If you have a successful blog with a large readership, you can create an additional stream of income (and repeat visitors) by having a newsletter. Depending on the topic of your blog, you may have readers who wish to receive a newsletter that contains more in-depth information. You start by creating an email opt-in list of newsletter subscribers. This list can then be used for other marketing promotions or you can monetize your newsletter through sponsor ads.

If your blogs offer something of value to your readers, chances are they will expect your newsletter or email campaign to do the same. This is a good thing because you will attract subscribers, but if you don’t deliver you will find that many of your readers end up unsubscribing. Add value to your email correspondences in the same way you make your blogs interesting to retain and attract subscribers.

Make sure you give readers something of value in these emails and give them a reason to read them so that your advertising methods have the greatest chances of being successful. If you promise little known tips or hard to find information, you better deliver or readers will unsubscribe.

A good way to increase the number of people subscribing is to reveal extra information that can be found only in the newsletter.

One example is to conclude a blog entry in an email for subscribers only.

Readers who are eager to get the whole story and will be more likely to subscribe to your newsletter. Free incentives are also a good way to get subscribers, it doesn’t have to be something fancy. Some ideas include offering a free report or list of tips. Even the free info you give out should be useful. Don’t just offer up junk. If your free information is that good, people will come back for more.

Monetizing a newsletter or email campaign is similar to monetizing your blog. While you cannot use Adsense and other similar advertising methods, you can directly sell ad space and depending on the size of your subscriber list you can charge a hefty sum.

You can also use affiliate marketing in your newsletter, just be sure to have the bulk of your newsletter contains relevant content and not just ads or else your readers will start dropping like flies. Make sure your affiliate marketing is related to the content of your newsletter or email and that your audience will be interested in what you are promoting. Don’t overdo it. Treat your subscribers well!

You can also sell your own merchandise through your newsletter. If you have created merchandise with your blog logo or related slogans, adding a link in your news letter asking readers to check out your store or merchandise won’t hurt, just make sure it is paired with good content.

If you build up a large subscriber base, you can also use it to send other email campaigns and promotions for your merchandise, book, or affiliate products. A word of caution, however, no one likes unsolicited emails so you should be sure that you have permission to send additional emails and that they offer something of value and are not just viewed as annoyances.

Finally, over time as your readership and brand grows, you can also offer a paid version of your newsletter that contains more information than the free one.

If you decide to start a newsletter, make sure you pick an autoresponder system that is reliable and has high deliverability rates.

Technorati Tags: create multiple streams of income, start your own newsletter, setting up a newsletter

Popularity: 74% [?]

If you are interested in promoting eBay as an affiliate, you should know that they are no longer using CJ as the affiliate platform. They have their own in-house affiliate program now called eBay Partner Network.

This is something you should really consider if you’re interested in promoting a brand that’s recognizable worldwide.

Be sure to read the terms and conditions before you join. Specifically, you’re not allowed to do direct linking from a PPC search engine ad to an eBay landing page. Going through your own site first is okay. Maybe you can check out BANS if you aren’t already using it. That’s a great way to construct highly targeted landing pages for this purpose.

The compensation is based on a tiered structure and you’re paid based on a percentage of the winning bid (promote high ticket items!) or the number of active new members recruited.

Technorati Tags: eBay partner network, affiliate program

Popularity: 100% [?]

Maybe that statement is an exaggeration but the point is that too many blogs are depending on AdSense as their major source of revenue. And I’d say that the major motivation that’s keeping a lot of blogs alive is the fact that they can make some money off AdSense.

While many small-time bloggers can make some extra cash through AdSense on their sites, don’t fall into the trap of relying solely on one source of revenue. This is especially true if you’re planning to quit your day job and think that you can survive on AdSense alone.

image credit: blmurch (Flickr)

The importance of diversification

Imagine that you wake up one day and Google bans your AdSense account. Will that kill 80% of your revenues? 95%?

That’s what happened to Incredimail, a public listed company (NASDAQ:MAIL) that saw its stock fall 30% today after they announced that Google has banned them from AdSense.

According to Maxim Group analyst, Matthew Weiss:

“This announcement is a big blow for IncrediMail as we believe that approximately 85 percent of the company’s advertising revenues are attributable to its AdSense relationship”

According to an article in the MotleyFool:

“Through the first nine months of 2007, revenues soared 94% to $13.3 million. The company is taking advantage of its popular email applications to launch Instant Messaging and social networking.”

If 85% of the revenues are from AdSense, that would amount to about $11 million dollars for the first nine months of 2007.

Use your earnings to invest for the future

While you are getting some decent checks from Google, set aside a part of it to invest in your continuing education and also for growing your revenue streams. Maybe you can plan to acquire some other websites. Or use some of your profits to hire writers and invest in building up new sites.

Or you can invest it off-line in traditional stuff like the stock market, CDs, forex, or pick your favorite investment vehicle.

Think of it this way. Look at what happened to Polaroid. They should have seen the trends occurring in the photography business with the advent of digital photography. Instead they were relying too much on their instant cameras which use film and look at where they are today.

When you think of photography who do you think of? Kodak? Polaroid? Hardly. I think the winners are Nikon and Canon.

So be sure to keep up with what’s happening in the industry.

Once again, I see that so many blogs are following the same layout as some A-list bloggers, you know, having the 125×125 ad blocks on the right hand sidebar. It’s like lemmings.

The supply and demand for these ads will eventually adjust their prices. However, there will always be suckers who are willing to pay more than the market price for them. While some popular blogs can charge hundreds of dollars per month for these ad spots, the advertisers will soon come to their senses if they are really measuring the results of putting up those ads.

Ad buying tips

If you’re considering buying an ad spot, be sure to set it up in such a way that you can measure the results. For example, you can use Google analytics and look at the referrals coming from the site that you’ve placed your ad on. You can look at the traffic coming from that referral and compare it to your average visitor in terms of time spent on your site, pages viewed, etc. Don’t just advertise blindly.

Another way is to set up a specific landing page and link it to the ad. Place an opt-in box and measure the conversion rate from the traffic you are getting. In some cases, it may be worth it. If you’re paying $30 per month for a spot, that means about $1 per day. If you’re getting 20 visitors per day, you’re paying 5 cents per visitor. Let’s say 1 out of 20 visitors opt-in, that means your acquisition cost per subscriber is $1. This isn’t too bad compared to putting up an AdWords ad.

Who says that Google won’t penalize sites selling 125×125 ad spots next? It would be in their interest to squash the competition for advertisers who would otherwise be advertising on AdWords.

It’s almost like the heady days of banner advertising in the first dot com boom. Everyone was into selling banner ads on their sites until the whole thing came apart. Some of the Web 2.0 properties may face the same fate. You can’t base your business model on AdSense alone.

Technorati Tags: Google AdSense, Incredimail, getting banned from AdSense, revenue streams, diversification, banner ads, 125×125 ads, lemmings

Popularity: 50% [?]

Here’s an article from InsideCRM on 101 ways to monetize your blog. Actually it’s broken down into the following subtopics:

1. Merchandising
2. Paid Content
3. Begging (a.k.a. donations)
4. Opportunities (speaking, consulting, etc.)
5. Offline
6. Ads
7. RSS Ads
8. Text Ads
9. Sell Your Own Ads
10. Affiliate Programs
11. Sponsored Posts
12. Misc.

How many of these ways have you tried? Please leave a comment. I’d like to hear about your experiences.

One thing you can do is to pick one or two items out of each subtopic and work on those. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Of course, some things like getting speaking gigs and consulting work is much harder to come by unless you establish your expertise.

For new bloggers, ads, sponsored posts, affiliate programs and donations are probably the best to start with.

Technorati Tags: blog monetization, revenue streams

Popularity: 26% [?]

Last month’s TLA earnings across my network of sites - $716.31

Not really something to write home about but it’s really passive income. I haven’t done anything else since submitting my sites to TLA.

It looks like the earnings have levelled off. And the recent changes with Google didn’t really change much in terms of the number of advertisers advertising on the sites. Look at my previous post showing the growth of Text Link Ads earnings.

Want some extra income for your blog?

Technorati Tags: passive income, blog income

Popularity: 28% [?]



So far the WidgetBucks program has been very promising. Since the launch on October 2nd, they have reported the following:

WidgetBucks has registered 5,000 publishers, bloggers and affiliates, as well as 25 million impressions during its first seven days.

I’ve installed it on a few different websites. The ones where it works best are product-focused blogs. As far as ad formats are concerned, personally I like the 160×600 (great for sidebars) and the 300×250 sizes (for placement in the main fold of the site or below your top post) as you can show the most information to your site visitors.

But on top of that, the most money is actually coming from referrals. Each referral that you send will make you $25. So you can see how it can add up fast! If you have a list of email subscribers, make sure you tell them about it. The time to promote this is now since it is still relatively new and unsaturated.

If you haven’t already joined, make sure that you check out WidgetBucks.

Technorati Tags: WidgetBucks, blog monetization

Popularity: 28% [?]

WidgetBucks can work really well for you for this holiday season if you have a blog that is shopping or product-related. It’s based on the pay-per-click model, that means you get paid for each click and not when someone buys something. If you’re familiar with Chitika, it’s quite similar.

You place a widget on your blog. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Blogger or Wordpress or Typepad. Just copy the piece of code and place it in your blog template. There are no limitations to the number of widgets you can place (they come in different sizes for different locations - sidebar, top of posts, below posts, etc.) but on a site where I tried it out, two different widgets were showing the same products so I decided to stick to a single 160×600 widget on the sidebar.

Also, they say you can run it along with AdSense, but you should check with Google just to make sure.

Widget Sizes

Widgets are available in the following sizes: 160×600, 468×60, 728×90, 300×250, 660×330. As an example, here is what the 300×250 widget looks like:

Categories

There are a number of categories that you can manually select from to display products. The other option is to use their contextual targeting “smarts” to automatically select the products for you.

The categories available so far are:

• Video games
• Sports and Outdoors
• Musical Instruments
• Media
• Kids and Family
• Jewelry and Watches
• Home and Garden
• Camera and Photo
• Electronics
• Computers
• Clothing and Accessories
• Cars

How much can you make from it?

According to the site, “A number of publishers who have tested WidgetBucks are seeing a $3-6 CPM.”

Translation: If you’re getting 10,000 visitors per day, you can $30-$60 dollars a day. It’s too early at this point to point to anyone who has publicly come out to say how much they’ve made with this program since it’s still new. However, I’m sure you’ll see some bloggers report their numbers soon.

Payment Terms

This is important if you have cash flow issues. The nice thing about WB is that they pay on the 1st of the month for all the revenues earned the previous month. You’ll get paid if you’ve made at least $50 and you can opt for payment by check or PayPal. At this point, I’m skeptical about how they will filter out invalid clicks as there’s bound to be people who will try to cheat the system.

How does WidgetBucks compare with Chitika?

From my own tests so far, I see that the WB widget doesn’t reload with too many different products when you reload the page. I have it on the sidebar of a blog in the 160×600 format vs. a Chitika 468×180 banner which actually shows a different product every time I refresh the page.

There also doesn’t seem to be very many products in the inventory at the moment. It might also due to their contextual targeting code not working fully yet. On this particular shopping blog, I have different posts about a variety of products but I only see a couple of variations of the WB widget.

Want to get $25 in your account?

When you sign-up with WidgetBucks, you’ll automatically receive a $25 bonus into your account to get the ball rolling. This means you are half way to your first payout with WidgetBucks.

Sign up for WidgetBucks.

Want to make MORE money?

You can recruit other bloggers to join WB. Here’s how it works. You’ll get 10% of all their earnings for a whole year.

When you refer a new WidgetBucks user, you will receive a 10 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people you refer. You?ll receive this 10 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins. Your referral fees will be credited to your account and paid monthly, along with your commission payout. So, if you refer someone, and they make $100 in commissions, we pay you $10; if they make $1,000, we pay you $100. This continues for a whole year on all the commissions they earn.

All the more reason to join WidgetBucks now.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Some folks just love it and others hate it. Well, it really boils down to how your promote it. Can the Amazon affiliate program fit into your blogging strategy? Absolutely.

Don’t be fooled by those who claim that it has a poor commission payout. The often quoted 4% commission applies only to the first tier of payouts. With Amazon, your commission increases based on the number of orders shipped in each month. So when you get to the next commission tier, your commissions increase for ALL your sales for that month. Everything except electronics, which is capped at 4% commission, is following the sliding scale.

As you can see, you can have a maximum commission rate of 8.5% if you can push the large volumes.

Here’s proof that it works:

Here are some good reasons why I love Amazon:

1. Trusted brand. It’s a lot easier to sell something when everyone knows that the vendor is a trusted name that isn’t going to keep their money and not ship the product.

2. HUGE selection. Yes, if you haven’t shopped at Amazon lately, take a look at the different categories of STUFF that they have there. They’re not just about books anymore. They sell a lot of third-party stuff too - even groceries!

3. People know what to expect. Since they’ve been around for so long, people know just what to expect when they buy something from Amazon. The checkout process is familiar. People are comfortable making purchases online when they are familiar with the process. Again, this ties in to reason #1.

4. Great prices. Amazon often has the best prices anywhere online. Another great selling point.

5. Constantly improving. They are continuously trying to improve their offerings with new widgets and new creatives for promoting their stuff.

6. Electronic payment. Payment goes straight into your bank account!

Ways that I think the Amazon affiliate program can improve:

1. They don’t seem to really care that much about communicating with affiliates. Even though I make 4 figures a month with them, I’ve yet to receive any special gifts like the Christmas gifts I’ve gotten from Google and Yahoo.

2. Payment timescale. You won’t get paid for the current month’s earnings until 2 months later. So expect to receive September earnings at the end of November. This can create some cash flow problems if you’re using PPC.

The bottom line is that you should really consider adding Amazon as a part of your blog’s income stream. Find out more about it here.

Technorati Tags: Amazon affiliate program

Popularity: 38% [?]

DealDotCom is a new program that is set to launch on Tuesday, September 18, 2007. It will feature daily deals on internet marketing and online business related products. The way it works is that when you refer someone who joins the site, that person will automatically be placed under you for the rest of their life. While other sites offer 30, 60 or 90 day cookies, DealDotCom gives you lifetime commissions. So someone who is referred by you who doesn’t buy anything now but decides to buy something in 2012, guess what? You’ll still get the commission.

The program is still in pre-launch and you can only join by getting an invitation.

Because the affiliate program is two-tiered, more people will scramble to join just to get in on the action early. Like many multi-tiered programs, the earlier you join in, the better off you are. By the way, the first tier pays out 35% and the second tier is 15%. This can become a lucrative source of passive income for your blog.

Get an invitation to join here.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Since I last wrote about my experience with Text Link Ads, I have been very satisfied with the results. The chart on the left shows my earnings since I joined the program in February 2006. As you can see, the earnings were rising over the months and they are leveling off now. I want to make a note that this is for a collection of about 30 sites with some earning more than others (and some not at all). It really depends on the niche your site is in.

My total earnings are slightly over $9,000.

The key to getting accepted to TLA is to have at least a Google Pagerank of 4. The higher your Pagerank, the more you will be likely to make. Most of my income from TLA is through being a publisher although I get an occasional referral which pays $25 once they get accepted.

I like TLA a lot because it’s a set-it-and-forget-it type of revenue stream. Once you get a site accepted, it takes all of 5 minutes to add the code to your site. This is pure passive income as you don’t have to do anything else to attract advertisers because TLA does it all for you.

Here are a few tips on being successful with TLA:

1. Browse through the site categories and try to select a category that has little competition. This will ensure that your site will be noticed by advertisers. Otherwise, if you have a less popular site in a hot category, your site may be listed on page 5 or 6 and it will be unlikely that you will get a lot of advertisers.

2. If you place the links somewhere above the fold on your site, it will be more attractive to the advertiser.

3. Make sure that you install the code properly so that the text links are showing up. Otherwise you won’t get paid.

4. Want to grow your earnings faster? Buy sites that have at least PR4. The way you can profit with this is to estimate whether you will be able to sell enough links to cover the cost of the purchase. Suppose you buy a site for $300. Assuming that you make $50 per month with TLA, this is equal to $600 per year which gives you an ROI of 100% over the course of the year. Not bad, eh? How can you tell if a site will be able to attract link buyers? Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

All in all, TLA has been a very consistent income earner for me and it requires practically no maintenance.

Technorati Tags: Text Link Ads, TLA

Popularity: 16% [?]