This is what I hate about MMO, to many people have negative attitudes. All I ever seem to read about is how you’ll never make $15k a month from your blog. Yeah, you probably won’t but Jesus, you’ve got to think positive. If you sit there constantly reading about how you’re going to fail, how you won’t make money online, how people won’t visit your blog then what is the point of blogging? And why on earth are the people who constantly tell you this still blogging? Ahhh, they’re here because they don’t care about making money, but I bet you they’re the ones who who try the hardest to make money.

Anyway, on to how am I starting to monetize this place. I’ve swapped the four 125×125 banners I had in my right side bar and replaced them with new ones. I did have a FlashDen.net, CMSNerd.com and two other banners linking to other blogs. The FlashDen banner is now on another site of mine and is bringing in roughly the same amount of revenue. The CMSNerd banner simply isn’t needed here anymore. The amount of traffic that CMSNerd receives via search engines doesn’t really require me to do any real advertising.

The replacement banners are all hopefully going to be provided by the ad network I just signed up for, BuySellAds.com I’ve set my price to $25 a month which is slightly high but I’m hoping to attract advertisers looking for blogs with PR. I’m trying to work out how to remove the rel=”nofollow” tag from that ad section, this should make advertising with me more appealing. BuySellAds.com is currently in private beta mode, so if you sign up now you might not be allowed to sell ad space just yet. But you can definitely start purchasing ads.

This is just the first step I’m taking to help start Funk13 start paying for itself.

Here’s my link if you fancy advertising here.

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Another downside for me was the fact that I wasn’t selling all of my ad spots. If I set my minimum bid to $0.01 they would fill. But if I raised it up to $0.05 to help cover the costs of the ads I was buying, I would scare everyone off. I’m not saying my blog deserves to have all of its ad spots filled, but If I’m going to struggle to break even or gain traffic, I don’t see the point in participating any more.

Maybe I should stop been such a Ebenezer Scrooge, and spend some money with out trying to make it back? First off, I do know that at some point, I will have to purchase ads to help drive traffic to my blog. But, as I mentioned before, I was placing ads and not generating any traffic what so ever. I even made my 125×125 as pretty as possible lol. Anyway, I’m not here to support the ProjectWonderful community (or should that be Entrecard community?) by purchasing ads just for the sake of it , I’m here to make a profit and generate some new traffic to my blog. If I was getting visitors off the ads I purchased, then I wouldn’t really care about filling my blogs ad spots. I probably wouldn’t even bother selling ProjectWonderful ad space. Because I don’t mind paying for something that works.

I think the main problem with ProjectWonderful is that nearly all of it’s users are Entrecard users, and people are basing their minimum bid price on there Entrecard status, not on the important things such as, unique visits per day. And I don’t mean entrecard people ”dropping their card” visits.

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It gives the impression your out to make a quick buck
Aren’t the majority of blogs out to make a quick buck? Hang on, I forgot. Your blog has 27687 feed burner readers, of course you’re not trying to make a quick buck from your readers. Your affiliate links which are slapped from head to toe in your posts and on your pages, are only there to make your blog look pretty.

New readers and even loyal readers will never return when you place ads on your site
Has anyone got any hard evidence to back up this claim? Johnchow has a blog full of ads. I also see a blog full of loyal readers.

You should be concentrating of promoting your blog. Not placing ads.
Fair point. But it’s hardly a lifetimes work placing an ad on your blog. You copy some fancy code, open up your source code and paste it in. Ad placement is important. It may take a little longer to work out. But Surely people are capable of promoting and advertising at the same time.

New blogs have low traffic. Your ad is worthless
This one is very true. But what if you get lucky? What if an ad relevant to a few of your visitors tastes is on your site? I recently had a referral ad up for a stock flash site. 3-4 days ago I got lucky and made a little bit on money.

Some basic ideas
If you look around the web you’ll notice a lot of blogs like to use 2 column 125×125 ad’s. For so many blogs to be using this method, surely it must be paying off. What you have to remember here is, these types of ads are usually paid ads. Someone pays you $200 a month for there image to placed in one of the blocks. If you’re a new blog, nobody in their rite mind is going to pay you that much to advertise on your site. So using the the 2 columns ad blocks should be put on hold. You could always offer the blocks out for free though. This should hopefully generate a little bit of traffic and if your site starts to grow, you might be able to start asking for a small monthly fee. In my opinion, having Images such as ”Advertise here free” make you look desperate. It might give the impression that you’re blog isn’t very popular. But then again, I’m sure it will attract advertisers as advertisers love free space. I would probably hide the ad blocks untill I have enough ads to fill all or most of them. Try to make sure you have a link somewhere on your site telling people your accepting new ads and create a post too.

You could try some affiliate links. Links that point towards a certain item which you receive commission if that item is purchased. Affiliate marketing is a whole new ball game, but if you’re going to try it, try to advertise something that’s relevant to your site. Use your head, try to blend the link in to your site, find a suitable place to put it. Create a post that is somehow going to tie in with your item. It wont be easy for a new blog to pull off. But it can be done.

To be successful with advertising you’re going to have to start experimenting. Those two methods are widely used. I’m sure if you really wanted to, you could come up with something 10x better.

But wait! You’re a new blog, you will fail if you experiment. Even more so with ads.
Ha, one of the best things to do when you first start blogging is to experiment. It’s a whole new world, and a free world at that. If you want to play around with advertising do it! Surely it’s better to start early? Remember. It’s Your Blog, Your Ads, Your Rules!

Are you a new blog with successful ad revenue? Let me know.

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