The topic that has come up over and over this week has been how to monetize the blog.  And, as many of you are busy writing, working, and looking after a home and family, you haven’t had the time to scour the internet for all the information on monetization!   So here is the summary version just for you:

Ad Networks

These are large marketing or public relations firms that do the gathering of blog sponsors for you.  They take applications from bloggers, whom they call “publishers” to publish the ads that they procure.

PROS:

• they have taken care of the legalities between big sponsors like Campbells and your blog.
• They take care of paying you and collecting from the company.
• Maintaining this type of network is very easy. Most of them have a help desk that will help you install (or do it for you) the ads.

CONS:

• The downside is that they do have a list of expectations from their publishers that you need to follow.

Women bloggers should check out blogher, Real Girls Media.  Food bloggers should check out FoodBuzz.

About.com has a list of 60 Ad & Affiliate programs.

Contextual Ads

Adsense is the most well known example of this type of advertising. When people come to your blog from google, they have entered some search terms.  From these terms, google serves up ads that might interest the reader.  Thus, they are contextual.  Problogger lists these contextual advertisers to check out:

• Chitika
• WidgetBucks,
• Text Link Ads,
• Azoogle Ads,
• Intelli Txt,
• DoubleClick,
• Tribal Fusion,
• Adbrite,
• Clicksor,
• AdHearUs,
• Kanoodle,
• Pheedo,
• TextAds,
• Bidvertiser,
• Fastclick,
• Value Click,
• MSN Adcenter,
• YPN.

I’ve only had experience with Adsense and Chitika, but I know that several of you use Text Link Ads, Adbrite, and WidgetBucks – How was your experience in applying for these ads?  Were they easy to install?

How much money can YOU make?

AdsenseGuide.info uses these examples – if all you do is copy and paste the Adsense code, and you are a small website, with only 400 impressions per day, and a click through rate of 1.5%.

And for a website with medium traffic- 4,000 impressions per day:

The above tables are from regular adsense ads that aren’t optimized or placed in any particular ‘hot spot’.

Darren Rowse has doubled his contextual ad revenue from simply moving them to a more effective location on the page!  From this, and lots of other examples on the web, we can learn that placement of the ads are just as important as the relevance of the ads.

Where do I put the ads?

This is a ‘heat map’ from Adsense itself.

A ‘heat map’ is measuring the reader’s length of time spent in a particular area of the page.  Isn’t it interesting that most of us will focus on the center of the page, and not the header?

If you think like your reader, you will be more likely to see where and how to place ads.  When you come to the page, what are you searching for?  What will you do after you’ve found it?  Will you spend time on this page or click through to the next?  Will you read daily or come once in a while when looking for a particular resource?  Will you shop from this page?  All of those things will determine the best placement for your ads.

The best place to start your ads is blending into the content – that is where the most bloggers experience the most success with advertisements.  Remember to always abide by the terms of use of any particular advertiser.  If you can, blend the ad into the background, and set apart the text.

Whether or not you should use text or images or both, is a matter of where you are placing the ad, the subject of the blog, and the audience’s preference.  Here are some examples of placements:

Image Ad Under Post

Adsense Display Under Header

Adsense Display Links in Sidebar

Adsense Display in Header

Adsense Display Above Header

These are just a few tips to get started with contextual ads and ad networks.  Next time we’ll cover affiliate ads, direct advertising and product reviews!

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For further information on adsense ads, check out the Adsense Guide for Optimizing.

For an 8 Part series on Adsense from Darren Rowse click here.

You may also be interested in:  the Beginner’s Guide to Starting A Business.

Survey Results:

1.  What technical/blogging information do you need?

• over 50% of you said, “I’m a Geek Wannabe – Teach me!”
• next was “How to do the basics – images, plugins”
• followed closely by “You can do it for me!”

2.  How often do you look for help/answers?

• 70% said, “Regularly, I’m a ‘why’ person.”

3.  Where do you get your answers?

• Google and Yours Truly were tied for 80% of you (you are such a smart bunch.)

4.   How important are the following topics?

• Writing came in surprisingly low in importance to 90% of you!  This is probably because you feel somewhat competent in this area already.
• Most important topic to 66% of you was SEO/ Being Seen
• followed closely by how to design, and Pro-Blogging (making money)
• 0% of you thinks that technology news is important!

5.  Should I show off the new design?

Only one of you questioned my insatiable desire to get the website ‘right’.  I have the nicest clients ever (or we all have the crazy habit of re-arranging our furniture on a regular basis.)

Thank you very much for your feedback. It will indeed shape the future of this blog.  I intend to focus on monetizing your websites, maintaining them, and things you need to know – with a big ol’ BUY NOW button for those of you who prefer to outsource your technical support.  :)

Free Downloads:

If you haven’t received the Press Release Guide & Template, it is now downloadable in the Desperately Seeking WordPress Client Center, along with “How to Build Your Media List”, and “What to do when a reporter calls”.  Along this vein, are 5 More Creative Ways to Get Publicity (free for everyone).

Blogs that will be considered for the BlogHer Publishing network must be:  …free of any advertorial or sponsored posts, and compensated product reviews….

And a number of you have been inquiring about providing a separate page without BlogHer ads, on which to post product reviews or giveaways.  If you have tried this, you have no doubt seen that it isn’t as easy as it sounds!   On category pages and searches, and on the front page – the giveaways still show up!  And how do you get the ads OFF your special giveaway page anyway?

Although this may look a little technical, it is actually pretty easy to do:

(If I have installed a separate blog for you, and you’d prefer to combine the blogs and use this method, let me know.)

#1 Prevent the BlogHer Ads from Showing on Certain Pages

• Download the “Widget Context” plugin by Kaspars Dambis from your Plugins >> Add New panel.
• Activate it.
• Go to the Appearance>> Widgets panel, and open the text widget that has your blogher code pasted in it
• And complete the new “context” part like this:

This is what you need in there:

spc-*
category/spc-giveaways
category/spc-giveaways/*

#2  Create a New Category for the Blogher-Ad-Free Giveaway Posts

• Go to Posts>> Categories.
• Add a new category just for the BlogHer-Ad-Free posts:  ”Special Giveaways”.
• Use the slug, “spc-giveaways”.

When you have saved the new category – look at the navigation bar at the top of your screen – it will look something like:  http://mysite.com/wp-admin/categories.php?action=edit&cat_ID=352.  Make a note of the ID number – in this case, “352″.

#3  Exclude the BlogHer Ad-Free Page from your Home Page

• Go to Plugins>> Add New and download “Front Page Excluded Categories” by Sean O’Steen.
• Activate.
• Go back to Plugins screen, select the new “Front Page Excluded” plugin, and click on the link “edit”.

• Replace the “1,2″  text with your category ID from Step 2.
• Save

#4  Directions for Thesis Users:

• Go to Thesis  Options>> Custom File Editor>> and select “Custom_functions.php” from the drop-down menu.
• Scroll to the very bottom of the file, and copy and paste this:

• Replace the ‘-nn’ with your category ID from Step 2.
• Save

You are not finished yet – there is one more thing that it needs to work.  Read the how-to post below.

How to Write a Special Giveaways BlogHer-Ad-free Post

You are all set to use this category for your ad-free giveaway posts.  If you post to this category, it will not show up on the front page.  If you check the special giveaways archive, it won’t show up there either.  But there is one more place to take care of – the single post.  Whether the permalinks post it under a title alone, or a date of some sort, we will need to append the URL with a few characters.

So – in English:

• Write your special giveaways post
• Assign the Special Giveaways category (that can be the only category)
• Edit the url to include the letters “spc-” like this:

• Write your ‘teaser’ post pointing readers to your new giveaway.
• Categorize this with “giveaways” or whatever you like, but do NOT use the “special giveaways” category.

NOTE ABOUT PERMALINKS:

• This will ONLY work if you are using pretty permalinks (view Settings >> Permalinks panel to check)

If you have any problems at all let me know in the comments, and I’ll do my best to help you out.  Good luck to all my women-blogger friends and clients!

Huge props to Kaspars Dambis and Sean O’Steen for their plugins – I’m sure a small token of your appreciation would be welcomed!  Their links are in their plugins for donating.

Go see Web Designer Depot this week for the most awesome brush fonts. These are only 5 of the 20 listed.

We’re Giving Back

As you know, I resell HostGator web hosting servers.  More specifically I resell the space that I rent on their servers.  And I am able to offer it to you at a great rate ($20 annually) and provide service second to none.  (not that I brag or anything.)  Plus, I actually set up your email for you and other services, so if words like “CPanel” make you squirm, come see momma.  :)  That was totally off point -

HostGator is making a $100,000 donation to the Red Cross for Haiti initiative.

Do you want to get involved – go to the Hosting for Haiti website.

I know you(we) already spend our money on the hosting but it is nice to know the company you’re investing in, isn’t it?  As for MOI, and My Little Company we made a $200 donation to the Red Cross fund.

How about you?

Did you get involved yet?  In this case, it is a ’something’ is better than nothing.

Shrink-O-Matic

FREE TOOL for making those images from your camera SHRINK into something palatable for your website!  This is the neatest thing EVER.  You install Adobe AIR first, and then install this program – but don’t fret!  You click “INstall now” and it runs through the adobe air installation, AND the  Shrink-O-Matic program – and you do – NOTHING.  Cool, right?

I tested it out -

• I dragged a pic from my camera card and
• dropped into the box that says, oddly enough, “Drop images here”.
• It disappeared.
• I went hunting/
• I found it in the same folder (camera memory card) except renamed and SMALLER.

Settings -

1. Set where you want the image to go when its disappeared.
2. Set the name format for the renaming.
3. Set the size of the outcome picture.

Price   $0.00 Get it here.

Have a great week!
Cathy

That’s me.  What about you?  Are you a bit OCD about your desktop?  Or does it get the best of you too?  If you want to share your desktop tips and tricks (or woes), I’d be so tickled to have company.  Let me know in a comment so I can check it out!

Here’s my completely unabridged, un-touched-up desktop this morning:

Desktop

Show me yours, if you dare!

For Your Readers:

You will learn lots from these little slides, but your readers, whether pro- or anti- Twitter will appreciate this.  This is a slideshow, 140 slides, with one tweet on each one – that is 140 characters – easy peasy.  They are the best wisdom and guidelines for twittering.  It will answer the “Why-on-earth-do-you-do-that?” types, and be eye-opening for the newbie tweeter.  http://zubeta.com/twitter-M.html

For Design Inspiration:

It seems that every time I go site-surfing to find a graphic, I stumble upon more great designing websites and online magazines.  My reader is chock full of them.  And to be honest, I still only go to my fave’s: webdesigndepot, freelanceswitch, and smashing magazine.  Those are the ones I can’t live without.  HERE is the list of websites on the Smashing Magazine’s “Network” launched last Nov.  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/the-smashing-network/, most of these are already in my reader, and some are just brilliant.  Now they are all compiled on the front page of smashing – no more hopping around for the good stuff!!

For Your Business

There are hundreds of you signed up to receive updates via email or reader.  And since I only get a few questions per week through the contact form here and even fewer comments, I simply need to ask - Who are you?  What would you like to know about WordPress?

See the newsletter this month for my survey – and as a thank you for participating, I’ve purchased this exclusively for you-  ”Press Releases & Template” – it is full of everything you need to know to fully realize the marketing value in press releases.  I learned a lot while reading this and intend to use it on this site.  Click here to go directly to the survey.

For YOU:

Recently uploaded to the Members Center:

• Twitter Icons (unique, high quality)
• Handy Icons  (social networking hand drawn in color – very nice)
• Glossy E-Commerce Icons (for your stores)
• Feed Icons for Designers (a huge assortment of RSS standard icons)
• What to Do When a Reporter Calls (pdf)
• How to Build Your First Media List (pdf)

For everyone:

• Photoshop Keyboard Cheat Sheet
• HTML Cheat Sheet
• CSS Cheat Sheet
• HTML Character Entities Cheat Sheet