Monetize WordPress With These Plugins

First off, this post is in no way com­pre­hen­sive. There are many dif­fer­ent ways to mon­e­tize your blog.

Of course, there’s sell­ing ad space on your blog, such as through the use of pay-​​per-​​click net­works like Google AdSense — which is the most popular.

But offer­ing will­ing adver­tis­ers to directly spon­sor your blog by buy­ing a post, an ad, or a link is one area that’s becom­ing increas­ingly popular.

Sites like ReviewMe​.com, PayPer​Post​.com, and Text​-Link​-Ads​.com are effec­tive in allow­ing blog­gers to get paid for sell­ing con­tent or links on their blogs. Basi­cally, these net­works bring both blog­gers and adver­tis­ers together.

Granted, this has been the sub­ject of a lot of con­tro­versy lately, par­tic­u­larly about dis­clo­sure. (And yes, all the links above are my affil­i­ate links.)

But what if you want to make money directly? What if you want more con­trol over how you mon­e­tize your blog? What if you want to make money based on sales (like an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion) and not just ad clicks or views?

Well, here are a few cool Word­Press plu­g­ins I found.

Recently, John Reese con­ducted an inter­view with Jeremy Shoe­maker of Shoe​money​.com about affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing, income gen­er­a­tion, and blog mon­e­ti­za­tion. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing stuff! Down­load it here and lis­ten to all two hours.

Jeremy launched a new ad net­work, called Auc­tion Ads, which I’m actu­ally test­ing out on this blog right now, on the front page.

(If you go to the front page, below the first post excerpt, you will see ads related to copy­writ­ing for prod­ucts being sold on eBay​.com.)

If a reader clicks the ad and buys the prod­uct (whether they are the win­ning bid­der or sim­ply use the “buy now” but­ton to buy it out­right), I get a commission.

Essen­tially, Auc­tion Ads is an affil­i­ate pro­gram for eBay, because you don’t have to use their ads. You see, another great fea­ture is that Auc­tion Ads also offers a link con­verter. (Enter any link to any eBay prod­uct, and the con­verter will turn the link into your affil­i­ate link.)

It has a great report­ing panel, as well as chan­nels (like AdSense), keyword-​​driven ads, ad rota­tions, and more. The best part is, you can either insert the code your­self or use the nifty Word­Press plugin.

Now, you’ve heard of get­ting spon­sors and sell­ing links on your blog. Some net­works offer this abil­ity (like the ones I men­tioned ear­lier), but at a fee. What if you want to sell links directly and pocket 100% of the profit?

WP-​​TextAds is a plu­gin that does exactly that. The best part is, you con­trol your fees, accept pay­ments via Pay­Pal, sell directly using an advertiser’s form on your blog, and deter­mine where and how the text ads appear.

What about sell­ing blog posts (such as reviews) on your blog, directly? This plu­gin, called WP-​​Bankroll, will allow you to do just that. It offers you the abil­ity to write the post for the spon­sor, lets spon­sors write their own posts, or sim­ply allows them to con­tribute con­tent for free.

(Rather than explain all its fea­tures here, JohnTP.comm, which is one of my favorite blogs, offers a lengthy blog post that explains it in detail.)

Speak­ing of plu­g­ins and mon­e­ti­za­tion, here are a few more…

Want to inte­grate Word­Press with Pay­Pal? Per­haps you want to cre­ate a pri­vate mem­ber­ship site using Word­Press as your con­tent man­age­ment solu­tion, and have only pay­ing mem­bers able to view your posts?

Here’s a neat Pay­Pal Mem­ber­ship plu­gin that does exactly that, and more.

You can offer recur­ring or one-​​time mem­ber­ships, man­age sub­scrip­tions, email users, and so on. You can even restrict mem­bers based on their mem­ber­ship level by access­ing only cer­tain posts, pages, or categories.

Next, there are sim­ple “donate” but­tons, like a “tip jar” for instance. I have one on the side­bar where you can buy me a glass of wine. If you like the con­tent on this blog, you can send me a tip or buy me a drink!

I’ve done this by sim­ply using PayPal’s but­ton maker and adding the code directly to the side­bar. Sim­i­larly, there’s a few “buy me a beer” scripts out there that allows you to do this with any web­site, but are sta­tic in nature and need to be on their own pages.

Well, here’s a Word­Pess “tip me” plu­gin that does exactly that, with­out the has­sle of cod­ing, cre­at­ing but­tons, or writ­ing addi­tional pages.

Upload the plu­gin, click it to acti­vate it, and you’re rolling. (There’s an admin panel to man­age everything.)

Plus, if you pre­fer non-​​alcoholic drinks, you can also change it to “buy me a cof­fee” instead. This plu­gin can add the link on your side­bar or auto­mat­i­cally add it at the bot­tom of every post — even in your RSS feeds!

Why “buy me a drink” rather than PayPal’s stan­dard “donate” but­ton? Because, accord­ing to the plu­gin devel­oper, giv­ing a spe­cific rea­son increases dona­tions by as much as 200%. (And I would have to agree.)

Finally, the one I’ve used with great suc­cess is to cre­ate and add your own ads.

For instance, I use AdSense Deluxe plu­gin. But rather than just using it with AdSense, I also use it for my own ads because this plu­gin allows you to insert any text or HTML code of your choice. Lit­er­ally, anything.

What I do is pull some Click­bank prod­ucts with my affil­i­ate links, write the copy for them (never rely on their given descrip­tion!), and use the inser­tion code to add them into my posts, pages, or sidebar.

I have mul­ti­ple sizes and shapes, and dif­fer­ent loca­tions to apply them, depend­ing on the post length. (You can see it being used on this post or in the side­bar under “Use­ful Resources” as an example.)

But don’t just limit your­self to ads or AdSense. Use it to insert any piece of text or HTML code to your blog. You can use this plu­gin to pro­mote your own prod­ucts, include an email opt-​​in form, add an “about the author” sig­na­ture file at the end, add a “break­ing news” announce­ment, and more.

It’s that versatile.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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