As you guys know, I’m always trying out new ways to monetize my niche sites. One great way to monetize sites is to sell ads. Keep in mind however, that your PR could drop if you decide to go this route however if you are more concerned with lining your pocketbooks with cold-hard cash, you probably don’t care anyway. Here are the 3 best ad selling sites that marketing writers use to monetize their sites.

www.buysellads.com

This is one of the best marketplaces for selling ads. It’s one of the most established, and there is a huge network of both buyers and sellers that frequent this website. In fact, there are more than 2,000 quality advertisers that use this website to find websites or blogs to publish their ads on. You must get your website or blog approved with this website, but that’s something you’ll have to do with most ad selling sites. They tend to have stringent standards and typically only accept sites with a PR of 3 or more and also seem concerned with Alexa scores too.

www.TextLinkAds.com

This is another of the best ad selling sites. There are already more than 40,000 publishers who are members of this site and for good reason. You can receive 50% of the money that is made when your ads are successful. You’re paid each month on the 1st of the month through PayPal, and you don’t have to pay any fees for the money you get paid. One of the benefits of the ads from this site is that they can increase your search engine ranking because they’re text-based. This site also has stringent standards and seems to approve sites with a PR of 2 or more and lower Alexa scores.

www.adknowledge.com

This site offers publishers the ability to sell different types of ad space, from text link ads to graphics and even banners. More than 50,000 advertisers use this website to sell ads, including companies like Virgin, The New York Times, eHarmony, and more. This site has a lot of flexibility but it is also a site that must approve your blog or website before you can publish ads. I haven’t actually used this one but it does get a lot of hoopla on a lot of forums that I visit and may be worth checking out.

Well, there you have it – the top 3 ad selling sites that you can use to increase your moola. Try them out – you just might like the money they make you!

Well, its the first of the month and I’m very excited that a new month is starting. Although I’m thankful that I reached my goal of $135 per day in online income, I’m a little bummed that I had to take on more active income jobs to get there. This month, I’ll attempt to earn $150 a day and to do this, I’m going to keep marketing my winners and will either flip or put text link ads on those sites that aren’t performing well. So, today’s blog post will discuss the pros and cons of selling text link ads.

Now, why Text Lilnk Ads? Well, Text Link Ads is a huge marketplace where bloggers and website owners can sell ads for their website. Apparently ad publishers make bids for text link ads on your website and you have the opportunity to approve or deny the ads. Here are the pros and cons of this revenue generation model.

Pros of Text Link Ads

One of the most beneficial things about text link ads is that they appear as typical links within the text that goes out to advertisers. This is very non-intrusive, so your guests aren’t irritated with a lot of picture-based or changing ads that are distracting. If a visitor is interested in a particular thing, they can click on the ad quickly and visit the sponsoring site.

Another thing that is quite advantageous for bloggers and website owners is that most ads are automatically renewed. If an ad does well on your site, you’ll probably keep the advertiser for quite some time. You will receive 50% of the income made on the ad placed on your website or blog.

Cons of Text Link Ads

There are a few different cons to this kind of advertising, especially if your site is small. It takes a site with many visitors and a lot of keyword traffic to get approved for Text Link Ads. Even then, it can be difficult to find advertisers unless you have a very specific niche or your site is the dominant site in a niche. The more general your niche, the harder it can be to find an advertiser. For instance, if your site’s main keyword and niche is ‘losing weight,’ it will be quite difficult to gain advertisers because this is such a popular niche and there are so many publishers.

Overall, text link ads can certainly benefit you if your site is well-known and is in a different niche than the majority of others. I plan to use it on those niche sites that have little PR or the ones that I don’t really care whether the PR drops anyway.

What do you think? Are you using Text link ads? Are they beneficial or do they do more harm than good?

Ever since I wrote this post on autoblogging, I’ve been getting a ton of emails and skype questions about autoblogging and thought I’d better clarify a few things here. Autoblogging is a term for setting your blog so that you don’t have to manually maintain it. Some individuals use plug-ins for WordPress which allow the blog to scoop posts from different sources, so that there is fresh content on the blog daily or even several times a day. And, although it sounds like a great “hands off way” to blog, there are some benefits and disadvantages to this method as you’ll see below.

Pros of Autoblogging

Creating your blogs so that they pull information from different websites or other blogs is fairly easy to do. The true benefit is that you always have fresh content related to your keywords or your niche. Some individuals use Unique Article Wizard, a site that allows you to use their articles, most of which are fairly good quality.

There is little to no maintenance involved with autoblogs, so any income you’re making is passive. Most individuals use Google ads and affiliate links to make money. If you choose to post your own unique content once in a while, you can make the blog even stronger. However, although there are a lot of advantages, there are also disadvantages.

Cons of Autoblogging

It’s really important to find a good plug-in to pull content, and ensure that there are links back to the original site. If you’re getting content from other peoples’ websites or blogs without linking back and giving credit, you could really upset those people. Even worse, there is the possibility that you could be sued.

Another disadvantage is that there are so many variables. What if Google changes their ranking algorithm and decides that they will no longer support autoblogs. What is they penalize individuals with autoblogs by unranking them. If this is the case, you could be left with zero online income virtually overnight. Unfortunately, this has happened to many people, and can easily happen if you’re not careful. Another possibility is that the keywords change or your niche is suddenly not as important anymore.

Although there are pros and cons to every situation, it’s important to look closely before determining whether autoblogging is the correct route for you to take. I personally am not a fan of autoblogs UNLESS you plan to flip them. I’ve been toying around with the idea of doing that but keeping them within my collection, probably not – but that’s just my opinion!

So, today is Monday and it is the beginning of the week for this internet marketing writer and there are so many things that I want to accomplish this month but I just realized that I don’t have much time. Now, typically I would go into panic mode and start doing a bunch of stuff to increase my revenues but this week, I’ve decided to stay focused on my goals. That is, although I would love to write a bunch of DS articles to make some extra cash or bid on a bunch of Elance projects to make some more money, I am gong to resist the temptation. Instead, I am going to focus on increasing my residual income. As you know, I have quite a bit of blogger blogs that haven’t made any money and my new goal is to make each one make at least $10+ a month. Now, mind you that $10 each is NOT a lot of money and I’m totally open to them making more but when you have 31 of these blogs and each one earns you $10.00 a month then you have $380.00 extra a month to add to the pot and that, my friend, starts looking much better, right? Well, it most certainly does to me!

Now, how am I going to increase the revenue of each blog to $10 a month? I am going to market those blogs like crazy. I am going to build quality links on higher PR sites and blogs, use Yahoo Answers to drive traffic, and write and submit articles to article directories. By doing this, I should skyrocket my search engine rankings and move up the ranks so that more people see my blogs and purchase my products or generate ad revenue for me. Well, gotta get to work so that I can put my plan into action.

If you’re considering blogging for today.com so that you can take advantage of the $1.00 per 100 word post deal, perhaps you should rethink your options. I have been blogging on today.com for over 2 months now and as a freelance writer and marketing consultant, I always keep my ears to the grapevine when it comes to my money.

Apparently, there are some major changes going on at today.com that could significantly impact my moola. Well, here’s what I found out. Not only does the owner expect you to bring in 1000 impressions a day to remain in good standing to receive the $1.00 paid per post per day deal but they are well in their rights to change the terms of agreement as they sit fit. In fact, they can change the payment structure midstream as you are only guaranteed the $1.00 per post for the first month only.

As a business owner myself, I understand the importance of making a profit but I also believe in treating your employees and contractors with respect and honor and not changing their payment streams midstream. In the forums, the owner has taken the attitude “if you don’t like it take your writing elsewhere attitude.” Apparently he doesn’t want to be a “gravy train” to writers.Hello Mr. Today.com owner, $31.00 a month is not a gravy train to us and most of us wouldn’t even write for that amount. I gave today.com a try simply because it takes me like 5 minutes to write 100 words and I love helping people and making a difference in their lives. But, the truth of the matter is that I could make more elsewhere and I’m going to prove it.

In fact, I’m even doing an experiment. The first one will evaluate my newly created today.com blog and compare it with a newly created blogger blog. I am going to write the same amount of articles (covering similar topics) and then see which one makes me the most money at the end of my experiment.

My hypothesis is that my niche blog site is going to kick some today.com butt. I say this becuase once I stop writing posts, it will keep making me moola whether I write 100+ word posts or not.  Plus, I can also capitalize it with affilate links, etc.

So, my advice is if you’re considering blogging at today.com to take advantage of the $1.00 a day post, make sure you’re a good writer and an expert at traffic generation and that your blog can bring in 28,000- 30,000 impressions a month. Otherwise, you might just log into your account for a not so good surprise notice that says  you’ve been demoted.