Over the past few months I?ve been looking at ways in which I can earn money from this website, which in reality is actually a way to offset the money I pay for hosting this and other websites I run. I?m never going to get rich from this but if a tiny amount of money comes in then I will definitely feel the benefit, and if ?monetising? my blog helps towards this then I?m all for it. The main concern though is that I don?t want the blog to become one big advert and so I have to be careful with what I do.
I added to the blog on 11th June 2009 with a banner advert and a sidebar advert which pays varying amounts depending on page impressions (visits to the site) and also actual clicks on the adverts. It?s a slow process to get income on this blog as its got a wide range of content, most of it personal, and so it doesn?t have a certain type of reader to whom I can target. Since 11th June I?ve had 42,267 page impressions and 300 advert clicks which have earned me the grand total of £42.50 which isn?t a great amount for just under 5 months, but it?s been picking up and I suppose it?s better than nothing.
I decided this week that it would be good to see if there were other ways to earn money from the site and so I came across Tradedoubler, which allows you to put specific adverts on your site from a variety of sources. You have to have your site approved by the advertiser and once that?s done you can choose from a variety of their adverts to put on your site. On Tradedoubler there are hardly any, if none at all, that pay for impression and clicks like Google does, and most of them work on a commission basis, so if someone clicks on an advert on your site and buys something you will get a flat fee or a percentage of the sale which varies from advertiser to advertiser.
So these adverts do different things and Google will give me a daily income, whilst I?m hoping that Tradedoubler will pay larger amounts but less frequently.
The good thing with Tradedoubler is that I can select which adverts I want on the site so you can be assured that there will only be adverts relevant to my readers and which I think people may find useful. So if you do see an advert on the site for something you were going to buy then I would be grateful if you followed the link on this site and earned me some money!
Here is an example of the types of adverts, and if you hover over it you should see that it has a referral link which will then forward to the actual Waterstones site:
Update (4/1/10): I?ve stopped using Tradedoubler as it was earning me nothing. Google Adsense is still earning money but I need to get site hits up so that I get more clicks.
I only use Google Adsense and Text Link Ad.
I barely make any money with Adsense ? not enough clicks, even though I have nice traffic.
I?m doing much better with Text Link Ad. Basically, you put your blog on a virtual market and Text Link Ad contacts you when they sell one of your link (basically, a key word that appears in one of your post, such as ?credit card? and link to the buyer website). It pays nicely, my average is $100 a month the last two years, which isn?t bad considering I don?t have to do anything.
By the way, it didn?t affect my google, SEO or whatever. It takes some times to pick up though, you may not sell any link for a while, and then it?s starts to be interesting.
If you feel like signing up, you can use me as a sponsor (yes, I will make $20 out of you I believe
) Just email me and I give you the code (I?m not gonna spam your blog on top of that 
)
Perhaps it was your AD for LD LINES that p***ed off Euroferries.!
That?s my Google Adsense. It automatically selects ads that are relevant to the post. I would happily put a Euroferries ad here if they had any (and gave me some money too).
The Second Hand Ferries advert has always made me laugh ! I did look though.
How do we get a password ?
I have removed or password protected some specific posts and these are not currently available to anyone. I?ve also introduced moderated comments for the time being. Sorry.