Disclaimer: I am by no means a pro-blogger, and if that turns you off, so will the rest of this post, I guess. However, if you are interested in how to make money off your blog, even if it is not seeing like a thousand visitors a day, then read on. All of this is based on my personal experience and earnings.
Alright, now that you have reached this far, this post is about making money from your blog through paid blogging. I started an experiment some time ago to see what I can make by not spending more than 10 hours a week on this (I am employed full time and so I didn't want to spend anymore time). Also, this does not include any time that I have spent on freelance blogging (another awesome way to earn).
One and Only Pre-requisite: You need to have a blog. This blog should typically be at least 3 months old, with a regular posting pattern. This can be as little as one post a week. This has to be genuine content (that would also almost assure you a page rank). Once you have that, you can start registering your blog with Pay 2 Blog sites. I will list all the ones that I have had success with.
Success = Money in my PayPal account!
Here is the list (in no particular order):
- PayPerPost.com - This is by far the most successful and famous such site. They have very strict requirements for admission and they have even stricter requirements for posting. However, they have a massive inventory of assignments and you are sure to find an assignment every day you go there. You are allowed to do 2 assignment per day. I do more like 4-5 per month here, but that is because of personal preferences. Once you have been paid for 10 assignments, you are allowed to add additional blogs which allow you to take more assignments per day. In two months, I have made around $120 here after doing 10 assignments.
The kind of assignments you get here vary a lot depending on your Page Rank and Alexa Rankings. If you have a PR above 5, you can easily land assignments which pay over $200 a pop. They pay you after 30 days of your assignment submission (condition to approval). So, if you are posting every day, then after 30 days, you will start earning something every day!
- ReviewMe.com - This site is a little low on assignments and I have only received 5 assignments so far on this site in a couple of months. However, it allows you to register multiple blogs in the beginning. You cannot choose an assignment as you can in PayPerPost. An assignment is made available to you and you can accept it. I have made around $20 on it in 2 months.
Also, you don't receive any notification if an assignment is available to you, so you need to login and check regularly.
- Blogsvertise.com - This, like ReviewMe, doesn't have a great inventory, but it has a higher per post payout than ReviewMe. It works in the same way; assignments are assigned to you and you have the option to accept/reject them. It also allows you to add multiple blogs. I have averaged 1 assignment a week with this and made over $30 here so far.
Unlike ReviewMe, an email is sent to you the moment you receive a new assignment. Also, the payout here is similar to PayPerPost: they pay you 30 days after your submission.
- SponsoredReview.com - This site has a lot of advertisers and also a unique model. It allows you to bid for assignments. Once you bid, the advertisers than approve/reject your bid. However, it takes forever for an advertiser to reject your bid and new opportunities are updated only about 2-3 times a month. But, I got one approved opportunity and that alone fetched me $32.50.
You can add multiple blogs, and their payout is within 14 days after completion of a successful review. So, I keep bidding here, because the earnings can be big. The only drawback is that they keep a large amount of money (35%) (for example, on my successful bid, I had bid $50).
- Bloggerwave.com - This particular site has been termed as fraud by many on the Internet. I just did one assignment for them and though it took more than a month, I eventually got my $10 from them. I include this here simply because I got paid, which equals success.
They also don't have a lot of assignments and you have to log in and accept assignments (PayPerPost style: in fact a lot of people say that they copied the PPP website).
- Smorty.com - This site is pretty low on inventory as well, but they do keep getting new assignments and send you an email. However, their assignments get taken up very fast, so you have to login and accept one fairly quickly. They however pay your quickly (usually within 7-10 days of completing the assignment).
In two months, I have made $24 doing in 4 posts (their minimum payment is $6 per post).
- LoudLaunch.com - this site has a similar model where you have to log in to accept assignments. However, they also notify you of new campaigns (which get taken up pretty fast). They allow you to add multiple blogs and have a feature where for the same assignment you have a different payment rate for different blogs, depending on the PageRank. So, for the same assignment, my PR3 blog gets $7.5, while my PR4 blog gets $15!
They pay monthly for the post approved within the first 20 days of the previous month. So far, I have made only $15 posting once from here, but that's because I always am too late to react to new opportunity announcements.
- PayU2Blog.com - And last, but not the least by far. I have made the most money from them. They are more into selling links than reviews. They usually pay you $5 per post (though I have made more), and they payout every two weeks. The difference is that they give you an assignment and you don't have an option of not accepting it. You have to do every assignment. In 3 payment cycles I have made $180 with them, and my next payment cycle will get me another $100.
So far, I haven't had to blog about anything totally stupid. They give you a lot of assignments. And minimum length for a post is 60 words. And they don't even care if the post is a review or not as long as the link with the requisite keywords is present.
Warnings!
- There is a lot of debate about making money this way and the authenticity of your blog if you do and how it is unfair to your readers. I only get about 50-100 visitors a day, and I have about 20 odd regular readers. And I keep them isolated from this activity very nicely (visit my blog to see what I mean). I am not going to write about this debate here, but Google it to read up on it.
- Google has declared that it will start penalizing sites which do sponsored reviews. And I can understand their position, because technically, this is equivalent to buying your way to a page rank. So, do it at your own risk.
Please feel free to ask me any questions, and I will answer. Cheers.
