Make Money
This page lists a few ad networks, money making options and tips to help you make money online. We are recommending them because Dollar$hower has been monetized through these products and we will keep updating this page as and when the earning potential or monetization strategy changes.
Money making options for those who have a blog
If you have an active blog where you write about your favorite topics on a regular basis then you have the following possibilities to make money out of it.
Advertisements
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads:
Indisputably Google AdSense is the first option for PPC advertising. AdSense will work for almost for all blogs regardless of its size, age, content. Google usually approves all types of blogs for AdSense publishing, even those blogs that are hosted for free (e.g. yourblog.blogspot.com).
If things did not work with AdSense and/or if you want to try a different PPC network, then your next option is Bidvertiser. In fact, you can also have both AdSense and Bidvertiser co-existing on the same page provided you demarcate them very well and make them look different. You may also read my post on Bidvertiser secrets to optimize your earnings. Regardless of this, AdSense is a dash better than Bidvertiser in terms of earnings. But Bidvertiser also offers excellent referral bonus for publishers and advertisers that you refer.
You can compare the features of ad networks using our money maker comparison tool D$ Comparator.
Pay-Per-Impression (PPM) ads:
Unfortunately smaller or beginner blogs do not get approved by majority of the premium PPM/CPM networks. By using AdSense banners, you also get paid for your impressions however it is not a proper PPM solution. You can go for premium CPM networks as and when your blog grows significantly with a few thousand page impressions per day.
CreditBurner is a PTP (Paid-To-Promote) network that is fetching us a few bucks per month right now. They approve smaller blogs as well and their eCPM rates are reasonably good.
(You may read the post on various ad compensation methods to understand how ad networks compensation models work)
Writing paid reviews or posts:
Once your blog has a reasonable number of readers (feed as well as direct readers) and decent page and traffic ranks, you may start writing paid reviews on your blog. Though there are a number of paid review services, the one that is working for us right now is SponsoredReviews. Another option - at least to get the first $20 after sign up - is PayPerPost. Do not forget to claim your $20 by writing about PayPerPost on your blog immediately after signing up with them.
You can search for other Get-Paid-To review services using D$ ProdFinder. Please note that sometimes Google penalizes the blogs, that posts paid reviews, by reducing their page ranks (PR).
Blog ad networks:
The recently launched PerformancingAds has started fetching us a few bucks already. Start bidding at lower rates for our ad spaces to steadily increase the fill rate. Their referral scheme is very good as well.
Blogroll link sales:
Once your blog gets a reasonable Google page rank (Say PR3 or above), you can actually start charging a few bucks per month per link that is added to your blog. Forums are the best place to sell your blogroll or links and you may check this Digital Point forum thread for your link sales. Also check out the thread on ad sales and services.
If your page rank is reasonably good (Say PR3 or above), you can make a lot of money by selling your links via Text Link Ads (We are yet to get there!) or via private ads sales of your banners if traffic is good as well. If the number of RSS readers is significantly high, your feed can be monetized as well as Google Ads for feed. LinkXL is another network that can bring in a small amount of money via selling links on your pages (with an assigned Google PR). Though they keep 50% of your earnings as commission, it really works. We have been using its predecessor LinkAdage reasonably effectively.
Private ad sales on your blog can be completely automated via the OIO Publisher WordPress Plugin and you can get advertisers via their marketplace. The OIO Publisher plugin will cost you $47 but that will be a great investment as you can recover it in one month or less. By the way, if you happen to buy OIO Publisher via this referral link, please contact me via the contact form on this blog to get a refund of $20 via PayPal (during Jan 2009) - that makes it $27 instead of $47.
Affiliate programs and referral links:
Affiliate programs can fetch you very good Pay-Per-Sale or Pay-Per-Lead based commission. Though I am not into this model of monetizing at the moment, you can search for top affiliate networks, also using D$ ProdFinder. Along with affiliate links and banners you could use your ad networks’ referral links to maximize your revenue. Amazon and Yahoo Affiliate programs are among the best though Yahoo (via Commission Junction) does not approve affiliates that easily.
Please note that the income generated via ads, text link sales, affiliate networks, paid reviews etc will depend on a lot of parameters such as the quality of content, content update frequency, traffic generated, various traffic & page ranks, how well your pages are optimized for search engine visibility etc. It is really possible to make online if you focus on the above aspects, especially during initial phases. Do not try too hard to achieve everything in the first two or three months - it does not work that way! Also, try to maximize your earnings via referring others as either publishers or advertisers.
Current Money Making Experiments
At the moment, we are experimenting with the following new networks in bits and pieces on this blog as well as on our other sites.
Pepperjam Network!: They offer $10 sign-on bonus and $7 referral bonus
Making money without a blog
The following are some methods to make money online without having a blog of your own.
- Paid data entry and freelance content creation jobs
- Forum posting and blog commenting to get paid
- Paid-To click ad sites
You can avail content creation, freelance writing, data entry opportunities as well as forum posting/commenting assignments at this Digital Point forum thread.
Please read this post to learn more on how to make money online via content creation related activities.
There are paid-to-click services like TakeTheGlobe that I used sometime back. But these are only for those who don’t mind spending time to view ads by clicking links and the earnings are not that great (but definitely they are not scams).
A lot of people believe that online surveys are the easiest way to make big money online. While there are one or two legitimate survey schemes, most others are scams. Another scam that has hit the web lately is the so-called affiliate rebate processor work-from-home option.
Further, if you intend to set up a professional blog soon, this article series may help you to achieve that goal thereby opening up a window of opportunities to make more money online.
Happy money making!
