• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Adam Kirk Smith

- A. Smith Blog - Leadership in Life

  • About Adam
  • The Bravest You
  • Blog
    • Leadership
      • Creativity
    • Communication
    • Relationships
    • Focus
  • Podcasts & Video
    • Podcast: Live Life with Purpose
    • Podcast: Ideas with Adam Smith
    • asmithvideo
  • Coaching & Consulting
  • Speaking

Courtney Gordner | January 31, 2014 | 9 Comments

10 Tools To Find Monetization for Your Blog

3269784239_e208c5b968_o

 

For most bloggers, developing a loyal reader base is their number one priority. When this reader base is obtained – typically through engaging posts, frequent updates and a presence on social media – then it’s common for bloggers to ask this question: How can I monetize my blog?  With a good reputation and solid reader base, it is possible for you to have monetization for your blog. Bloggers’ incomes can vary from pennies to a legitimate full-time income, but the monetization tools below can help every blogger achieve the latter category:

WP125 – Ad networks and sponsored posts are ways to monetize a blog, but many bloggers opt to deal with advertisers themselves, foregoing the middle men that are ad networks. Having a clear ‘Advertising’ page on your blog with some rates and a contact e-mail is the best way to do this. For easy placement of these ads for bloggers, the WordPress plugin WP125 is especially useful, allowing consummate management of 125×125 ads, with features such as click tracking and setting ads for a specific timeframe.

WordPress Calls to Action – Especially useful for blogs that sell products through their posts, this plugin keeps inbound marketing practices in mind via a variety of placement options, from pop-ups to sleek sidebar widgets. Calls-to-action can be very effective when employed on social media and blogs. The WordPress Calls to Action plugin helps immensely with the latter.

NRelate – Content networks like NRelate, Outbrain and Taboola work by providing links to relevant content at the bottom of a blog’s post. Visitors clicking on these links will provide revenue to the bloggers, who are usually paid via PayPal. These networks vary in relevancy, effectiveness and payouts, so bloggers should be prepared to try several to see which one works best.

Adzerk – Used by large sites like Reddit and Newsmax, Adzerk provides an excellent ad serving platform that balances speed and power. Adzerk performs 30% faster than OpenX and 9% faster than ad serving leader Doubleclick, all while carrying similar content.

Optimizely – It’s very important to test the effectiveness of ads, both in terms of creativity and location. Optimizely makes that easier, with a very accessible interface that tracks conversions, sign-ups, visitor engagement and more.

Mynaweb – An alternative to Optimizely, Mynaweb stresses fluid quickness by utilizing “multi-armed bandit algorithms” to run optimized pages and ads with extreme quickness. It also filters out ineffective, poorly-performing variants.

Crazy Egg – It’s prudent to price ad locations based on the popularity of them. This can be found effectively via heat maps, which Crazy Egg specializes in. Finding out detailed user information, including where they click the most and least on your site, is a breeze with Crazy Egg, whose lean interface is opposite the bulkiness of used heavy equipment.

Mouse Flow – An alternative to Crazy Egg, Mouse Flow has the extremely cool feature of allowing blog owners to watch site users in real-time. Live recordings of user behavior and instant heat maps provide perhaps the most immediate visitor behavioral analysis of any service.

WP Bounce – This tool is great for getting the most out of search traffic. For visitors that only view one page on your site, WP Bounce can pop up a message upon them hitting the ‘Back’ button to return to the search results. Particularly useful for blogs with high bounce rates, the plugin can showcase specific products on Amazon, using your referral link in the process.

SolveMedia – If you implement CAPTCHA on your site, it’s likely in the comments section to prevent spam. Monetize CAPTCHA by using tools like SolveMedia, which prompts users to type in brand phrases instead of random letters and numbers, making it easier for them while providing bloggers with additional revenue.

With these various available tools, bloggers can advance and monetize that which they already devote time and energy to: their blogs.

 

Which monetization tools have you used? Did they work for you? Let us know in the comments below!

Photo Credit: zzpza

Filed Under: blog, Featured

Courtney Gordner

Courtney is a blogger with a passion for all things internet and social media related! Read more from her on her own blog, talkviral.com.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Linda Lochridge Hoenigsberg says

    January 31, 2014 at 6:57 am

    Thanks for this Courtney! I am going to really look into using tools on my blog and did not know about most of these. Sharing your post… ;o)

    Reply
    • Courtney Gordner says

      January 31, 2014 at 11:42 am

      Hi Linda! I’m glad you found my post helpful! Good luck and let me know how it goes! 😉

      Reply
    • Courtney Gordner says

      February 3, 2014 at 8:06 am

      Hi Linda! I’m glad you found my post helpful! Let me know how monetizing your blog goes! 🙂

      Reply
  2. asmithblog says

    January 31, 2014 at 8:17 am

    I agree with, Linda. I have never heard of most of these. Great work finding these, Courtney! Love the research here.

    Reply
    • Courtney Gordner says

      January 31, 2014 at 11:42 am

      Thanks Adam!!

      Reply
    • Courtney Gordner says

      February 3, 2014 at 8:07 am

      Thanks Adam! It was really interesting looking into all of these!

      Reply
  3. Leo J. Lampinen says

    January 31, 2014 at 8:20 am

    Like Linda and Adam said I was not familiar with these either, except for WP125. I’m searching for ways to monetize at least to cover hosting.

    Reply
  4. Jon Stolpe says

    January 31, 2014 at 9:19 am

    Thanks for the info. I’m wondering how successful you’ve been in driving revenue through these tools?

    Reply
  5. James Wilson says

    May 5, 2017 at 2:01 pm

    Awesome information! Will be sure to keep this in mind when posting blogs on my companies website, Rental Power Solutions.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About

Hi, my name is Adam Smith and welcome to asmithblog.com. I am the author of the book, The Bravest You. Because of my work as an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and speaker, I have been named a top industry influencer by American Genius. I live with my wife, Jasmine, and three children in Shenandoah, IA.

[Read More…]

Podcast: Ideas

Ideas with Adam Smith Logo

Podcast: Live Life with Purpose

Life With Purpose Podcast Icon

The Bravest You by Adam Kirk Smith

Youtube: ASmithVideo

asmithvideo icon

Latest Posts

  • FREE BOOK… for a limited time!
  • Add Value
  • Books I’m Listening To…
  • Motive Matters
  • Books and Other Stuff

Adam Smith · Leadership in Life · asmithblog.com © 2025 · Adam Kirk Smith's blog on leadership, relationships, communication, creativity, and focus.