About a month ago I decided I wanted to test out ads on my blog to see what kind of return I would get by devoting some right sidebar space for a medium sized ad. I was a bit leery about the idea, but figured it was worth a shot seeing as my blog traffic had reached a point where I thought the return could be worth it. I decided to go with Social Spark (IZEA) since they offered a model that pays on impressions rather then click-throughs. I knew the return probably wouldn’t be as high as a click-through model, but I figured it was a good starting point.
Here are the results for the past month:
- Total Impressions: 9,384
- eCPM: $.0.81 (amount paid per 1,000 impressions)
- Total earnings: $7.60
So in essence I earned a couple cups of coffee. Worth it? Not in my opinion. It’s not really a knock on IZEA in anyway, the market bears what the market bears, so what it really comes down to is that if you want to incorporate an impression based monetization strategy on your blog, you better be in the 100,000 page views per month for it to bear any real fruit. Sure, I could just keep the ad on there and earn a few bucks, but quite honestly, I’d rather have the real estate for something else.
What I’ve learned is that it makes much more sense to monetize a blog of this size through affiliate and referral links of products and services I use, enjoy and trust. I don’t get a ton of return in this way, but when I do, one sale equals what an entire year of running an impression ad would. Therefore, I’ll stick to that model.
What monetization strategies have worked for you?
I have some aff links on my blog, but lately I’ve been experimenting with Pinterest aff marketing.
As you prob know, Pinterest used Skimlinks to monetize links to products, so what’s good for the goose… 🙂
For example, I have a board http://pinterest.com/dinodogan/top-20-books-of-2011/
It’s 20 best books on Amazon for 2011, and each book links to Amazon via my aff code.
Each pin contains a description so each pin is very keyword-rich and therefore search-friendly.
It has already yielded great results and I’ve been kinda half-assing it…it’s really only an experiment for me anyways, but it does seam like a great, and easy, way to monetize sans blog.
Wow. Interesting stuff and a great idea. I wonder how that would have worked if Pinterest stuck with their affiliate links. Would their’s trump yours? Either way, I’ll have to check this out.
The currently use Amazon banner links in my sidebar for recommended books. I have about 3,500 monthly visitors and this earns between $10-$20 of Amazon credit per month. Not a lot but it is good for a free Kindle book or two per month.
Just goes to show the affiliate path is a more viable option for personal bloggers. Now if I could just find time to read I could do this as well!
I have a weekly sale on my blog and then except for a few affiliates links here and there stay out of using banner ads. My focus is list building, so I can drive more traffic through that list. However, there are some sites I would consider doing banner ads when I have a larger audience (BSA for one). Cool test!
I appreciate your honesty, Jason. Few have the courage to keep it real.
Thanks for sharing! My views are about the same as yours so it’s nice to know I’m not leaving too much dinero on the table. I too prefer to do affiliate marketing, and market my stuff that way. Just discovered your site and am excited to follow it.
Thanks Ellen! Definitely think that banner ads make more sense for high traffic sites. Just doesn’t pay off otherwise.
I was reading your previous post about this experiment and was curious how it will turn out. Thanks for sharing your results with us 😉
As what I see it’s a kind of progression in which your stuff attain, a very interesting changes…
Thanks for sharing with us the real essence of Blog Monetization to our stuff…
Its truly hard to monetize a blog to make you good money. I get a lot of attention on my blog because I post some interesting stuff that actually helps people achieve good bodies, but its difficult to make good money. Even with 1,000 views a day on some of my postings I still make a few cents. I guess I don’t blog for the money for now. I like writing and helping people. Of course, it would be great to make a living out of this, but that won’t happen yet. Thanks for the post. I look forward to more.
It is really hard to earn online with blogs until you seriously apply the site optimization tricks and strategies. I have experience of running a blog with google page rank 3 and earning a few cents daily. I get around 6000 visitor monthly at my ‘health’ related blog.
Thanks for your honest post, Jason. I don’t have nearly the traffic you do and I had thought about an advertising model if I ever generated the traffic to warrant it.. now you’ve already done the work for me. I agree it doesn’t seem worthwhile at all. Thank you.