Blog Money Making in 2009

By Pete | @kingpetey | 06 Dec 2009

2009 has been a tough year for Bloggers to make money compared to 2008 but there have been opportunities and ad networks have matured to become better accepted by marketers. Gone are the large amounts of money for private ad sales in favor of link exchange agreements and PPC amounts have tumbled.

Here is how some of my sites have fared over the past year for monetization.

Sponsored Reviews

Sponsored reviews have fared well in 2009 with advertisers keen to show their products in a natural way to consumers and search engines. They are often criticized for degrading the quality of a blogs content but I've found a sponsored review mixed in between a number of good quality posts to perform well. Strict new rules for Bloggers in the US may mean some good opportunities for non-US blogs in 2010.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

It's been a rough year for Pay Per Click marketing, the amount made per click in 2009 has plummeted on a number of my sites, hopefully 2010 will see the PPC market performing much better.

Google Adsense - Has been a reliable income throughout the year though relies heavily on people clicking high value ads. Adsense performed well on my iPodHistory site before I sold it however has failed to do well on 12stix or ImAFish.

Clicksor - Has replaced Adsense on a couple of sites where they are not suitable for Adsense or have been banned. The amount per click is fairly poor even compared to Adsense.

Monthly Ads

Monthly ads are where you are paid a set amount per month for an advert though these often base prices on Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. There are a number of key players:

TNX - Has been a consistent payer throughout the year but relies on paying a small amount for a lot of adverts.

LinkLift - Recently out of beta, LinkLift is one of the newer players but has shown good growth throughout the year.

Linkworth - Advertising revenue has dried up significantly from Linkworth over the past year.

Text-Link-Ads - TLA has paid consistently low amounts all year.

Teliad - Has paid consistently for higher Page Ranked pages.

Private Ad Sales

This time last year there was a lot of money for private ad sales however this has declined significantly. Companies are now turning to link exchange programs rather than paying directly for ads. Even the better paying gambling sites have been cutting back on their advertising budget.

Conclusion

Hopefully we are over the worst in 2009 with the slump in the advertising market. There are plenty of opportunities out there for Blog monetization but Bloggers need to work that extra bit harder to attract the advertisers.