Jerry D. Russell

Is the recession affecting paid blog advertising?  It looks like it, at least from my perspective.  Where once there were 80 to 100 opportunities to chose from at PayPerPost, there are now 30 or 40. Other services such as LoudLaunch are seeing a decline in the number of offers available as well.  Prices at SocialSpark are dropping even lower than normal (and that is truly depressing) as bloggers jump at the chance to take a low paying opportunity rather than to forgo any income at all.

Newcomers to the Advertorial Arena are also serving to drive prices down.  With each new company offering Paid Advertorial post, the market becomes more competitive and offering prices are reflecting this. There is no reason for an advertiser to pay top dollar for bloggers from one network when the bloggers on a different network are more than willing to take an opportunity for half the price. It’s simple supply-and demand economics at work.

If you are an A or B-List blogger you may not notice this trend as quickly, simply because advertisers are still quite willing to pay out large amounts of money for someone with a readership of 10,000 per day.  If you’re like the rest of us, the crunch is already here, and there is little that we can do about it until the market stabilizes.  When this will happen is anyone’s guess at this point.

I’m not an economist, I just play one on the Internet

Markets Fluctuate

There will be those that say that the lack of good opportunities and higher-paying jobs is simply a market fluctuation, and that everything will be better as the Christmas Season approaches.  In many ways these people would be absolutely correct.  Holidays are most definitely a driving force for advertising budgets in many markets.  As we move towards major shopping holidays there is sure to be a flurry of activity in retail sectors that will translate directly into higher paying opportunities for advertorial publishers. unfortunately, I doubt they will be as frequent as they were in the previous two years.

The issue isn’t the willingness of advertisers to spend their dollars.  The issue is that with rising fuel prices and a related drop in sales, the advertisers just don’t have the budget that they had last year.  For the manufacturer to stay competitive in their respective market, money that they were spending on advertising last year is now being diverted to transportation costs, or in some cases to aiding communities that were affected by the recent flurry of natural disasters all across the United States.

High Fuel Cost + Community support efforts = fewer advertising dollars

So what’s a blogger to do?

For now, I would suggest looking in to as many revenue streams as possible.  It is highly unlikely that the Advertorial market is going to pick up to the same level we’ve been used to in the next 12 months.  The Freelance writing market is a god place to look if you feel that you have the skills to write 400 to 1,500 word pieces that companies would be willing to pay for.  This market doesn’t fall to economic pressures as rapidly as technology based industries do, though there has been a slight dip in offering prices in some sectors.  There are however, many freelance opportunities for travel writing and the advertising budget for that industry is actually increased at thimes when people are staying at home more often.

Blog advertising networks and direct advertising may also help to ease the crunch.  If you have not looked in to these options yet, now is most definitely the time to do so. Even if the overall amount earned from having ad-network ads placed on your site doesn’t equal what you could make for posting a few advertorials, it will still earn a consistent income, and it’s something you only have to do once.  From there it simply continues to earn you money, allowing you to focus on content and traffic.

Direct advertising can be trickier, since it requires you to manage the statistics and amounts you charge.  The upside is that you don’t have to pay a fee to a third party company for this type of advertising. The profits are all yours, and you determine your rate.  Go look at other popular blogs that accept this type of advertising for a few hints.  The topic is far to broad for the scope of this article, and I will revisit it in my next post.

Don’t Jump Ship Just Yet

I don’t think that the paid post industry is going anywhere, at least not for quite awhile.  It will take time for the market to stabilize in the face of economic challenges, but in the end, this will drive smaller companies out of business and leave the true industry leaders sitting at the head of the class. These services will have what it takes to both provide advertisers with valued services and to provide their subscribed writer base with a decent payout for their efforts.  At that point I believe things will go back to a very close semblance of “normal”, though they may never go back to the rates we once saw.

Just hang in there, diversify and grow your opportunities as they come along.  This is a business, and businesses survive by being able to adapt to changing economic models and customer dynamics.  It’s the way itt goes in a free market.  So get to adapting!

(Edit: As I was writing this, SocialSpark presented me with a rather extensive list of opportunities at over $10.00 per.  These were from financial companies, another industry that increases advertising in times of recession.)

The most common question I’m asked about how I make a living online is what tools I use to get paid, and I do get paid, each and every day. For those who might be skeptical of that statement, let me assure you that it is the God’s honest truth. The only reason I might go a day without seeing money deposited into my account is that I was too lazy to do something on a given day. I was paid yesterday, I’ve already seen payment today, and I’ve got several payments slated for tomorrow. I’ve gotten used to it, and it’s not something I want to live without any more.

Is it simple? To be honest, sometimes it is, at other times I end up feeling like I’ve moved mountains to get a check for the day, either way I push through and make sure that something that will make me at least a few dollars has been done. And folks, if I can do it, so can you. There’s no reason in the world that you can’t make at least a hundred dollars per month from your own hosted blog. (It may be a lot more difficult if you’re using blogger or some other hosted service.)

OK great, you get paid. Must be nice, but how do you do it?!?

Actually I use multiple streams to make an income through my blogs, and you should too. To rely on any one system of monetizing greatly limits your ability to bring in a regular paycheck and can, in times of difficulties with a given service, render you unable to make any money at all for days or even weeks. Spreading your efforts over different income methods provides not only the knowledge that there is something else you can look into on any given day to make a bit of cash, but at least for me it gives a sense of security. I know that if one of the services or companies I contract for goes under tomorrow, I’ve still got other avenues out there.

The methods available to make money through your blog vary in both type and in the amount of income they generate. Some methods are great for adding up to a hundred dollars a day to my account, while others accrue revenue more slowly over time. I use as many methods as possible, but they really break down into two categories, passive monetizing and active monetizing.

Passive and Active monetizing, my definition:

Passive Advertising:

Passive advertising is any form of advertising you “set and forget.” The most recognizable version of this type of monetizing is the venerable Google AdSense Ad. You simply set up an account, generate some code to add to your blog and forget you ever did it, while hoping that one day they will send you a check. This type of advertising also applies to ad networks such as BlogHer, TextLink Ads, Chitika Mini Malls and a wide variety of other services. The one that will work best for your blog depends heavily on your niche, bit it’s a good idea to look into as many of these services as possible.

Payment for these kind of ads varies depending on a variety of factors and the amount of income that they will generate for you is dependent largely on your audience and the sheer volume of traffic your blog receives. In a nutshell, the more traffic you get, the more likely these methods are to make you a good bottom line. There are rare cases however, where ads are so perfectly tailored to a site’s content that they generate a good deal of money even in low traffic situations.

Your mileage may vary, no warranty is expressed or applied.

Active Advertising

Active monetizing methods is the kind you actually have to put effort into each and every time you want to make money from it. The most profitable type of active advertising in my case is the Advertorial, or Paid Post. The most known companies offering this type of advertising dollar are companies like ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews and Izea. The premise here is that you write an article for or about a company that wants to generate traffic or awareness of their site in and around the bloggosphere and they pay you do do it.

There are a lot of people in the blogging community that feel this type of ad is the equal of selling out, or that posting this type of ad somehow dilutes the purity of all blogs everywhere. I disagree with this line of thinking. Advertorials are a part of every-day life whether you’re watching TV, listening to the radio or surfing your favorite blogs. They’re here to stay, and I’m more than willing to cash in on the method.

Crossover methods

Some types of advertising can either be active or passive, depending on how they are used. The most notable variety here is affiliate advertising. If you just slap some affiliate links in your sidebar, then you are using it as a passive method. (Say you toss up a few links to Amazon products.) You’re hoping that you made a good choice, and you run with it for a while, checking your stats from time-to-time.

If you’re adding affiliate links into your posts and comments, then it becomes an active method. It requires your time and attention a lot more frequently than it would otherwise. This method will generally give better results, since you can tailor what your readers have the opportunity to click on in direct relation to what they were interested in reading at the moment.

So what is it you’re using?

All of the above. If you look over my blog at Cooking, by the seat of my Pants!, you will see all of these methods in use after a few minutes of browsing around. I do a good job of keeping some of these ad types pretty subtle, but they are there nonetheless, and they’re making money.

My other blogs use different mixes of all of the above as well. some rely strictly on in-post affiliate linking, others that aren’t updated as often rely on AdSense and other passive methods, and still others make the entirety of their income from advertorials. It depends on the blog and how much work I want to put in to it.

I’m not going to tell you exactly who I go through, at least not yet. I’d rather cover that information on a company-by-company basis. It gives the opportunity to give the Pros and Cons of each on its own merit, and these companies and services deserve that courtesy. They are paying me, after all.

This overview should put you well on your way to finding a method of monetizing that works for you. Try doing a Google search for Blog Advertising Networks. It’s a good place to start.