This post contains affiliate links.
I knew when I started my Dragon Blogger Technology and Entertainment portal back in August 2008 that I wanted to monetize my blog as soon as possible. Making money from my blog by doing product reviews was my primary reason for blogging at the time, and once I started blogging I realized how much I enjoyed it and kind of morphed into a blogger who helps other bloggers, blogs about technology, became a poet and even use blogging as a diary.
As my blog has grown more popular plenty of $2 – $10 opportunities roll my way folks, there is plenty of tiny opps out there that add up if you do many of them. With a PR2 blog, or a blog that gets 100+ unique visits per day you can probably realistically get between 20 $5 opps per month easily if you sign up for all of the online blogging programs I list in my blog.
The problem is that many of these opportunities are not good fits for most blogs, you can find dozens that promote “insurance”, “gambling sites”, “get rich quick” or any other type of unfavorable opportunity. Know that if you write a decent blog about important and intersting topics like (blogging, technology, or anything) and you spew out an article or several per month including these topics you are going to hurt your reputation. Unless your blog is focused on industries like gambling (poker or Las Vegas) blog, or travel or politics (where you can fit in insurance)…etc You cannot do a paid post about these topics without being so off genre you look desperate and will blog about anything.
This is why I discriminate heavily, I reject 90% of all paid offers to my blog that are in topics I don’t deem suitable or valuable to my target audience. I don’t reject the ads to be rude and I do consider that as a blogger I am lucky to have anyone at all that is interested in paying me to promote their product or service. I reject the ads if I think it will hurt my credibility with my readers or appear as if I will just promote anything which is not what I am about.
It is okay to promote a product or service you actually enjoy and use, you are sharing your opinions and your blog is your voice. It is also more than acceptable to promote companies products and services who compensate you for taking the time to read about, learn about or try their products and share your experiences with your readers. Just remember if you are trying to build a persona and identity online through blogging, your reputation is very important and you must always be associated with something you would be able to publicly say you endorse to someones face, not just because somebody paid you to do it.
There are sites out there that have no “persona” for the blogger, they are sheer promotion/advertising/sales sites and it is more acceptable for these to take whatever paid opportunities come your way. For the rest of us, you have to be discriminating in what you promote and the more popular and successful you become as a blogger the more opportunities will be presented to you.
-Dragon Blogger
WPX Support
Latest posts by WPX Support (see all)
- What Posts and Videos Will Get Popular is Still a Mystery - December 16, 2016
- Poem: Weeping Priest - October 30, 2016
- Reflecting on 8 Years of Dragon Blogger - September 29, 2016