Making Money Online

So you've been through all the standard ideas: you've considered joining an affiliate program or network and decided it's not your bag. You've thought about domain parking and domain forwarding; AdSense, AdWords, and other Pay Per Click (PPC) opportunities; and setting up a storefront to do direct selling. If you don't have your own product or service ready to sell, does this mean you're out of luck? Don't give up yet! Read on for other ideas for monetization of your website.

Product Review and Promotion

Did you know that it's possible to sell your opinion? Yup—businesses will pay to have you review their products on your blog. Companies like PayPerPost (http://payperpost.com/index.html), ReviewMe (http://www.reviewme.com/), and SponsoredReviews (http://sponsoredreviews.com/) work to connect bloggers to merchants, and suggest that it's possible to earn $500/month or more doing this.

You begin by applying, and your blog may be reviewed and have to meet minimum requirements for readers, RSS subscribers, and links. Some companies may provide opportunities for which you don't need to qualify.

If you do qualify, there are guidelines for the blog post you write, such as minimum words and the inclusion of link text and a product URL. You may also have a deadline of a number of hours and a maximum number of posts per month. Increasing your website and RSS traffic may increase your opportunities.

It is not surprising that grammar, spelling, and usage count. In addition, disclosure of payment is required. If a company does not insist that you disclose that you are being paid, don't work for them.

Be aware that advertisers will likely be rating your reviews and can, in effect, ban you. This may create an issue if you honestly don't like the product, and push people towards slanting their reviews. Check policies carefully to find out what your options are to make sure you don't end up in an uncomfortable situation.

Note that if you do paid reviews it is absolutely necessary to make sure that search engines are not affected by your paid links. One way you can do this is put

<meta name= "robots" content="nofollow">

in the page header for the link. If you do not do this or take some other measure, you risk having your Google page rank (and perhaps others) affected, i.e., penalized. See the article More about <meta> Tags for more information about nofollow and other tags.

News Coverage

If none of the methods described so far suits you, it's possible to monetize your site with up-to-date, useful information, that is, with news. For example, Voxant Newsroom (http://www.thenewsroom.com/) offers an opportunity to add news content to our site and get paid for it through revenue sharing. The two hundred content providers include major news producers, such as the Associated Press (AP), CBS, MTV, NHL, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal.

The news is provided to you in the forms of text, video, and photos. Video content with an advertisement is paid by CPM (cost per thousand plays). Text articles and photos each have accompanying advertisements, and you receive credit when they are viewed.

Donations

You may also fall into the category of just wanting to do what you want to do, without added "stuff" on your website, but are interested in providing an opportunity to support your efforts if they so desire. If so, you may find a donation plug-in to be just the thing you need.

Donation plug-ins or extensions need to work specifically with the blog technology you use, for example WordPress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/money) or Joomla (http://extensions.joomla.org/). Some may be straightforward, while others try to be a bit catchier, sporting slogans like "Buy me a beer!" or "Buy me a coffee!" You may have the option of including a suggested donation or a thermometer to show the progress of your sustain campaign.

Most donation plug-ins that I've seen suggest that the visitor donate through PayPal. This keeps everything neat and tidy for you and allows your visitor to keep his or her financial details to him- or herself. But it is also possible to find plug-ins that invite a donation through a check or money-order, should you have this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best a need for that (for example, if a visitor wishes to donate to you but doesn't have a PayPal account). The plug-ins typically appear in the sidebar and/or at the end of posts.

Related Article: Affiliate Network Advantages >>