Monetize Your BlogHow-to Tips

• Tim Lemke• Wine blogger for over 2 years• Day job in Interactive marketing for

Barefoot Proximity (a BBDO agency) (no relation to Barefoot wines)

Who Am I?

• Wines & Vines offers a comprehensive collection of products providing news, information, marketing and research capabilities for the wine and grape industry

• The flagship monthly magazine provides a wide range of solutions to give those in the industry the tools they need to be successful

Thanks to Our Sponsor

This Session is NOT About...

• Whether or not to monetize

• Ethics

• A secret formula to Internet millions

This Session IS About...

• How to generate income from your blog... at least a little bit

• Mostly advertising-based revenue, but we’ll discuss some other options too

• Giving you actionable steps to start monetizing or improve how you’re doing it

Monetizing with Ads

Prerequisites to Monetize with Ads

• You need a blog (or similar web property)

• Your own root domain

• Traffic... Preferably lots of it

• Basic HTML knowledge, or a friend with it

• Privacy Policy

• Ideally, set up a LLC & get an EID

Lingo

• CPM = Cost per mille (thousand)

• CPC = Cost per click

• CPA = Cost per action

CPM is a Good Base Measure

How much can you make?

50,000 Page views x 3 Ads per page= 150,000 Ad impressions

Average $1.00 CPM = $150 per monthAverage $2.00 CPM = $300 per monthAverage $3.00 CPM = $450 per month

Maximize traffic, page views & CPM to maximize your profits

Don’t Be a Douchebag

“If CPC = Cost per click, then I can just click on my ads and watch the money roll in!”

- Foolish Douchebag

Ad Formats

• Banners

• Text ads

• Video ads

• Image ads

• Contextual text ads

• Sponsorships

Where to Find Advertisers

• Google Adsense

✓ Easy to become an Adsense publisher

✓ Can be ugly and can cheapen your site

✓ Can be tuned for a better experience and effectiveness

Where to Find Advertisers

• Affiliate Marketing

✓ Pay for performance based on conversions

✓ Subscriptions and high -commission items are most profitable

✓ Works better in some genres than others

Where to Find Advertisers

• Ad Networks

✓ Provides scalability for advertisers

✓ Many have minimum traffic or exclusivity requirements

✓ Requires active management to get best CPMs

Where to Find Advertisers

• Direct Sales

✓ Eliminates the middleman, making it more lucrative

✓ Can be most effective for advertisers, but can also be inefficient for advertisers

✓ Requires a lot of work

Revenue Opportunities

Direct Sales Sponsorship >

Direct Sales CPM >

Ad Networks CPM >

Google Adsense CPC >

Affiliate Marketing CPA*

*Usually

Optimize Banner Size/Placement

• Use IAB Standard Sizes

✓ Leaderboard

✓ Medium Rectangle

✓ Wide Skyscraper

• Place within 500 pixels of top

How to Get Ads on Your Site

• Insertion Code

✓ Ad Networks & Affiliate Marketing Networks provide insertion code.

✓ Can be JavaScript, iFrame or just HTML

✓ Ad serving apps can generate code too

<div style="text-align: center;"><script type="text/javascript"><!--adroll_width = 728;adroll_height = 90;

adroll_a_id = "PNF5YX2YT5GV7AOYFO7T5F";adroll_s_id = "MH3KJ42IUZEOTIBJQ5SIET";adroll_render_link = false;//--></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://c.adroll.com/j/rolling.js"></script></div>

Ad Serving Applications

• Help you to manage inventory

✓ Define spaces✓ Define advertisers

- Define campaigns- Define ads

✓ Associate advertisers with spaces

✓ Assign weighting, rotations and limits

Default Views

• When an ad network, Google Adsense or your own ad serving application doesn’t have a paid ad available it fills the space with a default view.

• Remnant inventory = lost revenue

• Ad chaining helps minimize revenue loss from remnant inventory

Ad Chaining

Direct Sale Ad (not available, default to) >

Ad Network 1 (not available, default to) >

Ad Network 2 (not available, default to) >

Affiliate Marketing Ad

Ad Chaining (advanced)

Direct Sale Ad (not available, default to) >

Ad Network 1 (if CPM < $3.00, default to) >

Ad Network 2 (not available, default to) >

Affiliate Marketing Ad

Ad Chaining (making your head spin)

Ad Server Ad Network 1

Ad Available

Ad > $1.00 CPM

Ad Server

Default Ad Rotation

Affiliate Program

Google Adsense

Display Ad Display Ad

Display Ad

Display Ad

50%

50%

NO NO

YES YES

Traffic IS Important

Be Transparent about your traffic... get Quantified

Create a “Media Kit”

Look at successful sites for examples of what you can do for a media kit

Here’s a snippet from icanhascheezbuger.com

You can get info like this from Quantcast & Google Analytics

Other Ways to Monetize

Text Ads

• Beyond Google text ads, some advertisers just want to buy links

✓ Not CPM-based✓ Either CPC or a flat

rate per time period

• Use a “nofollow” attribute in links or risk getting nerfed by Google

Find a Sponsor

• Site sponsorships can be unobtrusive and associate your equity with a brand

• This may require a custom layout for your sponsor, and/or a site-wide ad takeover

Write an eBook and Sell It

• If you’re really smart and think you can write something worth paying for, write an e-book

• The play here is not to just write it and sell it, but get others, “affiliates” to sell it for you and pay them a cut... pay them at least 50%

Subscription Model

• If you think your content is really good and worth paying for it, try switching to a subscription model

• Appellation America recently switched to subscription

• Good luck with this one

Promote Yourself on Your Blog

• Use your blog to generate offline business opportunities

✓ Promote your wine business✓ Offer wine consulting✓ Speak about wine at events & parties✓ Write about wine for others willing to pay you

Waterboard Your Readers

• Pop-under ads and other invasive technologies can pay well

• Contextual text ads can pop ads on mouse-over and send your readers running to the hills

• Mouse-over ads are also available for images, but lack context

Become the Scourge of the Blogosphere

• There are companies that will pay you to blog about their products

• Typical rates are $5-10 per post

• Disclosure that it’s a sponsored post is highly recommended, if not required

Questions?