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Can you make money from blogging? PDF Print E-mail
Written by Uponnothing   
Monday, 19 April 2010 13:15

Sponsored Post

As you know this blog has tried various advertising formats over the last year to try and make a little bit of money, which has realistically meant enough to cover the yearly hosting fees. Advertising on blogs is not always very successful in terms of how much money you make, given the space on your blog that you sacrifice and often the amount of readers you annoy. I'm sure regular readers remember my experiment a while back with adverts that take over the screen for a few seconds which you had to close in order to read whatever post it was that you had clicked on. Some 'robust' feedback from a few readers made me drop that one pretty quickly.

Which leads me to try and answer the question: can you make money from blogging?

Arguably, most bloggers do not seek to make money from blogging, most bloggers blog for very different but often very powerful reasons which enables them to dedicate a lot of time and effort to a 'hobby' without any financial rewards. However, I do not see in any harm in trying to monetise your blog if you have worked hard to create an audience for what it is you write. It was this desire that led me to sign up to the latest in blog Monetisation: ebuzzing.

ebuzzing

ebuzzing is an advertising system that has just been made available to UK bloggers, and it provides bloggers with an excellent chance to make real money from their blogs. It works in two basic ways: video adverts which generate money on a per-view basis - you can see one of these on this blog if you look to your left. Here are the thumbnails of the expanding video format that I choose for this blog:

Video normal

Video mousover

 

The second way is to write sponsored articles like this one, advertising a particular brand or product. For this you are paid an agreed, fixed fee, providing your article meets the specification. For examples of a sponsored post you can visit Tim Worstall's blog here.

ebuzzing is very clear that all sponsored articles must contain a disclaimer that they are 'sponsored' so that readers are fully aware that they are reading an advertisement, and the idea is that you only choose to write about products that you would actually recommend to others. I am writing this endorsement of ebuzzing because I have tried various advertising tools without a huge amount of success, but ebuzzing has already demonstrated that it is possible to make money from blogging without 'selling out' and without overtly intrusive adverts. You simply register on ebuzzing.com and once your blog (or blogs) have been verified you can start picking campaigns to promote, either video campaigns or sponsored articles like this one. The video adverts come in a range of sizes suitable for all blogger, Wordpress and in this case Joomla sidebars. If you have very narrow sidebars - like mine - you can choose the video format that I have gone for, one that expands on mouseover.

The registration process is quick, simple and free and most importantly holds you under no obligation to advertise anything, should you not see a campaign that suits you. However, given that more than 800 advertisers have proposed campaigns to bloggers with the help of ebuzzing such as Coca-Cola, Intel, MTV, L?Oréal, MasterCard, Toyota, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, eBay, Canon, Diesel, Warner Bros, Philips, StudioCanal… I'd imagine you'd find something that suited your blog and something that you would have no moral objection to recommending. I have written this post because I am genuinely interested in making a little bit of money from this blog and ebuzzing is the first advertising system I've found that really seems able to give me this chance.

If you want to find out more about ebuzzing then visit this post on their blog for more details.  In the meantime, normal service here on Angry Mob will return shortly.

 
Comments (2)
2 Monday, 19 April 2010 18:03
Uponnothing
Posting too many sponsered posts, as it was never something I had set out to do. However, when I use a product and like it, I have no issues with sharing that. In many ways it isn't particularly intrusive, because you can choose to not read anything I post. It certainly isn't like that awful ad system I tried that took over the screen etc.

I'm aware of being seen to 'sell out' but at the same time I'm just trying to get through a recession the same as everyone else (imagine violins playing now).

Anyway, thanks for the feedback and I hope not too many readers will be put off. Like I said, this post is a rare distraction from doing what I normally do.
1 Monday, 19 April 2010 17:16
But 'sponsored posts' will either be filtered from the feed or I'll simply stop reading.

It's a bit insidious for me. Even with the words "sponsored posts" in the title, I lose trust in the source. Just as I can't watch ITV News.

I do hope you find a suitable balance

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