Good luck!

 

Related articles:

How to Find Suitable Affiliate Programs for Your Blog

How to Find the Right Affiliate Products to Promote

 

 

Technorati-Tags: squidoo,make money online,blogging for money,affiliate programs

Make Money By Adding Banner Ads to Your Blogger Blogs

Your Ad Here

 

One of the things that makes Blogger such a great blogging platform is the ease with which you can add advertising to your Blogspot.com blog and make money from it. In this post I shall be discussing how banner advertisements on your Blogger blog can create passive income for you. By banner advertising I mean advertising in addition to Google AdSense or AdBrite or other contextual ad services you may have already added to your Blogger blog. For information on adding Google AdSense to your blog please read my articles on Google AdSense.

Banner advertising is FREE - And Banners Do Make Money

It is no secret that you can make quite a bit of money by placing banners on your site provided you choose your merchant program(s) carefully and have enough people accessing your site. In my experience, once you reach around 100 unique visitors a day it is high time time to add a few banner ads to your blog.

How to Make Money from Banners on Your Blogger Blog

Affiliate marketing banners are designed to make money for the publisher – in this case: you. In order to place a banner on your blog the affiliate program provides you with a snippet of code to add to your template which makes the banner display and identifies you as the publisher. When a visitor clicks on a banner on your website that click is recorded as originating from your site and you make money as a result of that click. Depending on the merchant program that you have signed up for you will earn a commission for providing a lead, or receive a percentage of the sale.

An Example of How Banners Work

After having placed a banner ad on your Blogger blog your site gets 100 visitors in a day. Out of that 100 people 5 people (hopefully!) click on a banner which takes them through to the merchant's website. From those 5 people one person makes a purchase of around $50.00. Assuming your commission is 10% of the sale you have just earned $5.00. It really is that easy.

Making the Most of Advertising Banners

To make money from banner ads you need a lot of traffic because only a small percentage of your visitors will take any notice of the advertising on your blog and a still smaller percentage of that pool will actually buy anything once they click. Therefore it is really important that you focus your energies on building site traffic. If you need to grow your traffic read my articles on tips to increase traffic to your Blogger blog.

Of course you do need to choose your affiliate banners carefully as obviously some ads will have more appeal than others. To some extent this is a matter of trial and error, as you can never be completely sure how a banner will perform until you try it. However, you can increase the odds of success by choosing merchant programs that are related to your blog in some way. For instance, if you blog about golfing then advertisers of golfing equipment or golfing vacations would be a good place to start.

How to Add Affiliate Banners to Your Blogger Blog

Adding affiliate banners to your blog is pretty easy. In most cases it is just a matter of copy and paste, and pretty much anyone should be able to do this. Please read my article providing step by step instructions on how to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to the Blogger Sidebar of your Blogger blog if you are unsure. If you want to place a banner in the header of your blog please refer to Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header.

Disadvantages of Banner Ads

Too many banner ads can give your visitors the impression you are just in it for the money. So make sure you do not go overboard with too much advertising that will overshadow or detract from the content of your blog. Keep in mind that less is more - so place your banners ads strategically on your blog. Very good results can be achieved by placing a small cluster of about 4 banner ads (usually 125x125) somewhere fairly close to the top in the sidebar and a 468x60 banner in the header. The header is obviously the prime position for an effective banner advertising campaign. Read more about how to place a banner ad in the header of your Blogger blog in my adding banners to Blogger series of posts.

The other main problem with banner ads is that they encourage visitors to leave your site - and as everyone knows one of the hardest jobs is to attract the visitor in the first place. Do you really want them to leave your site before they have had a chance to look around? I do not think so. Therefore, only place banner ads on your blog that you are confident will reap you some rewards, otherwise forget it. You might actually lose traffic if you provide too many inducements to leave your site.

Banner Ads Make Money

In this post I have told you about banner advertising on Blogger blogs. You have learned a little about how affiliate programs work and how you might use banner ads on your own blog to make extra money. For tutorials on adding banner ads to your Blogger Blogspot blog please refer to Add Affiliate Banner Ads to a Blogger Sidebar and Add an Affiliate Banner to Blogger Header.

Good luck!

 

Related articles:

8 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

How to Find the Right Affiliate Programs to Promote

Technorati-Tags: blogger tips,blogging for money,affiliate programs,banner ads,affiliate marketing,income streams,monetizing blog

 

How to Find the Right Affiliate Products to Promote

Your Ad Here

 

“How do I find the right kind of affiliate products to promote on my blog?” is one of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to monetizing a blog. And affiliate marketing is indeed a fascinating topic. Many bloggers are struggling with advertising as a means to make money from their blogs and want to branch out and experiment with affiliate promotions on their blog.

However, wanting to get into affiliate marketing and actually doing so are two very different things. There are a number of difficulties to overcome first.

One of these difficulties is finding the right products to promote.

Choosing the right products to promote is crucial for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:

a) Relevant Products Are Key

If your blog draws an audience centered around a particular topic or demographic it is very unlikely that you will be able to sell products that are in no way relevant to the topic of your blog.

b) The Quality of Products Can Have a Huge Impact on the Success of Your Blog or Brand

Promote low quality products and you could seriously hurt the reputation of your blog/brand. Readers remember who they heard about specific products from and their trust in you and your blog will increase or decrease depending on what you recommend to them.

Therefore, choosing the right affiliate product is crucial. Not only has it great impact on conversions and profitability, the success of your blog/brand and the trust of your readers depend on it as well.

Now, how do you find the right affiliate product to promote?

Here are a few tips and thoughts on finding affiliate products and programs to promote:

1. Google It – It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this one out - but it does work. If you happen to blog about beauty salons and/or products google “Beauty Products Affiliate Program”. Insert your main keywords into the search engine of your choice and you may just find products that are relevant to your niche.
2. Watch Your Competition - What kinds of products are other people blogging in your niche promoting? Quite often a quick glance down the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to find out what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products you could (and probably should) promote as well (and it could also point you to some relevant advertisers to promote).
3. Take a Close Look at AdSense Ads – You can find products that a relevant to your niche by checking out the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on websites, other blogs and even on your own blog. Do not (ever!!) click the ads on your own blog, but checking out what the ads promote can reveal all kinds of potential affiliate partners. The same thing is true for other types of advertising. For instance, the other day a friend of mine was surfing on Facebook and saw an ad relevant to his blog – and by clicking it he found a new product with an affiliate program that he had not heard of before.
4. Approach Potential Affiliate Partners - This one might not work if you have a new blog with little traffic, but as your blog grows you might find yourself in a position to approach the distributors of a product or the providers of a service to find out if they would be willing to start some kind of affiliate program for you. Some of the most successful bloggers do this regularly - and they make a lot of money this way. The best part of it is that you get a head start on your competition for the promotion as you are most likely to be the only person promoting it.
5. Search Affiliate Networks - There are quite a few affiliate networks around that list a lot of affiliate programs. The good ones have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check out Clickbank, Commission Junction, MarketLeverage, PepperJam Network, and many more.
6. Search Online Stores for Products – Almost all popular online stores, for instance Amazon, have affiliate programs attached to them. In general the comissions are not huge (Amazon, for example, offers commissions from as low as 4% up to 15% depending upon the type of product and how much you sell) – the profit margins in the retail trade are rather small - but stores like this have a wide variety of products and are probably the best place to start while you build traffic and search for other programs.

 

Related Article:

What is Affiliate Marketing?

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate marketing,affiliate programs,monetize blog,make money

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Your Ad Here

 

Affiliate marketing is a cool way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product(s), service(s) or site.

There are many different forms of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher placing banners or links on your website or blog and then earning a commission whenever someone follows one of these links/banners to another site where they then buy something.

In a common variation on this scheme you will be getting paid a specific amount of money for referring a visitor who then takes some kind of action - for example signing up for something and providing an email address, completing a survey, leaving a name and address, etc.

Commissions are very often a percentage of a sale but can also consist of a fixed amount per conversion.

Conversions are generally tracked in a simple and straightforward manner: the publisher (you) is provided with a link containing a special code only given to you that enables the advertiser to track where conversions are coming from (usually by cookies). In some rare instances an advertiser might provide publishers with a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.

• Advertisers often prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products because they know they will only have to pay for the advertising when there is a conversion. They will have to be content with making less money from each sale, but in exchange they will have recourse to a network of affiliates promoting their product which in turn will almost certainly increase overall sales levels.
• Publishers often prefer affiliate marketing because if they find a product that is relevant to their niche earnings can and will greatly exceed those of any pay per click or pay per impression advertising campaign.

Is Affiliate Marketing Easy Money?

While affiliate marketing can be an incredibly lucrative source of income it is important to know that it is not necessarily easy money. Most people who try it make fairly little money, for success relies upon a number of factors, including:

• traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
• finding products relevant to the content of your site or to your readers
• finding quality products as well as reliable companies/partners
• gaining the trust of your readers
• getting your readership into a ‘buying mood’
• being able to write good sales copy (and many more)

It has to be mentioned, that there is also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of inferior quality you can actually burn readers and thereby hurt your reputation and brand.

It is also worth noting that affiliate marketing does not work well on all blogs and websites. Some blogs/websites are on topics that make it extremely difficult to find products to promote while others attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and in still other cases affiliate marketing just does not fit with the blogger’s style or approach.

Why Affiliate Marketing Can Work Well on Most Blogs

Affiliate marketing is not the only way to make money from blogs and it definitely will not suit every blog/blogger (see above) but there are a few reasons why it can be profitable in our medium. Perhaps the most important of these reasons is that affiliate marketing can and does seems work very well when there is a trusting relationship between the publisher and his/her readers.

I have found (and many bloggers will confirm this statement) that the more the trust between publisher and readers deepens the more likely the readers will follow the recommendations that are made in a specific blog.

Of course, this fact can also turn against you and your affiliate marketing endeavours - promote the wrong product and you can easily lose the trust of your readers.

Please be sure to read the related post on how to find the right affiliate products to promote.

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate marketing,make money,monetize blog,make money blogging

8 More Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

Your Ad Here

 

9. Combine With Other Streams of Income

Affiliate programs and advertising programs are not mutually exclusive. There are more than a few people who think that affiliate linking will take the focus off their Adsense ads. While there is indeed potential for one to take the focus off the other there is also a real chance for both to work hand in hand as different readers are prone to respond to different approaches. You should consider the impact that your affiliate links have on other streams of income - but do not let that stop you from employing them.

10. Track Results

Most affiliate programs have at least some type of tracking or statistics service that will allow you to watch how effective your links are. Some of these services are better than others but most will at least allow you to see what is selling and what is not. Watching your results will help you plan future affiliate efforts. Keep track of which positions for links work best, which products sell, what wording around links works well, etc. and use all the information that you can get your hands on as you work to plan future affiliate strategies.

11. Build A Network Before You Need It

Probably the most important thing I have learned about affiliate marketing is that it works best the bigger and stronger your network is. As you may recall, in my first list I mentioned that ‘traffic levels are important’ - which is true, but connected to it is your ‘network’.

Whether it be your loyal blog readers and subscribers, your email list, your Twitter connections, your Facebook or MySpace friends or some other social network - the better and bigger your network the better you will do at driving affiliate sales.

It is not just about size – Although important, the size of your network is only part of what I am talking about here. Equally important is the depth of relationship you have with your readers/network and the amount of trust they have in you. If you have consistently helped people and been useful to them over a long time they are generally more inclined to respond favourably to your recommendations.

Relevance/Focus counts - Another key element of your network is its relevance to the topic that you are doing promotions on. For example – you may have heard of or seen some people on Twitter running competitions to build their follower numbers in a way that just brings in any follower they can get. The problem with this is that they end up with a very large but unfocused network. I recommend having a smaller network of people who all share one interest than a larger one comprised of “friends” who just signed up to get a prize.

Finally, a network takes time to build - If you think that you will be doing some sort of affiliate marketing at some point in the future then it would be a good idea to start building your network now, before you need it. This gives you time to build the depth of relationships, the trust and focus of your network, before you begin promoting affiliate products to your online friends.

12. Try Different Media

I have alluded to the fact that promotions work differently on different media above already, but it is worth mentioning once more.

For example: Some affiliate promotions seem to convert best in a blog post, others work best when you send an email to a list you have been building, while still others seem to take off on Twitter, Facebook or other social media sites.

The key is to try different approaches as you go along, to have build up your network before you need it (see 11. above) and to track the results for each promotion so you can check what is and what is not bringing in money.

13. Multiple Promotions Of The Same Product

If you write a single blog post promoting an affiliate product you will have a certain percentage of readers buy the product (the percentage varies a lot). If you are able and willing to follow that up with a different type of post a few days later it can reinforce the promotion.

The following is a good way to achieve this:

1. Blog Post 1 - a post announcing a new product, giving some benefits, explaining who the product is relevant for,and so on.
2. Blog Post 2 - a post a few days later in the form of an interview with the person or company behind the product - exploring why it was made, expanding upon what it includes and what accessories are available (if any), who it is intended for, etc., thereby giving the product context. You should try to include some tips or suggestions for readers who do not buy the product as well so that it will become a useful post for everyone.
3. Email List - later in the week email out the subscriber list, linking to the previous posts and reinforcing the promotion.
4. Tweets/Followups – You could also include a few Tweets about the promotion throughout the week and should consider a third blog post a week or so later – perhaps including some reader reviews of the product.

It is important not to spam your network but to find interesting and useful ways to draw attention to the product several times over a week or two so in order to reinforce it and give those who need a little more time to make a decision the opportunity to buy the product.

14. Bonuses DO Work

There are a lot of techniques that internet marketers use to increase sales of their products. Some of them may seem a little ‘cheap’, ‘nasty’ even, but many do work. Two of the least offensive and/or manipulative techniques work with the promise of added value. There are two easily manageable ways for adding value to the affiliate promotion: you can make the offer more attractive by adding a bonus of your own or you can ask the person/company behind the product to offer a special bonus or discount just for your readers.

Everyone who has ever tried it can tell you that conversions are significantly higher.

15. It Takes Time

A point I always stess and that may be familiar to you is that making money from blogs (through any method) takes time. While an affiliate program does have the potential to make you a huge amount of money very quickly - it almost always comes only after you have done a lot of work and spent a lot of time and effort on building and maintaining your network.

The early days of building your network may see very little - if any - results. I earned very little from affiliate marketing in my first nine or ten months of blogging but after that it has really begun to take off - partly as a result of getting smarter with the my promotions and partly because my network grew in size and quality.

16. Timing Is Essential

One of the things I have learned over the last couple of months is just how much difference there can be in the rate of sales at different times of the day and week. It can vary depending upon the location of most of a blog’s readers but generally sales will go up significantly during business hours in the region most of your readers reside in and on weekdays. Not really surprising, is it?

This information translates to promoting products: Unless the product happens to focus especially upon the type of people surfing the web on weekends or late at night you will want to time your promotions to those times of the week (and the day) that your target audience is online. And - avoid public holidays.

Please read Part 1 as well.

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate programs,make money,monetize blog,blogging for money

8 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on Your Blog

Your Ad Here

 

There are a number of very popular affiliate programs available to bloggers who are interested in monetizing their blog. Amazon Associates Program, Clickbank Affiliate Program, Commission Junction Affiliate Program and Linkshare are probably the most widely known. Today I’d like to give you a few tips that should help you get the best results out of any affiliate program that you choose to run with.

1. Consider Your Audience

This one is a given - but it is worth putting yourself in the shoes of your typical reader and consider what he or she might be looking for as they visit your blog. Are they shopping for specific products? Might they be interested in related products or accessories? What would entice them to purchase? Have your reader in mind rather than the product. If you take this advice by heart you will be doing your readers a favor as well as making a few dollars on the side.

2. Genuine Recommendations and Personal Endorsements Work Best

There are literally hundreds of thousands (perhaps even millions) of products and services for you to choose from to recommend to your blog’s readers but, unfortunately, making money from them is not as easy as randomly adding links to them from your blog. Your blog’s readers come back to your blog time and again because something about your writing resonates with them - they trust and respect you, and perhaps the quickest way to destroy this is to recommend that they buy products that cannot possibly benefit them.

So far, I have had the best results from affiliate programs whenever and wherever I give an open and honest appraisal of the product - including both its strenghts and its weaknesses. People want to know exactly what they are buying first, therefore you should tell them about what possible limitations a product might have - they will be grateful for your honesty and buy it anyway if it meets their particular need.

3. Only Link to Quality Products

We all like to make sure that we are getting the best value for our money - your readers are no different in this respect than anybody else and they are more likely to make a purchase if they can rely on you to find the best products for them. Choose products and companies with good reputations, quality sales pages and safe payment options. There is nothing worse than writing a glowing review of a product only to send your readers to a page that looks cheap and untrustworthy.

4. Contextual Deep Links Work Best

A while ago, when I started using the Amazon Associate Program on one of my blogs I naively thought that all I had to do was put an Amazon banner ad (linking to Amazon’s front page or – alternatively – to special offers) at the top of my blog. I assumed that my readers would see it and surf over to Amazon and buy up big - thereby making me rich and happy. Alas, nothing could have been further from reality.

That is the reason  why I always stress that bloggers should learn a little bit from contextual advertising when it comes to affiliate programs. The secret of contextual ads like AdSense is that when visitors are reading a post on a particular topic on your blog they will be shown an advertisement for a product that is closely related to that topic so they are more likely to click it than if they saw an ad for something else. The same is true for all affiliate programs. A banner to a general page on every page on your site will not be anywhere near as effective as multiple links throughout your blog that advertise products that are relevant to readers reading a particular part of your blog.

So if you are writing a blog about digital cameras and have a review for a particular product - the most effective affiliate program that you could link to from within the content of that page would be one that sends your readers directly to a page selling that specific model of digital camera. This is how I use the Amazon program today. It is more work than AdSense-style contextual advertising because you’re not just putting one piece of code into a template but rather need to place individual links on many pages - but it is worth the effort.

5. Consider the Positioning of Links

The key factor in AdSense optimization is the positioning of ads. I keep telling fellow bloggers to position their ads in the hotspots on pages (like the top of a left hand side bar - or inside content - or at the end of posts above comments – directly below the header, etc). The same principles should be applied to affiliate advertising.

6. Traffic Levels are Important

While they are not the sole factor - traffic levels are obviously key when it comes to making money from almost any online activity. The more people see your carefully placed, relevant and well designed affiliate links the more likely it is that one of them will click on them and go on to make a purchase. So do not just work on your affiliate links - work on building a readership. Not just this, consider as well how you might direct traffic on your blog toward pages where people are more likely to see your affiliate links.

7. Diversify without Cluttering

Don’t put all your affiliate efforts into one basket. There are plenty of products out there to link to so there is no need to just work on one. But do not clutter up your blog with too many affiliate program links. If you do so you run the serious risk of diluting the effectiveness of your links and annoying your readership.

8. Transparency

Do not try to trick your readers into clicking links that could make you money. While it may not always be feasible to label each and every affiliate link I think at least some attempt should be made to let people know what type of link they are clicking on. Consistency is important with this so readers of your blog will always know what to expect. You could, for instance, put a note beside or under affiliate links to let readers know that this is what they are (unless the wording of a link makes it obvious that the reader will be taken to some sort of shop, ie a link my say ‘buy the XXX product’ or ‘get the latest product on XXX’). But the best and easiest way to go about this is to use side-wide diclaimers to inform your readers that you are using affiliate links.

 

Please read Part 2 as well.

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate program,amazon,links,make money,monetize blog,product links,monetizing blog,endorsement,advertising

How to Find Suitable Affiliate Programs for Your Blog

Your Ad Here

 

Blogs provide a lot of different opportunities for bloggers to earn money. Advertising revenue, direct sales as well as contextual links are some of the most popular money-makers. One of the best ways for you to earn money with a blog, however, is to find a suitable affiliate program. An affiliate program that fits the content of your blog has a far greater potential for earning you money than most of the other options.

How to find Suitable Affiliate Programs

1. Step 1

Identify categories of products relevant to the topic or niche of your blog. For instance, if you blog about photography look for anything a photographer could need. Seek out products like digital cameras, special lenses, lens cleaners, filters, tripods and books about photography.

2. Step 2

Check with your preferred product vendor to see if they have an affiliate program you can use on your blog or website. Many companies participate in affiliate programs, either directly to you or through affiliate websites like Commission Junction or Link Share.

3. Step 3

Choose products that are relevant to your blog's target demographic. Even if your blog is about parachuting and you can't find a good parachuting affiliate program, chances are you can find products that are relevant to your average reader based on their age, gender, hobbys.

4. Step 4

Re-evaluate the affiliate programs you employ on a regular basis. Some affiliate programs may end without notifying you, and you will end up with a dead link on your blog. Some affiliate programs will make you more money than others, too. Be prepared to make changes and find new affiliate programs for your blog if need should be.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: affiliate program,monetize blog,make money blogging,blogging for money