(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)
Chitika eMiniMalls (affiliate link: I get some extra money if you subscribe using that link; that money does not come out of yours, you still receive 100% of your earnings) is a new-ish product-oriented banner ads service. At this moment, you can see it in action in the top banner, or, if you prefer, as a smaller banner on The Games of my Life, on the right sidebar.
A lot of people are reporting great results from those, typically better than AdSense earnings; I’ve just started using them, a couple of days ago, so nothing to report… as of yet. They work very well because they’re “dynamic” (move the mouse cursor over the tabs and see for yourself), and also because they have nice pics of the announced products. They draw attention without being annoying.
Note: the code they give you, by default, has contextual advertising (that is, “understanding” what your page is about, and showing relevant ads) turned off. It’s that way so that they’re compatible with AdSense ads (which disallow other contextual ads on the same page - it’s in their rules). That means you have to manually edit the code (it’s easy) and say what types of products, or products themselves, you want the ads to show. That’s very useful for some kinds of blogs, such as political ones, or blogs about blogging, because they’re not directly related to a type of products, but you can figure out that your visitors are probably interested in a particular product type. On the other hand, if you don’t have AdSense on your blog, it may be better to turn on the contextual advertising.
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Pedro, I’ve followed your series with interest. It is well researched, clearly written, quite informative as well as brief, which are all attributes of a competent blog writer. I’ve paused to comment after reading your last entry about making money from blogging because there is one important element in online money-making that I think you should make your readers aware of. A blogger can target a particular audience of readers and ask them to download special content from the blog or to enter a special section of the blog for a fee.
This is a sophisticated way of generating revenue from a blog, but not an unfeasible one. It all depends on how valuable some of the material in the blog has become to the reader and how well the blogger has targeted the readership with it. Commercializing a blog is not a far-fetch idea and this is a topic that is discussed regularly in the direct marketing circles where I work. Anyone interested should read up on it.
All blogger are investors. They’re investing their time and effort, and even cash resources, to create blogs for someone to read in return for their labor. If they wish to make money off their blog, then bloggers should consider at least recovering their costs up to the break-even point, as part of a return on investment (ROI) plan. A blogging ROI calculator would come in handy for that purpose.
Cheers,
Arturo
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