I’ve mentioned AdBrite and Text-Link-Ads as options to make money from your website or to buy advertising to bring in traffic and raise your PageRank. A third option targeted specifically at the blogosphere is BlogAds.
BlogAds operates much like the other two services except they target only blogs and not general websites. This is a nice niche and as you can imagine makes for a powerful advertising method. Blogs in general have more sway with their audience because of the personal, human-to-human relationship bloggers enjoy with their readership. Generally if a blogger recommends a product or service, his or her audience will take the recommendation as word-of-mouth rather than perceive it as advertising, especially if the blogger has a reputation for honesty, integrity and experience in his or her chosen field. Placing an ad on a blog won’t quite have the same effect but it may enjoy more credibility than placing the same ad on a commercial website.
From the bloggers point of view BlogAds offers another method to monetise their audience. BlogAds won’t take just any blogs on board, there is a screening process and they will take a 30% cut of each advertising sale. BlogAds state that the average blogger makes $50 per month and the lucky few make as much as $5000 per month. The system offers a simple submission form hosted by BlogAds so you don’t have to do much once you are approved to join the network.
You copy the “Your Ad Here” code onto your blog and any interested advertiser can click through and purchase an add. Delivery and payment are automatic and you can manually approve all advertiser applications. BlogAds also allows you to write your own sales copy that is displayed to potential advertisers which is a nice touch, allowing you to personalise the selling process and carefully pitch what your blog is about.
While not appearing nearly as professionally branded as AdBrite or Text-Link-Ads, BlogAds does have it’s appeal. It looks like a simple blog itself and feels more like a human being is running the show rather than a corporate entity, a no doubt important selling point to attract bloggers that value community over commercialism.
BlogAds stresses the community nature of it’s network to potential advertisers and warns them that a standard advertisement like you would run on a site like MSNBC.com may not perform as well on blogs. Blog advertising rewards creative and savvy advertisers that can connect and empathise with the community they are trying to reach.
No doubt as more and more blogs are added to the BlogAds network it will become very appealing to advertisers to leverage this advertising method. I expect many bloggers will look to systems like this to form the bulk of their revenue strategy and hopefully over time it will reward popular blogs with enough funding that they can rely on it for a living. For the time being it offers small-time bloggers perhaps enough money to supplement hosting costs, but you certainly should not be thinking about quitting that day job just yet!
