Blogging 101 – Top tools to monetize your blog

After the process of setting up a blog, working with the basics and promoting it, it’s time to milk some money out of your hard work. No doubt it’s not a cake walk but at the same time, it isn’t a rocket science either. We shall look at some of the monetization programs which you can opt for your blog.

The biggest of all is Google’s very own – Adsense. For the uninitiated, Google Adsense is an advertising program by Google than can be run on your site or blog to enable text, picture and video ads. The Adsense program is one of the most recognizable and widely implemented online monetization tool by bloggers across the globe. It is one of the highest revenue generation program for most bloggers. The ads which get displayed on your site are more often than not contextual.

One of the main reasons of Google Adsense program being widely used than others is the ease of use and the Google brand. The ads are closely matched in context with the post, geographical location, and other parameters, etc. There are different ways to use Adsense effectively. Be it feeds, search, domain names and mobile content – Google has it for all!

Surprisingly, most people think that Adsense is the only program that is present on the web to help them monetize your blog. However, there are a plethora of other programs that people have successfully made money with. We shall talk about a few of them;

1. Clicksor – It helps in driving customers with graphical banners, text ads, interstitial ads and pop-up ads. It is different from other programs because it majorly focuses on concentrating on converting visitors to your site into consumers via their product Content Marketing Technology. This helps the user in increasing the ROI quickly and effectively than others.
2. TargetPoint – They claim to be technology leaders by providing the most relevant of ads. It is one of the most cost effective pay-per-search based program. The company only works with a limited numeral of direct advertisers. Their services are mostly publisher oriented in which the publisher will have control command over the ads form, regulation over ad content, entire statistics on your performance and enhanced bottom-line revenue.
3. Adbrite – It is tipped as the 2^nd best advertising program after Adsense. The ads fit the content of your site and have their base of advertisers which are biggies such as Live Nation, GM, AT&T and Verizon. As they are the 2^nd best, their ads run on more than 1 billion pages and provide opportunities to scale up.
4. BidClix – They claim to be one of the fastest growing ad programs on the web. Wiki says BidClix was the first online advertising network to create a “self serve” system that allowed advertisers to create and manage their advertising campaigns and allowed publishers to manage their online advertising inventory through a web-based interface. This probably is their USP.
5. Chitika – It is one of the largest search targeted advertising networks serving over 30 thousand websites and is a proven place for online buyers and consumers. Chitika originates its meaning from the South Indian language Telugu meaning “in a snap”. They offer their services based on user’s ‘intent driven’ search activity and also tenders to search marketing which is beyond Google and Yahoo. Their success is authenticated by reviews that its users have written.
6. AllFeeds – They implement a proprietary infrastructure technology that pulls and pushes results to and from numerous search engines at the same time. As a result of this technology, advertisers and affiliates earn more than other programs and for the users, the site experience is enhanced. This also helps provide sponsored listings and value added service in your site.
7. Veoda – Veoda’s search engine returns accurate results in a colorful format while providing an enriched internet experience. Their USP is that they offer add-on services such as raising up money for a non profit organization. Veoda includes step by step wizards for creating search boxes, flash listings, static listings, pop-ups and fly in ads.
8. RevenuePilot – They offer one of the most innovative, efficient and effective means to monetize the traffic on a site and generate revenue out of it. The details of the use of RevenenuePIlot describe its operation. This program allows the user to specify the keywords that one wishes to advertise or link to and thus help in achieving greater targeting.
9. Kanoodle – They offer one of the brightest ads on the web and are affiliated with thousands of search engines across the world. However, the opinions in forums don’t appear that the consumers have been happy using this particular service.
10. Quigo – It is one of the cheaper programs that users can select and their ad placements are based on brand, page or section, geographical location and topic. They offer automated contextual ad serving systems for online publishers, portals, PPC engines and shopping sites. They have some of the biggest of names as their clients.

There are several more options to work it out, but to top it all, it’s the content that shall be the king.

Image credits: EC

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