I hear it all the time. People who are otherwise very successful bloggers saying that they can’t make any real money with sponsored posts. I hear cries of “there aren’t enough high paying posts” or “None of the opportunities fits my niche, there’s just nothing there for me.”
If I hear you say any of the above or any variant, then I can tell you the reason that you aren’t making any money with paid posting opportunities, and it has nothing to do with the companies offering the ads.
It’s all you. You’re shutting yourself out of the market.
You’re shooting yourself in the foot. Remember what these posts are for. They are paid advertising spots designed to make your client money, improve search engine rankings or to bring in more traffic. These ads are generally pretty broad spectrum. They aren’t designed to really fit into any given niche in most cases, they’re based on broad appeal.
If you have any intention of making money in this manner, you have to broaden the way you think. Ten to one your readers aren’t interested soleley in your niche. They’re people, they have other interests as well as the one for which they are reading your words in the virtual ether. It’s also a good bet that if it seems even mildly interesting to you, it will appeal to one or more of your readers. At the very least it won’t put them off too badly.
Think about your readership. Even though you’re in a niche, your readers actually come from a much larger demographic. If you blog about business there is a good chance that your readers are either already business owners and managers or are aspiring to become one. Ads for POS systems, card readers or any other item that can remotely be thought of as “business related” is a good candidate. So are vacation posts, since most business owners try to get away from the stresses of business every once in a while.
Let’s take my primary blog as an example. It’s a blog on cooking and recipes, but there are relatively few opportunities available for that niche. When they are there I grab them as soon as I can, but I’m not about to let a lack of kitchen related opps stop me from making money.
The readership at that blog is either going to be foodies looking for a certain new twist or the family cook looking for a new recipe to get him or her through the week. That sets my primary demographic at between 30 ad 60, most probably housewives (OR House Hubby’s). I could base my choices on that alone, but there are better ways to get a close insight…
I take the time to get into a conversation with as many readers as possible through twitter, blogCatalog and any other social media outlet I can find. Over time I’ve gotten to understand a larger percentage of what their interests are. (I pay very close attention to my comments as well.)
Using that information, I know that many of my readers are very much environmentally conscious. Many are also business owners or fellow food writers and photographers. Almost all have families with kids. And now I’ve got a base for what I can smoothly slip into the context of my posts.
Ads for household products, cameras, tech gadgets, anything green, coupons and coupon codes, deals, shoppin alerts… All of these are very likely going to interest someone. I also almost never pass up a Holiday themed opportunity, it’s just perfect timing and I always have something seasonal to say…
If you want to make money, you can’t be too picky.
Obviously your PageRank has a lot to do with the opportunities you can take and the amount that you’ll earn for them, but that concept is too broad to fit in here. But even with lower paying opportunities, you should still be able to make a couple hundred a month if you’re dedicated to doing it. There are a lot of services out there that will pay you to blog for them in one way or another.
But do remember the old saw. Content really is king. Your regular posts need to be thoughtfully written and there needs to be a lot of them. Your paid posts need to be written equally well. You can’t skimp on quality just because it was something you were tossing in to make ten bucks. do the advertisers proud and they will remember you and you might just get requests for opps directly. These usually pay better than the standard marketplace opportunities and are better tailored to your specific blog topic.
Wrapping up.
The short of it is this.
- If you want to make real money taking paid opportunities, you have to take the opps. You can’t wait for “That perfect Ad.” It’s out there, but it doesn’t come in often.
- Write quality posts. Nobody pays for hacks.
- Have some morals and ethics. Don’t promote things you would never use yourself, or that you are morally or ethically opposed to, unless you have the option of writing something that fits your actual beliefs.
- Keep the broader spectrum of your readership in mind. Knowing your readers is key.
This article only covers paid posting opportunities. There are a lot of other ways to make money from your blog or website, but paid opportunities are a good way to get income rolling in while you build other methods. I’ll cover those soon.
In my next post I plan to cover some methods that might make paid posts more appealing to you as a blog owner, such as methods for keeping sponsored posts from showing up in your RSS feed, ways to make sure that the sponsored post isn’t the first thing your readers see and so on. Until then
Get out and take a few opportunities! Knowing there’s a few bucks coming to your paypal account in the near future will make you more willing to work a little harder.
Jerry Monetizing, Paid Blogging ethics, Izea, Monetizing, PageRank, paid posts, PPP, writing
The single most common question I get asked is where I find paid post opportunities. The answer is fairly simple. All over the place. I look at myself as a freelancer, and as a freelancer, having a lot of different clients to choose from is the key to staying productive and keeping the money rolling in. Without a wide base of posts to choose from, there would be no way that I could accomplish my two main objectives, which are:
