Keeping Readers Happy and Bloggers Earning
Bloggers have a very tough job of writing compelling and interesting articles that will keep their readers engaged and try to earn some money while doing it. This often necessitates bloggers to take advantage of sponsored or paid posts which can be a double edged sword as it allows for the blogger to earn some money, but may turn off the readers if the sponsored post is too outside the blog content focus or is a little to obvious and pitchy.
InPostLinks and PayPerPost are some examples of earning programs that allows bloggers to get assignments in the form of keywords (they just have to use these keywords in any normal post) and they get paid a certain amount for using the keyword. These keywords can be anything from “Mesothelioma Lawyers” to “Sale” so you have to find the best way to use these keywords in your blog post. This allows you to keep your content spot on without writing about products which may have nothing to do with your blog niche.
Then there are paid or sponsored posts such as the ones you would get from SocialSpark, SponsoredReviews, BuyBlogReviews, BlogsVertise and ReviewMe which all require some form of paid review or advertisement post including several links and sometimes a declaration of sponsorship. The best thing you can do is find and take only ones that fill your blog niche, Technology blogs only do software or technology related paid opportunities. But if you run a personal blog, or a diary blog you have a lot more flexibility since you often can discuss or talk about any topic and stay on target for a blog focus.
There are benefits and disadvantages to using both types of services, SocialSpark has declaration of sponsorship but each link is a “nofollow” link which in theory shouldn’t hurt your PR as much. PayPerPost is not obvious if you take “link only” opportunities and is a non-obtrusive way to get some earnings for posts, but many opps are “dofollow” links and will sap away your posts PageRank if you do not have enough links coming in to offset the links going out. Also, PayPerPost, SocialSpark, BlogsVertise, SponsoredReviews and ReviewMe allow you to pick and choose which assignments you want to do, you can reject or simply not take an assignment if you are not comfortable with it.
I do my best to feature informative and compelling content and try to appeal to a wide audience, I also do need my blogs to bring in some earnings to justify the amount of time I spend blogging. My hosting fee’s alone are several hundred dollars per year including DNS names and the blog earnings are what offset that and allow me to get a few extra’s (I see my blog earnings as luxury money and often buy games, movie tickets, meals and such).
So the next time you are reading someone’s blog and see a paid post, or if you subscribe to their RSS Feed and a paid sponsorship is the next article, don’t be so offended and unsubscribe from the Blog and take it with stride. You sit through commercials or movie previews before the movie, you might as well accept the occasional sponsored or paid post in between the genuine content you are looking for. Let bloggers have a right to try and make some money to do what they do.
In addition Bloggers are obligated to keep their sponsorships and paid posts to a minimum of 50% or less make sure you are giving at least two decent and legitimate articles per sponsored or paid article. Just remember you might be tempted to do 10 paid opps this week and make that $50 or $75 from your blog, but you will have to do at least 10-15 non-paid articles to make up the difference. I would try to do no more than 1 paid article per blog per day, unless you blog full time and are able to churn out 3 or more articles per day.
For myself I only typically produce 1 non-paid article per day, which means I do no more than 1 sponsored article every 2 days (if I make an exception, I will write more non-paid content to fill out my blog better). I also don’t accept every post I qualify for and I turn down much more than I accept.
These is just some advice and opinions from the Dragon Blogger for people trying to earn money blogging and considering using sponsored posts as a form of income. I can tell you I have tried and used virtually every blog advertising service that exists, and did a review of the Top Companies I Use to Earn Money Blogging and I encourage you to read the post to find out what works for me.
-Dragon Blogger
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It's very understandable.
For me, I have no problem investing time into my blog without a monetary return however the more I work on it, the more I would like for it to help me out.
After all the domains, hosting, gear and other items I use for my blog and some of my freelance websites, it really starts to add up.
.-= Muxx´s last blog ..Shpongle – Ineffable Mysteries From Shpongleland Review =-.
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