To Monetise Or Not - That Is My Question
By Lightening • Jan 12th, 2008 • Category: Blogging tips, Recent postsNote from Andrew: following is a guest post from Lightening of Lightening Online on the tricky subject of making money online from blogging. She asks a lot of questions to help her make the decision on how best to monetise her blog. Because she (like I) is Australian, she uses the locally preferred spelling “monetisation” rather than the US “monetization”.
Late last year, in response to a comment I had left on his blog, Andrew Boyd asked me the question “would you go problogger if you could?” Being reasonably new to the blogging world, I wasn’t entirely sure on the definition of “problogger”. However, something about that question really got my heart pumping. I LIKED the concept of making money through blogging. My reaction was enough to make me really sit down and THINK about what I wanted to get out of blogging and why.
For some people, the question of monetizing their blog is really a moot point. It’s WHY they blog in the first place. From the very outset, they set out to build a popular blog that will attract readers and in return earn them anything from a rather small to a “what most people only ever dream of” level of income.
I’m not one of those people. My blog is a personal blog and when I began blogging it was more about ME than my readers. Earning an income from blogging hadn’t even entered my mind when I first began.
So, my question now is, is it okay to monetise a personal blog? It would seem it’s a question that leads to quite a division in the blogging world from those who are quite passionate about NOT advertising on their blogs, to those who maximize their use of advertising (and all the variations in between).
I’ve been going through the list of pro’s and con’s in my own mind, as I attempt to make the decision of whether or not this direction is the right direction for me and MY blog.
PROS
It’s a perfect way to earn a part-time income as a stay at home mum. I can work around sick kids, sports days and so on. I can work with the kids at home or at school.
With the right equipment, it can become a very portable form of employment.
At the very least, earning some income helps cover the very small costs associated with blogging as a hobby.
It gives some recognition to the amount of time and level of commitment I have for my blogging.
It in some way recognizes that I have a voice and I can use it. It also helps to validate my purpose and my voice in some small way (at least in my own mind).
CONS
I have made friendships with many of my readers and feel somewhat uncomfortable at the thought of making money from them. I most certainly wouldn’t want them to feel “used” or undervalued in any way.
I am still unsure as to whether it would change my view on blogging (moving it from an enjoyable hobby to a “job”). I would hope it wouldn’t but I won’t know until I get there.
I would want to maintain the integrity of my voice and would hope that using advertising or other money earning tasks as part of my blogging wouldn’t change the perception my readers have of that.
Having been pondering on these lists for some time, as well as some of Andrew Boyd’s responses to my initial list of questions, I have pretty much come to the conclusion that I would like to begin to earn some kind of an income from my blogging. I LOVE the idea of being able to earn an income doing something that I am so passionate about. My passion for blogging has continued to increase and I doubt very much that earning a small income from it will cause that to waver any time soon.
Of course, this brings me to my next question which is “how do I earn an income from my blog?”
Google Adsense does seem like a logical place to start. I got nervous for a while there when smaller bloggers were having their accounts pulled for seemingly no clear reason and finding their hard earned earnings disappear at the same time. Then again, there are others who have never had a problem with them and find them to be a very reliable source of income.
I certainly do like the way they are able to set up the ads to reflect the content of the blog and also the origin of the reader. Given blogging is definitely an international platform, it does make finding advertising that is appropriate to a wide range of readers quite difficult.
I would use them with no hesitation whatsoever if the following were to happen:
- They lowered their minimum payout figure. I can understand the need to have a minimum payout figure but even lowering it to $50 would make it a much friendlier system for the multitude of smaller bloggers.
- They guaranteed to pay out what you had earnt so far if for some reason your account was pulled by them. Or at the very least had some kind of appeal system in place for those who believe they’ve been wrongly “accused”. After all, when you get dismissed from any other job, the employer is bound by law to pay you for any work you’ve already been done. They can’t fire you on day 9 of a pay fortnight and say “sorry, you don’t get paid for the last 9 days either”.
I’ve struggled to find what I would describe as a “perfect” ad set-up for bloggers, so I sat down and wrote a list of what such a set-up would look like in my opinion.
- A pay per view rather than simply a per click or per sale payout. If you advertise in a newspaper or on television, you are paying for exposure to your ad. It seems like most advertising set-ups designed for bloggers do not pay on a “per view” basis.
- A choice of which companies I endorse (or at least a choice of categories and the option to NOT advertise companies that go against my personal values)
- A monthly payout with a minimum payout figure MUCH lower than $100. I don’t really want to have to wait 2 years to receive my first cheque!
- An easy to install ad graphic that links to the advertisers site. Or at least an explanation of how to code these myself.
Am I asking too much? Does something like this already exist?
My thoughts are that my best chance of setting up a system like this may be to look into selling advertising space privately. That leads me to a whole new set of questions like:
What is the going rate for advertising on a blog? Is there a basic formula or cents per page load that is considered reasonable in the advertising world? I would want to be fair to both me AND my advertisers. I’m assuming you’d charge per month rather than per pageload and work the figures on an average readership?
Would it be a hard task for me to set up these ads on my blog? I assume it’s a matter of knowing the right coding and applying that to a graphic? Is that right?
At what point is it likely that advertisers would even be interested in advertising on a blog like mine? Right now my visits per month are around 4000. I know this is still reasonably small in the scheme of things. At what point would I consider myself to be a large enough blogger that I could even approach companies directly without having them laugh at me?
So there you have it. I might have answered 1 question (whether to monetize or not) but now I have a whole list of NEW questions!!! Andrew Boyd has been kind enough to offer me his platform for asking my questions. Will you be so kind as to share your thoughts regarding them?
Lightening is
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I can’t answer them, I’m afraid. I have the same questions, and the one answer myself. BlogHer ad network does do all those things on your “wishlist” (and mine, which is identical) but they aren’t accepting new ad publishers at the moment.
If I find anything appropriate in my research I will be sure to let you know.
You´ve covered the issues really well, Lightening and my pros and cons were almost identical to yours. My biggest concern was feeling like I would alienate readers by monetising, but in reality I think regular readers take very little notice of the ads (as long as you haven´t gone overboard). Which then begs the question of who is going to click on your ads. I agree with you about seeking a pay per view rather than click for this reason (and the adsense payout threshold is very high when you´re starting out). Of the services I have seen the pay per view seems to be limited to US visitors (like shoppingads.com) with pay per click for the rest of the world. You should look at clixgalore.com.au which allows you to pick and choose the ads you display and they have loads of Australian companies. My other problem was that so much was aimed at the US market that you lose out if your audience is mostly elsewhere. Clixgalore is more labour intensive though, rather than the easy contextual services like adsense. I am viewing my ads as a bit of an experiment at the moment, it´ll be interesting to see how it pans out.
Hi Lightening,
My situation is different to yours. As soon as I discovered blogging I wanted it to be the way I earned my income. So my blogs had adsense ads on them from the word go. No one has mentioned this and it doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone (perhaps because so few people click on them - my traffic is tiny but I have earned pretty much zero from AdSense).
As to pay per clicks. Pay per click is what newspapers and magazines (which is pretty much what a blog is) do sell. Most of us don’t look at even a tiny percentage of the ads in a newspaper or magazine.
I’m thinking of affiliates. But I think I’d have had to have bought them myself and checked them out before I could recommend them, and this could become awfully expensive.
Looking forward to hearing how you sort it all out.
Evan
Lani - thanks.
I am stuck half way through an application with blogher ads which is rather frustrating. I can’t get any response from them via email either as to where I stand. I’ll possibly give them one more attempt before ditching the idea for now and looking elsewhere. The fact that they are US based ads AND that some people have had load time troubles has given me pause. I’m still thinking I’ll try them if I get the opportunity but they’re also rather strict about using other ads and where they want to be placed etc.
Guera - thanks for your kind comments. I have tried ClixGalore and know that I made 1 sale through them but never got paid. I think there is a difficulty with cookies with some affiliate programs (as to who deserves the affiliate commission - because they often last a certain number of days). My reader had intended for me to get the commission but it didn’t work out that way. It’s all rather complicated for a non-techie like myself.
My best success so far has been using a direct affiliate (not through a company) and I’d love to be involved in more of those programs. The sales were also made by advertising within a relevant post rather than in my sidebar. I want to go down that avenue more but again the issue of “does this compromise the validity of my voice” issues springs up again.
Evan - interesting comment about the magazine ads. Are you saying that their fees are based on the fact that only a small percentage of people read the ads? Agreed on the affiliates front. If you’re going to endorse a company, you want to KNOW that they are worth endorsing. Otherwise you really DO compromise your integrity and voice.
There are a couple of other things you could do to start. One is get yourself a “tipjar” or “buy-me-a-coffee” jar. I think this is perfectly reasonable. The other thing you could consider is getting a “shop” where you can sell mugs or t-shirts or whatever with your designs and/or logo on it. I think their are also some programs where you can set up a shop selling other people’s stuff that you like and get a commission from it.
If you did that, you would obviously have very tight control over what you were promoting, making sure that wasn’t in conflict with your overall “simplify your life” “less materialistic” message. There may not be a lot of money in it but I dare say you would find more joy in that than with some of the bigger programs which are designed more for sites with great SEO value, which personal blogs usually do not have.
Another option is to set up some space for block ads and offer them to people / services you like free for a month. That way, you can get an idea of how many click throughs and conversions ads on your site will get and when you’re ready, you can approach prospective advertisers with some evidence of their value.
(Yes, Andrew, that means I wasn’t being unselfishly generous.
)
I can’t answer your exact questions because like you my blog does not have advertising, but since I work in online advertising I can give you a view of the industry.
Online advertising is really geared towards the advertiser, they are the big winners here. The publishers (ie you) really lose out in monetary terms. Most advertising for blogs and small publishers work on a pay per click or CPC basis. This is because whilst a large number of viewers will see the ad, a very small number will click on them - the industry standard is 0.05%. Therefore, for roughly 5 million impressions, there will be about 3,500 clicks. The advertiser still gets eyes on their ads, but don’t have to pay out as much as they would if they were paying per thousand impressions (CPM).
The industry is now moving towards paying per sale or CPA. This means you (the publisher) does not get paid unless someone who clicks on the ad shown on your site goes ahead and either makes a sale, signs up for a credit card or registers an expression of interest.
Back to my example, an ad which will register 5 million impressions and 3,500 clicks will only register about 50 acquisitions (sales, signups etc). The advertiser will only pay the publisher for those 50 sales.
It is a very poor way to make money especially for a blog that has a small readership. The big blogs do make some money from it because they are generating tens of thousands if not millions of views per day.
For those of us who are not A list bloggers, we might earn just enough to cover hosting costs and that’s about it.
Mmmmm…..interesting suggestions there Lani. I have a feeling I need to “think outside the square” a little more. Thanks for provoking me into deeper thought.
Hi Lani,
in my mind you are most generous anyhow
Best regards, Andrew
very interesting - I don’t know either - great information you shared.I got a 21 cent payout from adsense I think …I pulled it anyway.
There is also the new form of blog advertising I have been reading about 5 sec audio plays launching soon.
Lightening, great post. Lots of issues, so I’ll just respond to a couple that are close to my heart:
- Adsense (because I’ve been writing about it a lot lately): It’s one of the best ways to earn money online, but Adsense doesn’t work well on blogs for a whole lot of reasons. I’ve actually found that it’s starting to perform a little better for me, but I’ve decided to start showing it only to search engine traffic (regular visitors and social traffic don’t normally click ads) to help prevent me being smart priced (where Google cuts the amount each click is worth to about 10%). I’m going to explain how (in WordPress) in a post later this week if anyone else is interested in this.
- Buy Me A Coffee (as Lani suggests): This sounds like a great idea, but so far, no-one has ever donated to me. I only show Buy Me A Coffee on my plugin pages, as I feel a little uncomfortable asking for a donation for a post, but I think it’s fine if someone uses my plugins. But nada… So it hasn’t worked, for me at least. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who it has worked for.
- Direct Advertising: I’ve started thinking about this as well. It can’t hurt to ask can it?
Riayn - my apologies that I didn’t respond to your comment earlier. Thanks very much for your insight into the advertising industry, even if it isn’t such good news for bloggers.
Babyamore - I think I did manage to make $4 from adsense in the month I had it on my original blog. Which isn’t too bad by the sounds of things. Not that I pulled it for it’s low returns but more for my other concerns. I’m not sure it will fit in so well with my wordpress blog though (the locations it could go are different). 5 second audio plays? Sounds interesting although I wonder how annoying it might be for readers. It’s a fine line between giving advertisers enough exposure to make it worth their while and not being too intrusive on readers.
Stephen - thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I appreciate hearing your experience on various things. I do agree with the sentiment “it can’t hurt to ask” and I’m thinking that’s an avenue I will attempt. If I do, I’ll be sure to fill people in on how it went.
[…] Riayn made an amazing comment on Lightening’s monetisation post: […]