by Michael Fletcher

Created on: July 08, 2009   Last Updated: July 25, 2009

I have long advocated a minimalist approach to blog monetization. With all the options available it's critical that as bloggers we work on targeting our audience with a laser rather than a shotgun. I find myself moving around from site to site and it appears at some point every beginning blogger in the world got around a table and decided that the best way to monetize their site would be to fit as many advertisements onto one page as possible while your posts snake carefully around even more advertisements.

There are a number of tools available for Wordpress that will allow you to get control of your advertising real estate which I will discuss in a bit, but before I continue. Let me just re-state a point I make often. The best tool you have as a blogger to monetize your site is your good name, authority and your superior content. When a reader lands in a site where the tone is professional the author is well versed in the subject matter and the content fulfills their needs I guarantee you they will return to your site. With advertising, the quality of your content will decide how much soap you sell from your box. I find even when I'm surfing sites myself I'm far more likely to click an advertisement or affiliate link on a site I know and trust.

OK content sermonizing over for now.

Broadly speaking there are 3 ways to make money with your Wordpress blog:

Advertising Affilliate marketing Paid posting

Advertising is the easiest method to monetize your word press site. Even a brand new site will more likely than not be approved for a Google Adsense account. Adsense pays for every user who clicks on an ad on your site. I suggest you make getting an Adsense account your first To-do item. Once you have your Adsense Account download an Adsense plugin for Wordpress. I use Adsenser which is an easily configurable Adsense manager. Managers like this will typically allow you to insert ads into your posts and feeds and as widgets in your side bars. Adsense on a high traffic site will typically be the biggest earner. On smaller or niche sites it may be a better idea to build the content on your site and apply with one of the smaller company's that deal with your niche, these companies typically pay per 1000 impressions. This means the advertiser pays based on how many times their advertisement is displayed not how many times it's clicked on. This model is very effective on niche sites that see low volumes of users but where the users navigate the

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