Lately we’ve been focusing a lot on promoting your blog. Blog promotion is great for building traffic, but to make money blogging you will need to do more than just promote your blog.

The more traffic, the more money you will make, but… you’ll need a way to translate that traffic into dollars.

How can you do this? Advertising.

Most bloggers make money through advertising, although there are definitely other methods, like selling your own product and establishing premium sections of your site.  But advertising is by far the most common method used to make money online.

Here are the most common forms of advertising that bloggers use:

Banner Ads

Chances are you’ve already seen these types of ads on sites you’ve visited.  Banner ads are basically pictures, often animated, that are links to another website.  They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but usually you’ll see the small square buttons on side bars or a long horizontal in the coveted top of the blog.

Common shapes and sizes:

• 125×125 – a small square “button” that you usually see in sidebars
• 728×90 – that long thin horizontal ad banner you’ll usually see at the top of a site and/or at the bottom
• 120×600 – the tall skinny rectangle; you may see this in sidebars as well

Advertisers will probably pay more for more visibility. Meaning – you’ll want to put your banner ad near the top of your site and definitely “above the fold”.

(Vocab lesson: “above the fold” means whatever is visible on the screen without having to scroll down to read more).

To use these ads, you will need to know how to create a picture link.  This is quite simple

Pay Per Click Ads, Pay Per Action, & Pay Per Mille Ads

These are ads for which you get paid based on certain criteria.

Pay Per Click: paid based on how many visitors click the ad on your blog

Pay Per Action: paid based on the actions that a reader takes on the advertiser website.

For example, if you have PPA ad on your website, to get paid your reader needs to:

• Click on the ad & go to the advertiser’s website
• Sign up for their website / sign up for their newsletter / complete a form / etc

Pay Per Mille: paid based on the number of times the ad is displayed or viewed on your site.

These ads will often use banners for the link to the advertiser’s website.

These ads especially show how important it is to have traffic flowing to your blog.

Paid Reviews

Many bloggers get paid to write reviews of products and websites.  How much they get paid often depends on the advertiser, how many links are required, how nice the blog is and so on.  The highest paying ads will typically go to blogs that have a lot of unique and original content and higher amounts of traffic and higher page rank.

If you decide to use paid reviews, you should be careful and make sure that your blog doesn’t become spammy. Remember that your reviews should be relevant to your readers and you should always give an honest opinion of the product or website.

You can use any or all 3 of these methods to make money with your blog.  The main thing to remember when you decide to monetize your site is that you should always keep your audience in mind.  Use ads that you think are pertinent and helpful to your readers.  Stay focused on creating original content, as well.  This will make you more successful in the long run and help you attract better paying advertisers.