OK, I'll admit it: I'll never be one of those guys who earns his entire income from his blog, and gets to sit around in a housecoat sipping coffee while he thinks up the next thing to write about (ironically enough, I actually am sitting in a housecoat with a coffee, but that's only because I just got up). Anyhow, this blog has become a popular destination for web programmers and students, and I have put a lot of time into it, so I'm happy to say that it does give a little something back to me.
If you're building a blog or website based on solid content that is going to be useful to a number of people, I would highly recommend that you consider monetizing it. For me, there are four main ways to make money on an average website:
- Contextual ads (e.g. AdSense)
- In-text link ads (for me it's now Infolinks that provides this)
- Affiliate ads
- Direct ad sales
If you're trying to decide which to use first, here's what I have found to be the results: (more…)