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How to Monetize Your Blog: Putting Ads on Blogger

Blogger is a free blog platform, owned by Google, that makes it simple to publish blog posts. There are more than 617,000 blogs on the platform and there’s money to be made.

Marketing budgets continue to increase at most companies and the spending is mainly on digital channels. Digital ads now account for 56% of total marketing spend, according to Gartner. If you have a Blogger account, monetizing your blog is not only easy to do, but you can capture your share of the ever-growing pot of digital dollars.

There are several different ways you can generate revenue from your blog, including:

  • Display ads
  • Video ads
  • Affiliate marketing
  • Sponsored content and guest posts
  • Paying subscribers and members-only content
  • Social media
  • Influencer marketing
  • Selling products or services

You can sell ads yourself, but the easiest way to generate revenue is to work with an ad network that can help you optimize your revenue. If your blog is getting more than 10,000 visitors a month, you can sign up for an ad network, put a piece of code on your Blogger site, and start generating passive revenue.

Can You Put Ads on Blogger?

Yes, you can put ads on your Blogger blog.

Ad networks connect bloggers with advertisers. You can put ads on your homepage or another webpage in different sizes and formats. Once you place the code, the ad network will handle everything else. The best ad networks have access to a wide variety of advertisers, will connect advertisers with your available ad inventory, and facilitate the bidding process. Then, they will show ads on your site, manage the billing, and provide you with a revenue stream for ads on your Blogger site.

Blogger lets you add most of the most common ad sizes in various places, including the sidebar, top of the page, mid-blog, and footer.

There are two main ways bloggers earn money from ads:

  • CPC/PPC ads: Cost per click, or pay per click, ads generate revenue every time someone clicks on an ad.
  • CPM ads: CPM ads are sold on a cost per thousand impressions basis. Advertisers pay a certain amount every thousand times an ad is shown. This pays out regardless of whether anyone clicks on an ad or buys a product or service.

Ad placement can play a big role in your success. Highly visible ad units will generate higher conversions and click-through rates. Different types of ad units perform better than others, too. The best ad networks will help you test and optimize ad placements to maximize your earning potential.

How Do Blogger Blogs Make Money?

Some people make a full-time living from monetizing their blogs, while others generate passive income as a side gig. Revenue varies based on traffic and building traffic takes time.

Low-quality content, even with decent traffic, rarely attracts good rates, so one of the keys is to create high-quality content that attracts an audience. Once you’ve developed enough consistent page views, the opportunity to make money grows. Three of the biggest opportunities come from ad networks, guest or sponsored posts, and affiliate marketing.

Advertising Networks

Using an ad network can provide a steady revenue stream without a lot of work, but you should consider your options carefully. Not all ad networks are alike and some provide greater earning opportunities.

Since Blogger (formerly known as Blogspot) is owned by Google, you can add Google AdSense with a few clicks once you’ve set up your AdSense account. AdSense is one of the world’s largest ad networks, but typically generates lower cost per thousand (CPM) rates for bloggers and publishers.

Just because Google owns Blogger, doesn’t mean you can only use Google AdSense, or show Google ads on your blog.

Instead of AdSense ads, you can just as easily add other ad networks that use advanced strategies, such as header bidding, that generates higher CPMs. For example, Newor Media offers ad space to a wide range of advertisers simultaneously, putting them in competition for your ad space. This drives up rates. With partnerships with all major networks and supply-side platforms (SSPs), you get access to diverse and quality demand. This makes Newor Media an ideal ad network for bloggers, whether you’re using Blogger, WordPress, or another blog solution.

Other ad networks include Ezoic, Media.net, Propeller Ads, and Amazon Publisher Services. You can opt for one of these services instead of AdSense as well.

Guest Posts/Sponsored Posts

Offering guest posts or sponsored posts gives advertisers a way to reach your audience with their message. Many advertisers and other bloggers will be happy to create content for your site that blends useful information and highlights their brand or products. Attracting and finding sponsored posts can be a challenge, but can pay fairly well — especially for niche sites in high-value niches.

If you do get paid to share guest posts or sponsored posts, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has rules about how you have to label these posts so that site visitors are aware of the relationship.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a common way to monetize your blog. In affiliate marketing, you provide ads or content that includes links to products or services. Thousands of brands offer affiliate partnerships and will provide you with a specific link to use. When someone clicks on these links and makes a purchase, you earn a commission or referral fee.

Some bloggers earn a fair amount of money using affiliate links. Brands are forecast to spend $8.2 billion on affiliate marketing in 2022.

If you do decide to use affiliate marketing, make sure you disclose to readers that you may earn a commission from clicks or sales. Not only can it hurt your relationship with site visitors, but the FTC also requires you to provide the proper disclosures anytime you are compensated by brands or products you mention, whether you receive cash, discounts, free products, or any other kind of preferential treatment.

How to Run Ads on Your Blogger Blog with Newor Media

If you’re thinking about running ads on your Blogger site, or are interested in seeing whether a different ad network can generate more revenue, you can check out the free Website Earnings tool from Newor Media to see how much you could be making.

Adding Newor Media to your Blogger site is easy. Follow this tutorial to start earning money on your blog without having to do any HTML coding.

  1. You’ll need to apply for for an account at Newor Media. Newor Media will evaluate your site, and if approved, provide you with a snippet of code to use on Blogger.
  2. Once you sign in to Blogger, choose the blog you wish to monetize on the top left and click Layout.
  3. Find the space where you want to show ads. You can show ads in columns, between posts, sidebars, or in the footer section (or all of these)!
  4. Click Add a Gadget. When the pop-up window appears, click Add.
  5. Enter a title for your ad space (optional) and then copy and paste the ad code from Newor Media into the Content box. Click save.
  6. Make sure you also click Save on the bottom right to activate your ad network.

There is one other step that you will need to do manually. You’ll want to set up an ads.txt file. Ads.txt is an initiative by the IAB Tech Lab to increase transparency in programmatic advertising. Ads.txt helps prevent ad fraud by letting advertisers know who is authorized to sell ads on your blog. Newor Media can provide you with the ads.txt file, which you should place on your Blogger site.

Here’s how to add the ads.txt file.

  1. Sign in to Blogger and choose the blog you want to set up.
  2. From the left-side menu, click Settings.
  3. Under Monetization, you will want to turn on Enable custom ads.txt and click on it.
  4. Copy and paste the text you get from Newor Media into the text box.
  5. Click Save.

One benefit of using Newor Media is that you can also use the same account to monetize other digital sites. For example, if you also have a WordPress website, you can add your snippet in a widget on your site in much the same way as you did using a gadget in Blogger. They work the same way and just have different names.

You should be aware that not all blogs are eligible for ad programs. Themed websites such as adult, gambling, or cannabis sites are not allowed on most ad networks.

Conclusion

Once you’ve set up your Blogger site with an ad network, you’re off and running. There’s nothing else to do to start serving ads and generating revenue. Using Newor Media as your ad network on your blog lets you generate revenue automatically. You don’t have to worry about finding advertisers, selling ads, or doing any coding. Newor Media handles everything from start to finish, including the payout.

Adding an ad network to your site is the easy part. The hard part will be generating the traffic you need to earn revenue. As an entrepreneur, you can focus on creating high-quality content and best practices for search engine optimization (SEO) to drive traffic to your site and let Newor Media worry about selling the ads. The more traffic you get, the more money you can earn from ads.

Learn how much money you could be making on your blog by using Newor Media’s free website revenue calculator today.

Lauren Aloia

Senior Account Manager, Publisher Development: Newor Media

Lauren is an ad tech expert with a wealth of experience spanning product development, ad operations, and data analysis. She currently works with Newor Media publishers to implement yield optimization strategies that maximize revenue from their programmatic inventory.