For many people blogging is a way to express themselves online for the rest of the world to read. Usually it’s about a specific topic or if it’s a personal blog, then the blog posts could range from anything like your latest trip to Europe or how your dog just had puppies. Nevertheless, blogging is easy for anyone with a computer and internet access to use.

So for those who enjoy writing and spend lots of time doing it, why not make some extra money from it? It doesn’t cost you anything and only requires a little bit of time to setup but the return could be well worth it. That’s the beauty about online advertising programs — they work 24/7 even when you’re sleeping. Talk about a nice passive way to earn some extra money each day!

My first tip is probably the most popular method (and easiest) way to get started with making money from your blog. It’s a program called AdSense from a small company you’ve probably never heard of called Google. Knowingly or not, you’ve viewed hundreds of Google’s ads online and probably even clicked on a few since they were relevant to whatever topic or website you were reading at the time. That’s one of the great things about this program and I’ll talk more about it further down this post.

Use Google AdSense

Google adsense logo

Google’s advertising program is free to sign up and you can usually be online within an hour or so (assuming your application is approved quickly). Then adding AdSense to your blog is easy especially with Blogger’s new AdSense widget (it’s quite simple with WordPress as well but I’m going to assume WordPress users already know how to do this since it’s just cut and pasting html). Once your application is approved, just log into your account, customize your ad unit, and copy and paste a block of HTML code into your blog. I’ll give you a walkthru of this process.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Bonus Tips

Now a few tips and a warning before you get too giddy about all this money you’re going to start making. First, never (and I mean never) click on your own ads. Google will know and they will ban you from the AdSense program. It’s not worth it! Secondly, don’t expect the big bucks to start rolling in right away. It’s a numbers game. The more traffic you get to your site, the better chances you have of somebody actually clicking your ad. Typically with ads, you can expect a 2% - 4% click thru rate (CTR) assuming your ad is in a good spot which means for every 100 page views you get, expect 2-4 ad clicks. Translation — keep writing great quality blog posts and your traffic will increase over time and so will the ad clicks which equals money in your pocket.

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So go sign up for your AdSense account (Sign up) now and you’ll soon be able to start making money from your blog! If you’ve got any problems or questions while setting this up, please post a comment below. We will do our best to answer any questions you may have or at the least point you in the right direction.

Please make sure to click on the AdSense links provided in this article as the sign up referral helps support and offset our expenses for maintaining this site.