Everyone agrees that selling text links is an easy way to make some stable money every month. The question is, should you use a service like TextLinkAds or should you sell them manually? It all comes down to personal preference.

3rd Party Services

I am not a big fan of 3rd party services. A lot of them take a lot of money away from you. TextLinkAds , for example, takes 50% of all sales.

And lets not forget you also have to first get into their publisher programs, which isn’t an easy task if you run a new blog. A lot of the services tend to rely too much on worthless data like Alexa rankings and not enough on information like blog readership levels and where the links will be posted.

If you do not like doing stuff yourself, or if you have previously failed at selling your own links, then a service like TextLinkAds would work well for you.

Manual Labor

If you don’t mind doing a little bit of work by creating a small “Advertise here” page, then perhaps you should sell your links manually.

The advantages to manually selling link space are pretty obvious. You get to keep all of the money from the sale and you have more price control. The downside to this is that you need to have fairly good proof that you get good traffic (or that you will soon get good traffic), and you need to experiment with link pricing.

Oh, and lets not forget that looking for advertisers is hard work.

Here are ten quick rules for making money from your blog…

Readers Are Essential

Don’t ever forget about the people who made your blog popular - your readers. If you have a group of loyal readers that have been visiting your blog for a long time, a little gift would be appreciated. Contests also let your readers know you care about them, and they can also bring in some new faces as well.

And remember, valuable traffic = more readers = more popularity = more money.

Pop-Ups Are Evil

DHTML and regular popup windows are the most vile thing to hit the Internet. Unless you feel like killing off your blog, you should never have any form of popup.

Diversification Is The Key

Income diversification is the best way to bring in money. Selling text link ads and banner space is a nice way to have a fairly steady income each month that you can fall back on in the “just in case” scenario. Also, don’t forget about affiliate programs.

Constant Layout

If you have to constantly change your blog’s layout when you start using a new ad or affiliate program, maybe it is time to invest in a professional design. Professional designers know some neat tricks for sucking that extra dollar or two out of your blog by blending ads and banners in with your layout.

User Experience

If your reader’s experience on your blog changes drastically because of some new monetization technique, you should probably change it back. When you add in advertisements, banners, etc the overall user experience should remain the same.

Respect Your Superiors

Just because you might be making big money doesn’t mean you should badmouth your peers. In fact, becoming friends with them can help both of your blogs. You can share ideas, link to each other’s posts, guest post, etc. You never know, you could get a high-traffic link or two from your superior’s blog that gets you a few extra bucks as a result.

You Don’t Have To Discuss Your Profits

For some bizarre reason a lot of people seem to think you have to discuss your profits each month. Although some people like seeing how much you make, nobody is going to leave your blog just because you keep your finances to yourself. It really isn’t the reader’s business to know how much a blog makes, unless you make in their business.

It Takes Time

It takes time to make money from a website, and it takes longer to make money with a blog. Be patient.

Not Every Post Need To Be Monetized

By this I mean you don’t have to post ads or affiliate links in every post on your site. If anything, doing so will make you look like a sellout, which will result in less readers.

Understanding And Experimentation

Blog monetization is all about understanding your previous mistakes and experimenting with new techniques. Tell your readers if you add in some new feature, and read their reactions. If people get mad about it, remove it. By understanding your previous mistakes you are ensuring that the same screw-ups will never happen again.

Far too many bloggers are becoming sellouts. Chances are you have seen one of those blogs. You know, the type of blog that has ads plastered all over and they do whatever they can to make money even if it means interfering with their design.

The vast majority of people do not care if you make money from your blog, as long as your money-making schemes don’t interfere with the functionality of your blog.

You should always remember, readers are more important than money. They always have been, and they always will be. If you find that you are forgetting this simple rule then perhaps it is time to take a break from blogging, or to end your career all together.

A lot of bloggers forget that rule, and they let their greed get the best of them. First it starts with some complaints from your readers, and the next thing you know your back to getting 15 hits a day.

Those who become greedy become needy.

Lets face it, pay per click ad networks suck. They are 100% pure crap. For starters, most of them are still at the stage of banning you if you accidentally click on your own ad. And lets not forget the little problem with click attacks. PPC ad networks could be greatly improved if they implemented 3 simple things, that is all. Just 3 things.

Don’t Count User’s Own Clicks

This is one thing I have never understood. If the ad networks know if you click on your own ad, how come they don’t simply remove any funds generated by the click? They would have to add in maybe 10 lines of code to do that.

Now I can understand banning someone if they repeatedly click on their own ads (10 times a day), but the little one or two accidental clicks should not get a user booted. What is even worse is companies like Google who withhold entire checks of $1,000+ because a user accidentally clicked on their ad once.

Don’t Allow Click Attacks

There is no reason why there can’t be any preventative measures to keep a user from clicking on ads on a website more than X times in a single hour. What would it take to do this? Maybe an extra database column, and about 10 to 20 lines of code. It doesn’t seem like it would be a hard feature to implement.

Disable Ad Viewing For Certain IPs

In addition to the above to issues, disabling ad viewing for certain IPs wouldn’t be hard either. They could add in a small listbox where you can ad your IP, proxy IPs, etc. If a user that is on a network with that IP visits your site no ads (or at least placeholders) will be displayed. Again, it doesn’t seem like it would be hard to implement.

So why don’t the major ad networks have any of those features? It’s mind boggling.

A click attack is one of those things that is every publisher’s worst nightmare. Click attacks occur when a robot or some pissed off user decide to go nuts and click every ad on your site many [thousand] times, thus costing advertisers money. When a click attack occurs most publishers will be booted from the ad program, but luckily there is a way to avoid that.

So, some user got mad at you and decided to get revenge by clicking on your ads? Well, first and foremost, don’t panic. As soon as you find out the fraudulent clicks are occurring contact the ad network you are using. If you fail to do this, the network will most likely assume you authorized the clicks and they will ban you. However, by contacting them and explaining what is going on there is a good chance they will believe you. The majority of people who indulge in click fraud never talk to their ad network.

If you have a log manager for your site set up you may want to check it for any suspicious activity. This is really easy if you use software like adlogger, which will tell you if it suspects click fraud is going on. Give any suspicious IP addresses to the ad network.

If the network gives you a hard time, try at least a couple more times. Just don’t harass the company. Eventually you might get someone who is sympathetic toward you. If they believe you, any fraudulent funds will be removed. Another way that networks may remedy the situation is by simply not paying you for the day.

I cannot guarantee that this will work, but doing something is better than doing nothing. Don’t you agree?

Plus if worse comes to worse, you can post the IP address of the attacker on some hacker forum and let the fun begin. Legal Note: Don’t do that!