Monetizing your blog can be difficult; especially if you are just starting out.
There are many ways to monetize ones blog but finding the right one could be difficult. It all depends on which direction you would like to take. If you are here for the long run then you should always think twice before you jump on an income generating advertising or affiliate program. Take your time and examine the pros and cons because all of them differ in one way or another. You should pick the ones that suit your needs. Some pay commissions based on clicks, some pay per sale… others for referrals.
In my few months blogging I have developed a liking to the ones that require the least effort/worry and generate steady passive income. I like the ones that you don’t need to overwhelmingly ‘study’ and figure out to comprehend the myriads of details and conditions.
I enjoy simplicity and straightforwardness. That’s why I enjoy being a part of Project Wonderful. Although I registered with the project about a month ago, I got approved the last few days of January.
Project Wonderful, allows you to allocate a desired area of your blog for direct advertising available to blogs and sites. You can divide that space, according to the size of ads you want to hold and set a minimum price for each of them.
It’s up to you to decide if you want to place boxes that hold small buttons, 125x125 squares, half banners or full banners and you decide how many of these to display in the box.
Interested advertisers bid for the spots and the cost to advertise fluctuates based on demand. You don’t have to worry much. Every ad box has a few settings you might want to tweak, but autopilot works fine. Just set it and forget it.
So I set it two weeks ago, I forgot about it, did nothing and at the end of the day it generated a few bucks. Project wonderful made me $5.77 as you can see in the screenshot from my account page.
Initially I created a box with two spots and set the minimum bid to 1 cent. Some day’s people paid 1 cent, other days the price went up to $2. The high bidder gets the spot.
As you can see the current box fits 4 ads and the minimum bid is set at 0.05.
By clicking on the blue letters on the top “Your ad here, right now” you will be able to see the traffic and price details for the particular box, number of impressions as well as price history. Since it was placed a few hours ago there is not much to see, but in a few days from now, everything will be recorder and displayed to potential advertisers.
As a publisher you will get the highest rate for your ad since the highest bidder gets the ad slot.
You can create your own ad and buy advertising space on other Project wonderful blogs and sites. You can put funds in your account through pay pal or just use the money that your ad boxes have generated for you.
Instead of setting fixed prices for ads Project Wonderful uses a “Infinite Auction” model, kinda like ebay but with no set end date.
If the publisher has not set a minimum price for his slot, you will pay $0 for your ad. I am actually running a couple of free ones right now. Not a lot of traffic, but no complains.
Your ad is displayed only if you are the high bidder and if you get outbid, you only get charged for the amount corresponding to the time your add was actually being displayed. No nonsense….
Note that Project Wonderful keeps a 25% commission from every ad, but they also pay for the all the transaction fees when you get paid. You can withdraw money directly to your paypal account.
Stay tuned for more great ways to make money blogging