Since starting to accept advertising back in April 2006, I have been amazed at the growth of opportunities which this humble blog has had. It took about 2 months for me to be able to afford that lunch per month, as I suggested in the original post, then within six months, I was selling enough advertising (mostly through Text Link Ads [aff]) to buy lunch every second week.
Now, fifteen months later, I’m making enough from advertising on here, that I can afford a eating out for lunch most days of the week.
So, how did I do it? Well, I certainly didn’t do it with any intention on making much money. I didn’t follow most professional blogger suggestions, and keep my blog ‘on topic’ or even post daily, I didn’t use any trickery with SEO or the like, it turns out that a few posts of mine got big in the blogosphere, and that created link bait, which took my in bound links from near zero to over 3,000 in a short period of time.
This created a Pagerank of 3 and advertisers using Text Link Ads [aff] started seeing the search engine benefits of a PR3 blog linking to them. That, and my link for sign ups through the $100 worth of free text link ads [aff] campaign, mean I get ongoing revenue from those who use my link to start selling text links on their blogs too.
I also have Google Adsense and Auction Ads [aff] unobtrusively in the sidebar as well, however they probably only bring in 10% of the revenue, compared to the text link advertising I get both directly and through Text Link Ads [aff], who pay not by click, but by month instead.
What would have happened if I had followed the advice, and designed the blog around revenue? I don’t know, but maybe I’ll try it with another blog soon!
Oh, and a big thanks to the advertisers who appear on this blog right at the moment, and keep me in lunches. They are;
So, do you make an income from your blog? What works for you, and how did you do it?
Image: RAIL road sign, Northam WA
