The goal of any serious blogger is to generate money with his or her blog.  We dream about getting up late, working in our PJs, and writing a blog post that generates millions of pageviews.  It’s a nice dream, but how attainable is it?

How blogs advertise themselves

Blogs look to advertise themsleves on other blog by writing guest posts, writing strategic comments, and showing up on a blogger’s blog roll.  The best way to write a guest post is to first become a good blogger on your own domain name.  Write quality content, drive traffic to your blog through Twitter and commenting on other blogs, and make sure to actively participate in your community’s niche.

If you’re a personal finance blogger, then your goal is to be the first one to comment on The Simple Dollar, I Will Teach You to be Rich, and Man vs Debt.  Once you start building some credibility and traction on your own blog, you can use that traction to contact these great personal finance bloggers and request to write a guest post for them.  It’s all a process, and if you’re patient and respectful, the top people will give you a chance.

Advertising on your own blog

There ares several ways to advertise on your blog.  We will focus on the two most popular here: Advertising CPC/CPM or Affiliate links.

Advertising with CPC or CPM

Advertising on your blog with CPC ads means that you are getting paid per click.  Everytime someone clicks on an ad on your site, you are paid a certain amount by the advertiser.  A great example of this is Google Adsense.  When you implement Google Adsense on your blog, Google will crawl your blog, and then put ads on your site that are relevant to your content.  The downside of CPC and Google Adsense is that the payout is extremely low.  You’re not going to get rich off of Adsense.

Advertising on your blog with CPM means cost per 1000 impressions.  An impression means that the ad has loaded on the page and the blog reader has the potential of seeing it.  The most common CPM is 1.5.  This means that an advertiser will pay you $1.50 for every 1000 impressions.  On a blog with 100,000 pageviews per month, this means that for a 125×125 ad, the advertiser will pay the blogger $100/month.

The downside of CPM is that it is harder to find advertisers who will pay you a high CPM on a monthly basis.

Advertise with Affiliate links

Affiliates links come in all shapes and sizes.  I recommend finding affiliate links that are high-priced and give you a high percentage of the sale.  Look for products that cost between $50 - $100 and give you at least %25 of the sale (%40 preferred).

Affiliate links work when you have a readership base that trusts you.  For example, if you’re a personal finance blogger who goes out of her way to help her readership, then people will trust you when you recommend a product.  The revenue potential is huge with affiliate links.

Best method for advertising blogs

By far, the best method to generate revenue is to have affiliate links on your trusted blog.  It all starts with writing good content.  Once you have a community that follows you and trusts you, put up affiliate links of products that you know are high-quality and trust-worthy.