Which are the best and most effective ways to make your blog or independent news site return a profit?

Photo credit: Georgios M.W.

Prompted by Make Money off Your Blog, a recent editorial article by Washington Post contributor Mike Peed, I would like to share my own personal discoveries and humble recommendations on how to best monetize online content while maintaining your site free of all forms of interruptive ads (banners, pop-ups, flashy ads, etc.).

On February 1st, as promised, I have turned off all of the remaining banners and sponsor promoboxes appearing on my mini-network, as what will be driving this year revenues will be all made up without using any traditional, in-the-face, interruptive promotional messages. As I have clearly written, the road to successful online ad promotion is indeed another one.

But these are the unique, effective revenue channels you should seriously consider to increase the sustainability and profit potential of your micro-publishing enterprise. If intelligently used each one of these can help any serious online publisher move her news site from a part-time passion into a serious, competitive business.

You can't do it overnight, but with enough nose, patience and dedication you can make good content pay back for itself and then some.

1) Google AdSense
AdSense is by far the best, most rewarding monetization resource for blogs, for news sites and for small, content-rich information sites. AdSense is a service offered by Google that allows independent publishers, bloggers and news site owners to publish text-based, context-relevant ads next to the content on their sites. This is all done automatically without you, the publisher, having to worry about anything else but placing a small piece of code inside each of your Web pages.

For every click on those contextual ads a small amount of money is credited to the publishing site, while Google keeps an undisclosed amount of the total advertising share for itself. While many lament lack of relevance for the ads and little return for the increased info clutter on their pages, lots of silent publishers, probably the ones who consciously make less noise about this, are making serious money with this program. What few have understood, is that to make AdSense work for you ($$), there is some strategic work to be done. For just placing the code on your pages you shouldn't expect anything to tell your friends about. The focus of your site, the way the content is organized, the way in which your web pages are coded, the titles you use and lastly, the color and position you select for placing your AdSense ads on your Web pages, all make a very significant difference to the results you can obtain. Very significant. What is important to note here, is that different rules apply to different types of pages and content. So there is no set of rules that applies homogeneously to all sites and it is key that each publisher keeps questioning the integration of contextual, text-based ads by systematic, ongoing testing, experimentation and optimization. For a blogger with focus this can mean from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. For a dedicated publisher, covering high-paying information areas, it is not impossible to get into the 5-digit range without any major investments and with a relatively short time-to-market. I am not referring here to a blogger in the traditional sense, but rather to focused and very professional independent information resources, e.g. SearchEngineWatch.com or Paidcontent.org.

AdSense offers also the opportunity to monetize site searches while providing a powerful, lightning-fast search engine for your own site at no extra cost. By providing search-relevant ads on search results pages generated on your site Google AdSense adds another great opportunity to monetize premium service and access with relevant text-based information about products and services.

Too bad Google AdSense doesn't let you select your contextual advertisers from its inventory.

Here some great examples of AdSense at work.

Alternative solutions to AdSense: Kanoodle, Overture in the near future (for now it is open only to large publishers)

2) Blogads
Blogads is an effective solution to get control of your advertisers and to compare your own profit share transparently with the one of your online ad agency. As the name clearly implies, Blogads is an advertising service for blogs. As I have pointed out two years ago when the service first came out, Blogads offers a tremendous opportunity for small, independent publishers, blogs and news sites to sell their ad space in a direct and effective way. Blogads keeps 20 percent of your net revenue and sends you the rest via Paypal or check as soon as you reach a predetermined amount.

For your advertisers Blogads provides a great bonus in terms of speed and simplicity: "Ordering an ad takes just two or three minutes. Submit your image and/or text ad. Define its duration. Pay with Paypal's secure forms. You are done. After the blogger approves the ad, return to tweak and optimize clickthrus, renew or order on new blogs."

In the case of Blogads the publisher can fully choose which ads to accept and which ones to reject.

Alternative services: Crispads is an advertising network focused on blogs. Crispads allows publishers to place ads in their blog entries so that they propagate to their RSS/ATOM feeds to generate revenues when content is syndicated.

grokAds - an advertising clearinghouse for both buyers and sellers which works with any type of site. Allows advertising to a specific market quickly and easily.

Tagword - Much like Blogads, Tagword also allows you to select which kinds of ads you want to sell to your site visitors as well as allowing you to select the prices 'you' want to charge. Add the code provided to your selected Web pages and you are selling text ads on your site!
Users can create their text ads directly and submit them in a matter of minutes. Purchased ads start to display on your site as soon as you decide so.

or

Create your own Text-based Ads service

TextAds is an open source text ad management system for websites using PHP. It has been deployed with content management systems like PostNuke and should work with any PHP based website.

The Idya AdSystem
The Idya AdSystem is a text ad management solution for websites. It supports keyword-driven text-ads and multiple sites. Installation takes place in a few minutes. Simply upload it to your site, use the installer to install it, and your site is ready to show text ads. You can see the entire list of features that AdSystem provides in the feature list. The AdSystem is written in PHP 4 and MySQL, though it can be ported to many other DBMSs. Supports PayPal payments too. The AdSystem is presently being re-engineered for version 2.

3) Amazon Associate
The Amazon Associate program offers the opportunity to independent online publishers to promote as affiliate agents any product in its inventory, just by adding a small, identifying code to the links that take visitors of your site to a specific Amazon product page (books, DVDs, electronics, etc.). If those visitors buy that Amazon item you will be rewarded with a small commission.

Though the amount of return that can be made with the Amazon Associate program is relatively quite small, it is nonetheless an extra income trail that doesn't require adding clutter or not-relevant interruptive information to your valuable content. References to relevant books add in fact to the overall user experience allowing those who want to search for more to have some immediate, direct and hand-picked-by-the-author selections. Again this can be seen as added value that brings also an extra income stream.

As a matter of fact it is possible to earn as much as 10 percent per sale from an Amazon Associate sale.

4) Text Links
Text links may be a controversial area for some purists, but for those seeking an extra opportunity to monetize their content without adding clutter and intrusive ads to their content it is certainly an interesting opportunity to explore in depth. Text links are a new emerging advertising market that brokers small, text-only links, which often don't even need to be made prominent (the payback is not on the clicks) on your site pages. What the advertisers seek is a link presence on your site to gain extra "authority" (such as the one provide by the Google PageRank indicator) in an artificial way. This is why you may notice many of these text links being placed at the very bottom of content pages or in other non-premium positions. Again, what the advertiser is seeking is simply a link to her site to increase its value on the search engines. The good thing is that as this market grows, the independent publisher has more and more options to select from and can therefore approve and accept text links that are also complementary and relevant to his own content.

In fact, while for now we have seen many of such text links point to second-rate services and products (online casinos, poker, Viagra, etc.), as this marketplace becomes more visible a greater number of advertisers representing more mainstream tools and products are also starting to appear in numbers. And since you are the one to finally accept any such advertising contract, the selection of what you display is always on you.

To play this game it is best to have a Google PageRank of 4 or more. (Here is an article where you can find out how to measure Google PageRank). For those having a PR value of 6, 7 or more there is real opportunity for serious monetization. As an indication consider that 5 or 6 text links ads can bring easily a few hundred dollars every month on a PR 6 site/blog.

A Google generated list of companies brokering text link ads: http://tinyurl.com/66pc4

The example above: FaganFinder
(check the bottom of the home page to see what I mean)

Other online text link agencies: LinkAdage Auctions - Offers blog owners the chance to sell text links on their site at market value via a private on-line auction environment.

Text Link Brokerage

Paid Text Links

LinkAuctions

See also: Will Plain-Text Ads Continue to Rule? (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

5) Premium Content Sponsorships
Obviously the opportunity to sell sponsored space remains another monetization opportunity for the independent publisher and while this used to be associated with prominent flashy banner ads, the ways in which this can be made effective are changing and expanding in many ways. In my view the successful strategy is one to use selected and relevant sponsors to introduce, give access or extend the value offered by premium content. A thematic news channel or RSS feed can be appropriately sponsored by a relevant product/service. A rich section of related additional content to a standard article can also be appropriately sponsored. A resourceful bibliography or annotated resources section in your next ebook or mini-guide is also fertile ground to showcase relevant sponsors effectively.

A comparative review of screen-sharing tools is sponsored by two vendors in complementary industries: iVocalize, a web conferencing vendor, and Think of It, an online resource about conferencing technologies - see sponsors on the top right corner of the display - click on the image to enlarge it

X-events, podcasts, live and recorded web conferences, online interviews, all lend themselves to many unintrusive and highly relevant sponsorship opportunities.

See also: New Online Advertising Strategies: No More Interruptive Ads

6) Related Reports
Another opportunity of which we will start to see more offerings in the near future is the one of affiliate marketing of related research reports. For sites that cover very specific industry topics there is indeed opportunity to play an effective marketing role for research clearinghouses and large publishers of intelligence reports, analyst insider briefings, white papers, research findings.

These types of reports usually carry a higher price tag than normal ebooks and physical publications. The reason for this is that their content is in general very focused on specific industries and topics, and it aggregates information that is not easily accessible anywhere else.

Good example above visible at: http://p2p-weblog.com/

The technology to make the above possible is made available by 21st Publish (the blog hosting provider) in partnership with Market Research.

7) Affiliate Sales
A good monetization channel for very selected products and services can be the one of affiliate sales. This approach allows most sites to sign up to become affiliate resellers of specific products.

As long as the affiliate products do not cut into the publisher credibility and provide pointers to useful, high-value products that the publisher endorses fully, affiliate sales can be a very rewarding monetization channel.

The commissions received for these sales can vary quite a bit depending on the product and the original vendor sales and marketing strategy. LinkShare and Commission Junction are the two largest affiliate program brokers and a visit to their catalogs can give you a good idea of what products and commissions are available.

If you write and publish your own e-books and other premium content publications, you may want to seriously consider using an affiliate sales program to give more reach and exposure to your products.

My preferred provider on this front is Share-It!, which offers full payment and ecommerce infrastructure to any online publishers while integrating a customizable affiliate program for any account. You can set the commission and the products that you want to allow your affiliates to manage all by yourself. Payments and accountability of the transactions are all taken care of automatically by Share-It!; it sends updates and timely sales reports both to you and to your registered resellers. The system even automatically creates the content pages that the reseller can link to from her own site.

8) Online Guides and E-Books
Self-published books, e-books, mini-guides, tutorials or other types of premium content can also generate a respectable source of income for those who have indeed something relevant, important and useful content to share. Focused guides and reference publications in niche areas draw a growing demand from qualified customers, especially when these information products can be easily evaluated in one form or another.

9) POD Publishing: Print On Demand
You can also increase profitability an exposure of your e-books by utilizing a company like Lightning Source, which can take your digital content up for distribution on the Amazon bookshelves while allowing you to also offer physically printed versions of your masterpieces with the use of POD technology.

See also: Turn your weblog into a book

10) Merchandising
Selling your branded t-shirt or baseball cap makes sense when your publishing project has a strong brand, a powerful message or an issue that it stands behind.

Why only a few devoted fans would shell out USD $20 or more to buy a branded Chris Pirillo t-shirt promoting his site, if the bold tagline on it would spell out a strong message or slogan about RSS, podcasting, or Firefox adoption, which are some of the "flags" Chris has taken at heart in some of his past posts, well quite a few readers would have liked supporting the cause while getting a personal flag to carry around themselves. So, I really think that this works effectively only where a) the personal brand is good enough to create a desire in readers to "stand" for it (few bloggers or news sites have this kind of charisma, but I guess that people like Joi Ito or Howard Rheingold could command some of this), b) the author or blog / site stands for something clearly identifiable. It may be an overarching mission or it can be a number of changing issues that can be used as effective marketing themes for this type of products.

CafePress offers an extensive catalog of shorts, caps, calendars, mugs making up over 50 customizable merchandise products awaiting only your logo and tagline to be printed on them. CafePress provides the raw merchandise that you can customize by uploading your artwork and adjusting it interactively on their online command center. While CafePress charges you a base cost for the material (e.g.: USD $13.99 base price for T-shirts) you can price your branded merchandise as you like and CafePress will dutifully manage transaction clearance, payment, shipment anywhere in the world and send monthly payments to you for your hard-earned commissions. In the process CafePress also creates a full web-based shopping center that can be customized to fit nicely with the existing design of your web site.

11) Collections - Anthologies - Compilations - Curated content on CD-ROM
Thanks to CafePress and similar emerging services, independent online publishers also have the opportunity to deliver vast amounts of content such as aggregated anthologies of articles, reports, audio and video files, or research collections on physical CD-ROM media while providing complete infrastructure support for the mastering, duplication, labeling and shipping of these.

Again, the publisher pays a wholesale cost for the production of each CD-ROM ordered and the profit is derived from the markup that the publisher decides to set on each item sold. CafePress clears payments from customers, prints the CD, packages it and ships anywhere your customer is. It then sets aside your profit margin and cuts a check for you at the end of the month.

Your publisher base price is USD $4.99 per CD (excluding shipping). You can mark up the price as much as you want and CafePress will collect payments and will send back your profit margin to you.

More info: CafePress Data CD

12) Paid Assignment
While many find this very controversial, it is a matter of fact that there is a growing demand from companies to use bloggers and independent sites to talk, promote or cover specific products and issues. The Marqui program, in which I have decided to participate, is a good example of this. But there are certainly other ways to go about it. One can sell oneself to a company and go and become their official online blogger. One can only take specific assignments for other prominent sites and work for them, with or without credit, to cover specific issues.

The only really important issue here is to be clear and upfront about it. That is why people get so stiff about this today. Because they are afraid that the people they trusted and read without question before may now be writing articles because they are being paid.

From my personal point of view I can say the following:

a) question your sources, no matter how good they are and how fanatical you are about them.

b) take that ham away from your eyes: there is no objectivity, outside of the transparency of the reporter, blogger, newsman. Everyone is influenced in one way or another. You need not take direct money from a customer to be paid. How about all those journalists or bloggers because they have been pitched with nice and free evaluation access to a tool everyone else has to pay for? What counts, and what I think readers value the most, is being upfront, transparent, credible.

Taking money per se is not a disreputable act, nor it is to be paid to use one's own writing skills to cover a certain topic: isn't this what newspapers command their editors to do?

What the critics of paid assignment have underestimated is the amount of demand and offer that there is out there for this. If the paid writers are transparent, accountable and professional at what they are assigned to do, this is as legitimate as any other activity.

I guess you only need to decide if you are in it for the art or the part.

Marqui presently pays USD $800 to each blogger who has been accepted and who writes four articles a month in which Marqui gets at least a mention and a linkback.

13) Donations
If you are one of those that indeed supports some cause that goes beyond the mere reporting of news in your interest areas, why not consider asking your readers for upfront support?

People like to take a stand for the people whom they think can make a difference, so why not using this strategy upfront to finance some of your effective communication campaigns? PayPal Donations, the Amazon's Honor System and BitPass all offer a simple way to add a snippet of code to your site that makes it easy for people to make a donation to you.

Depending on the system adopted you may even opt to receive money in euros, U.S. dollars, Japanese yen, pounds sterling and in several other currencies.

If all above fails:

a) Join a publishing network
If you are just starting up with your blog or small news site, and need either more traffic, exposure or experience before you feel you can do any of the above on your own, then a great, free university (which may return some profit as well) may be one of joining a group blog.

Metafilter, Chris Pirillo Lockergnome Channels, Blogcritics, WikiNews, Blogit or any of these emerging group blogs, if not at my own MasterNewMedia, MasterViews and Kolabora.com, where I am always actively searching for additional contributors.

Working in a group blog can ease the pressure of having to post on a daily basis, gives you much greater exposure in much less time and exposes you and your ideas to an existing community of interested readers and other writers.

In some cases like at Weblogs Inc., Creative Blogging and elsewhere, contributing bloggers are also paid a share of what the advertising revenue of their blog generates.

Another great alternative is to look into the creation of local news sites and Get Local News has a smart idea ready to be picked up.

See also: Making money with Blogs by Jason Calacanis

b) Blog your best without worrying about making money in any direct way. Money will come as a consequence of your extra exposure and visibility. Blogging will create extra income by allowing you to enter in rapid contact with relevant people in your areas of interest, and by facilitating exchange and contact with prospective customers via your online presence. Simply blogging with no strings attached increases your credibility and authority in the field and earns you extra income when you are called in to give your advice. Having a blog in which one showcases his best talent at reviewing, exploring or analyzing issues and products is the best way to market oneself and to provide a living showcase of one's own talents and abilities.

To listen:
Making Money - session from Bloggercon III
Doc Searls leads the Making Money session at Bloggercon III. Audio from IT Conversations. [runtime: 01:24:31, 38.7Mb, recorded 2004-11-06]

True Voice: The Business of Blogging
Session hosted by Stowe Boyd at the Blog Business Summit in Seattle on Jan. 24th 2005, with Robert Scoble and Get Real contributor Greg Narian.

To read:
Make Money off Your Blog
Washington Post - January 27th 2005

The Blogs' Long Tail: Blogs And RSS Profit Potential

All of the above are non-exclusive strategies that can be used in parallel to create multiple income streams for bloggers, news sites and other content-focused, online resources.

A few guiding principles have stood out from my own experience in the search for creating multiple income streams for an independent online publisher, blogger or small news site:

• Relevance, Value
  People want to see relevant information. Related, complementary to the main subject. If they have liked what they have found, what better opportunity to give them more of what they want? Make your readers kings and queens at your site! The products and services a publisher selects, should fit the editorial line of the blog/site as much as possible; this ensures a true continuum between articles and promotional messages.
• Complementarity
  The additional ad or sponsorship information has to bring in value to the overall content. Selling prestigious and prominent content space for money, with no consideration to the relevance of the sponsoring firm to the content being sponsored, is a wasted opportunity for both sides. Given that no-one really enjoys being distracted by brand x or product z if attending at some other goal, why not leverage this natural and reasonable defense mechanism and match sponsors to relevant events and content spaces? Why not allow sponsors to truly provide an additional value to the content/event being offered by providing access/integration to premium-quality complementary resources?
• Visual unobtrusiveness - Non-interruptiveness
  Sponsorships, text-based ads, promotional messages need not to be screaming for visual attention. If they are to complement and enrich what is already out there, they only need to be properly and intelligently juxtaposed, formatted and made as legible, scannable and printable, just as all of the other content available on their hosting page. A site's web developer should have full CSS control over the layout and positioning of these items.
• Publisher Control
  The publisher must be king
  This is what I think. It is the publisher and not the advertising agency or some obscure algorithm that should control which ads show up on my web pages. It should be the publisher who takes the role of information director in full; not just in respect to what is written, but also about what is promoted. Separation of editorial and marketing offices would appear not to be an advantage in the type of new-media universe I am envisioning.

  Services like Blogads and the text-link clearinghouses facilitate this by allowing publishers to maintain full and final control of who are going to be their advertisers.

  Google AdSense allows some control of which ads are displayed by letting publishers filter out up to 200 advertisers that may not be fitting their editorial line. Ideally, as I have advocated, a publisher should be able to select from a large inventory of relevant and complementary advertisers the ads he wants to carry.

• Endorsement
  A publisher should also endorse in some way the products she advertises as to provide great value with such "recommendations" to her readers. I have repeatedly refused to be a very well-paid affiliate reseller or advertiser for products that I didn't believe in, while I have offered multiple times my space for free to companies and products which I thought deserved the attention of my readers (proof is on hand if needed). A sense of personal ethics and editorial coherence is all it takes

Which monetization strategy to use?

Diversify income streams
Don't bet all your money on one horse and think like a coffee shop where money is made with many small transactions across a good variety of (generally low-cost related offerings.

What I am learning is that you can make money by creating and cultivating multiple, small, income streams. Relaying on one big source of income is always very dangerous. If that resource disappears so does your ability to survive.

Photo credit: Elliott Scott

What are other blog / site monetization ideas that small publishers can utilize to make their passion a full profession?

What do you think?