Adding Advertising to Your Blog

Adding advertising to your blog or Web site can be a great little boost to you monthly income. For some bloggers it is is big money. Two of the most popular ways to monetize your site are:

Charge for Ad Spots

You’re first option is to charge for ad spots on your blog. If you’re blog is young but you already have a good following, start out small for your first advertising spots. Maybe $10 or $15 dollars a month or a quarter. Depending on what your traffic is. Check what other bloggers in your niche are doing.

It should be a win-win for both you and your advertiser. You get extra income, they get traffic.

If you are just starting to blog consider offering to swap with other bloggers. Set a time frame for your first swaps, maybe 90 days. And then review with each other. Once you start having a good traffic you can start charging.

As your traffic increases you can increase your rates. A media kit with your page visits and growth over time will be essential in demonstrating to advertisers that you are a good place for them to spend their precious advertising budget.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you make a percentage based on products or services you recommend. Either through sidebar advertising or links in your posts.

For instance, I’m an Amazon affiliate. (full disclosure here, I’ve made very little with Amazon, but hey, it could happen) I mention a book I recently read on my blog and link to it on Amazon, my reader purchases the book and I make a tiny commission.

There are tons of companies that offer affiliate programs. See my sidebar for a couple of my affiliates.

Personally, I only sign up for affiliate programs with products or services that I would highly recommend.

Show me the money! But first show me how.

To add an image/link to your sidebar:

Go to Media Library >> add new media
upload your image
copy the URL (
Go to the Widget Panel
Open/Expand the Primary Sidebar
Drag a Text Widget to the Primary Sidebar
Put in the Title
Code for an image with a link

Explanation:

<a href=”this is where you tell the link to go make sure to copy everything url including the http:// for the destination page and that it is surrounded by quotes“ target=”_blank” – this will open the new site in a new window. If you are linking to another page in your blog don’t use it. But if you are linking to another site or outside your blog it’s good practice to use it.><img src=”this is where you copy the URL of you IMAGE“></a> this closes the code for the link, you want to make sure it’s on the outside of the image code.

Need a button?

Here are a couple of advertising buttons you can feel free to grab. (right click and save as to save them to your computer) These buttons are 125×125 (a popular size and easy to manage on your sidebar).

Use a Plugin like WP125

WP125 is a useful plugin to manage your ad images. Simply add the plugin and then upload your images and input the URL for the destination. You can set up 1 or 2 column.

You can also set expiration dates so if you sell an ad spot for 30 days you don’t have to remember to remove it.

It can be a bit buggy once you’ve reached a certain number (I’m not sure what that magic number is) of ads. But if it does get buggy (adding blank spots) change from ordered to random in the settings and sometimes that will fix it. Also, remember the name…all your images should be 125×125.

I’m using WP125 in my sidebar.

Paid service – Passionfruit Ads

I keep thinking that I’m going to do more with affiliate programs, but it still remains on my to-do list. But if I ever make more of monetizing effort I’m going to switch to Passionfruit ads. I’ve heard great things about it.

Are you already monetizing your blog? I’d love to hear what has worked for you.