by Doreen Martel

Created on: May 10, 2010

With hundreds of new blogs cropping up each day, new bloggers who are interested in making money blogging have a number of decisions to make. One of the decisions that they will have to make is which money making opportunities they will take advantage of.  Bloggers have the opportunity to use in text advertisements such as those supplied by Vibrant, HOTWords, Infolinks and Kontera. In text advertisements can be an additional source of revenue for bloggers but you must carefully weigh the pros and cons of these advertisements.

Pros

One of the main features of in text advertisements is that they are generally relevant to your content. The way these advertisements work is that they pick up on key words in your blog post and display appropriate advertising based on those keywords. For example, the phrase "your iPhone" may return an advertisement for Search Next which is an online marketplace.

In text advertising is fairly unobtrusive to your readers. The person reading your blog would have to place their mouse over the double underlined text to see the advertisement. Some bloggers consider this type of advertising preferable to potentially annoying banner advertisements and those loaded with flashing text. They are also far less distracting than video advertisements that start playing the minute someone lands on a page of your website.

In text advertising does not take up any additional space on your blog. Unlike programs like Amazon and AdSense, in text advertising does not require the blogger to set up the advertisements themselves. They are automatically linked to keywords in your blog. You insert a small piece of Java code to your blog and the advertiser does the rest.

Cons

In text advertising is not a high earning proposition for the most part. While you will see a number of advertisements in your text, you may find that your earnings are low in comparison to other advertising programs such as AdSense. The payment on these advertisements is a pay per click model so clearly if your readers do not click on the advertisements, you do not earn anything.

In spite of being less obnoxious than their banner and flash counterparts that can pop up and interfere with reading, some readers will still complain that they are getting "hit" with advertisements all over your website. Once you place the code on your site, the code determines where advertising will be placed and you have little control over it. While these advertisements will not display over text you have linked, you still cannot control what advertising appears.

Another drawback of in text advertising is that you could very well be advertising for a competitor without even knowing it. You should check your advertisements from time to time and block them from your control panel.

Another downside of in text advertising is that much like other advertisements on the internet, there are people who have created programs that will block these types of advertising.  This means that no matter how relevant they are, you will not earn money from these advertisements if your visitors are using these script blockers. The irony here is that many of these people who write these scripts are earning money from similar programs.

Summary

When you are interested in making money blogging, you will have to decide for yourself whether you wish to have in-text advertisements. They can be an additional source of revenue, but the pros and cons of using them should be carefully weighed before you make your final decision.  If a blogger is interested in maximizing their opportunities for income from their blog, they should be using in text advertising as another source of revenue.

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