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Personal Blogging Compared to Affiliate Blogging


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   Personal blogging could still be monetized, but the subject matter is only what you personally want to talk about. Affiliate blogging being where you're blogging to promote and sell a product or service. Which one makes more money, and what about affiliate networks and systems, do they work?

   There seems to be many people who're making a living as marketers online. They basically are affiliate marketers, who either run a website or have an extensive social media network to sell products and services through. Each sale is given a commission, and with a world-wide market a large audience can be reached.

Personal Blogging


This is what I've been doing with 4 monetized blogs on Blogger. Although, I do sell Amazon products as an affiliate on some of my blogs, I wouldn't say these are affiliate blogs. These are personal blogs: where I write what I want, and if I make money then great. Otherwise, my blogs are monetized with Google Adsense.

I've noticed over the couple years I've been blogging that the RPM for Adsense on my blogs is very low. The average overall is around .50 cents per 1000 Adsense views. Lately, on my main blog: “The Lowdown Truth”, the RPM has been .17 cents per 1000!

From my experience, it's difficult to make a good RPM with Adsense on blogs. This could be from my error in using the ads correctly, but considering my main blog is getting about 20,000 Adsense views a month – I should be making more than the couple bucks per month.

Ultimately and generally, personally blogging isn't going to make as much money as affiliate marketing. Yet, it's nice to be able to make some money writing what you want, and if a site/blog becomes popular: an exponential increase in money is possible.

Affiliate Blogging


I'm no expert on this subject, but I have some experience and see the potential with this way of making money online. Setting up a website to promote a product or service, then making a commission from each sale – this is what affiliate blogging is all about.

There are prescribed ways to make money as an affiliate marketer, one is called affiliate networks. These networks vary, but are basically places where a person can start from scratch and be led through the construction and running of their own site: selling items/services from affiliate companies.

Other affiliate marketers are more independent, setting up their own sites and soliciting the businesses they want to market. Amazon is a very popular affiliate with a lot of potential for affiliate marketers. Yet, there are so many other small and large businesses which have affiliate programs. A site will usually tell you if it has an affiliate program right on the home page of its site (usually on bottom of page).

I've considered looking more into affiliate marketing as a way to make good money online, but I've found other ways I'd rather focus on now. Marketing is not one of my favorite jobs, although many times this is what I'm doing when content writing for clients. Also, my efforts to market Amazon over the last couple years has shown me how hard it is to get people to buy something.

Summary


In a way, bloggers are doing a little of both types of blogging if their blogs are monetized. The difference is what is the main focus for a site?

It's tempting to buy into some affiliate network and go step by step with their cookie cutter formulas. Likely with a bit of effort, a quality network will start making you what they promise. I mean wouldn't it be nice to make $100,000/year blogging about products and services?

The most experience I've had with affiliate blogging is using Amazon and ClickBank on my personal blogs. I haven't had any success with ClickBank, but have sold a few things with Amazon over the years. Never enough for a payment though...pennies...


Are you an affiliate blogger? How's it working out? Just some thoughts on the two types of blogging, maybe it'll inspire someone to look into affiliate marketing more. This is still an area of making money online I may get into more later. For now, happy blogging and God bless in Jesus.  



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