Aug
18
Missons of Commerce
August 18, 2007 |
I’ve got a little bit o’ spare time on my hands (amazing, I know) due to visiting the in-laws this weekend and picking up our new pet rats, Scribbles and Rip, from the rat breeder. Yes, indeed, you read that sentence correctly. Not only are my wife and I the sorts of freaks that have pet rats, but we’re the special sorts of freaks that drive many hours to get pet rats from a rat breeder.
Instead of babbling more about House #2, I thought I’d step back a bit and throw a curveball into the mix and instead talk about ways to make a bit o’ money from your real estate investing blog/website. Or, for that matter, any sort of website, but since most people reading this are of the real estate bent, I’ll mostly focus on that.
I’m just a part-time real estate investor, and the vast majority of my other work involves Web content, whether it’s updating and maintaining content for a big honking business information provider (rhymes with Hun & Fadstreet) or the freelance work I do via my side business, which is mostly Web development and affiliate marketing work.
All of those worlds collide here to various extents, but fairly prominently in the ads you see here, and some other less noticeable stuff. Much of my work involves finding ways to make money off Web content, so it’s pretty natural to extend those endeavors to these pages. So if you have a real estate investing blog or website and are looking for ways to make a little extra money off of it, here you go:
1) Google Adsense: I see a lot of Adsense ads already on many real estate investing sites, so many of you are likely familiar with this. You sign up for an account and insert snipppets of code where you want ads to appear, and Google handles all the rest. When visitors to your site click on the ads, you get paid. On the backend, advertisers looking to reach eyeballs on real estate sites bid for placement of their ads, and it’s those bids that are responsible for paying you for all the clicks you generate.
One nice thing about using Adsense on REI sites is that advertisers are willing to pay more click than in many other industries and niches. It’s not uncommon for you to make .75-$1.00 per click for some terms, which can obviously add up pretty quickly. In general, you’ll get more clicks on your ads the more tightly you can integrate them into your site. If they blend in and look natural, they get clicked more; if they look like the obvious Adsense ads that you see on tons of site, they get ignored as obvious Adsense ads.
Will you get rich from Adsense? Nope. Google prevents you from discussing specific earnings through the program, but let’s just say that a good month in Adsense for most small REI sites would equate to 2-3 gallons of nice paint at Lowe’s.
2) Text Link Ads: This is a program that most REI sites don’t take advantage of, which I like a lot. You basically sign up with their program and devote a space on your site (usually in the sidebar) to publishing text links from them. They open up bidding on links on your site to their pool of advertisers, who pay a set fee each month for running a text link ad on your site. They’ve recently started offering a new option where advertisers can buy text links on a per post basis, where they buy the right to have their hyperlink inserted for a keyword or phrase in a post you’ve published on your site.
Text Link Ads sets the pricing on their end and adjusts it up or down each month, depending on whether or not they feel your site has become more or less popular, all based on their internal formula for ranking such thins (which takes Google PageRank into account as well as other factors). They keep 50% of what advertisers pay for links and give you 50%. Which is pretty steep, as far as their cut, but they have a very large pool of advertisers, much more than other rival programs. They pay you via PayPal or check on the 1st of every month, for any money you’ve made through their program.
For Flip Thy House, I use the post level advertising method, where advertisers buy links in individual posts. I’ve been averaging about $75/month, which isn’t bad at all, for something I’d be doing anyway (blogging about my real estate adventures. Some people ae turned off by the cut that Text Link Ads takes, but personally I think it’s worth it, as it’s hard to sell links yourself and other link sale sites just don’t have many advertisers who use their systems.
3) Private link sales: I haven’t done any of this yet, but the same advertisers mentioned above are sometimes willing to pay you directly for ads on your site. You basically slap up an “Advertise on this Site Link” prominently and list details about how potential advertisers can contact you, rates, etc. You come to an agreement, they pay you, and you pu their ads on your site. Pretty straighforward.
4) E-commerce affiliate programs: I pretty much avoid these, as I’d rather gouge my eyes out than help Robert KoolaidSaki make any more money, but these can be profitable, especially if you put up ads for insanely expensive REI “guru” type products and packages. You typically sign up as an affiliate with these programs, display their banners and links, and get paid a commission when someone clicks through your links and buys the products. These can be profitable depending on the product, as you typically make around 5% commission as an affiliate, or get paid a flat fee per customer, which can sometimes be as high as $50-$75/customer.
5) Sponsored reviews: These are fairly new opportunities, and can primarily be found at ReviewMe and SponsoredReview.com. You basically sign up and submit your site details, and then wait for an advertiser to contact you. When you enter your details, the sites set a price for you (again based on their own formula that takes into account your site’s Google PageRank and other factors), and this price is what advertisers pay for you to write a review about their product or website.
ReviewMe takes a cut of your price and you keep the rest. It’s a lot like Text Link Ads (and run by the same company), except you’re writing reviews, and not selling link space. You have to denote that the reviews are paid advertisements, and sometimes advertisers have specific requests and requirements for the reviews. They can be positive or negative in tone, though, so you’re not forced to heap praise on anything; you get paid regardless of whether you write a positive or negative review.
I’m about to write a few of these here, as I finally have a few advertisers that are actually related to flipping that requested reviews. I’d had some offers previously that I declined, as they were pretty tangential and I didn’t want to clutter this space up with stuff like that just to make a few bucks. Another thing to note is that you can also buy reviews your self on other REI sites, if you’re looking to build up your readership and audience (this applies to puchasing text links through Text Links Ads, too). So the system can work both ways, depending on what you’re after.
Overall, none of the above will make you rich, so it really is a pretty valid question as to whether you want to annoy readers with all of the money-grubbing stuff. My personal take on it is that I’ll do it as long as I can keep the annoyance and clutter to a reasonable level, and if it’s all on-topic and REI-related. I don’t make a ton of money from all of the advertising and collective money grubbing, but I’ve had a few months where I made $200-$300/month, which isn’t something to sneeze at.
