I’ve been blogging for a little over 2 ½ years now. Over that time I’ve tried many different monetization methods that have been touted as “great”.

*This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

 

But over and over again I come back to these same two monetization methods for my blogs.

Now many people sell courses or coaching but truthfully… that’s just not my style. I prefer to give away all that I know to help people rather than hide that info behind a paid course.

So if I’m not going to sell courses or coaching sessions then how can I make money with my blogs? Well it really leaves me with two great options.

And the good thing is that both of them are almost entirely passive (which I love). The first one is…

Display Ads

Now having ads on your blog is a controversial subject in some circles. Some people hate the way they make sites look or don’t want the site too feel too “commercial” but here’s the thing, if you want to make good money with your blog passively then you will want to use display ads.

Display ads are 100% my favorite way to monetize my blogs and also make up the large majority of my blogging income 90%+.

And the best thing is… I don’t have to make changes to them ever. The display ad companies handle all of the issues and o just get a direct deposit once a month.

I’ve personally used 4 different display ad providers so far in my blogging journey. I’ve used:

  • Adsense
  • Ezoic
  • Mediavine
  • Adthrive

Of those 4 display ad providers, the best RPMs that I’ve experienced have been from both Mediavine and Adthrive. With both of those companies, I’ve seen earnings more than double when moving a site from Ezoic to them… and they show less spammy-looking ads too.

The big downside to Mediavine and Adthrive? They both require a pretty big number of monthly pageviews/sessions. Currently, Mediavine requires your site to have 50k sessions to join their network while Adthrive requires 100k monthly pageviews.

So simply put these providers aren’t for the tiny sites.

However, if you are able to get enough pageviews to get onto one of these two premium ad networks you won’t be sorry. As I said I’ve moved multiple sites from Ezoic to Adthrive and everytime my earnings double (or more).

I had the same experience when moving a site from Ezoic to Mediavine. Again my RPMs and earnings more than doubled.

Depending on the niche you are in and which ad provider you use you could expect to make anywhere from a few dollars per thousand pageviews to hundreds of dollars per thousand pageviews.

What I’ve found across my different sites is that Ezoic tends to pay between $10–15 RPMs and Mediavine and Adthrive pay $20-$30 RPMs. That RPM is revenue per milli (or per thousand pageviews on the site.

So enough about display ads. How else do I monetize my blogs?

Affiliate Links

Monetizing a blog through affiliates had been around for many years. How I do it is a bit different, however.

My goal with affiliate links is passive income. So rather than writing best x for y posts and trying to beat out the competition instead I will just add affiliate links to my information blog posts.

Say for example I wrote an informational article about why pillows turn yellow. Somewhere in the article (normally toward the top), I will say something along the lines of “if you want to see the best pillow that I’ve found that I personally love just click here” then the click here will either take them to a product page or category page for those pillows.

Writing best x for y posts is super competitive and means you have to be constantly working on backlinks and many of the recent Google updates have been targeted at product reviews as well.

By simply writing information content and then recommending products in it I have been able to avoid the higher competition keywords while still brining in some decent money from affiliates.

So which is better? Display ads or affiliates

Personally, I love not having to constantly be updating my content or fighting for the number one position with a bunch of other affiliate marketers so I enjoy monetizing mainly via the display ads route.

Yes, I’m leaving some money on the table, and yes I could probably make more of I went heavier into affiliates however I prefer the more passive approach.

By using display ads I simply target any and all low competition terms in my niche and write articles on them. All of them are monetized with display ads and the money just keeps coming in day after day, week after week, and month after month.

That’s just what I personally prefer however so if you want to be more active and try and go against those other affiliate marketers than you certainly can.

It’s just not what I want to do.

Matt R
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