Earnings on an ordinary Russian-language blog. Pros and cons of different ways. Additions are welcome.

Today on “Vebplanet” my article about earnings on an ordinary Russian-language blog was published. It is written on my personal experience and the experience of people with whom I am somehow familiar.

However, many topics were not covered. I invite those who have a Russian-language blog with their own content to share the experience of its monetization. Numbers and details are welcome.


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If you are seriously interested in the topic of earnings on a Russian-language blog, you have already read quite a few articles on this topic. There are different ways to make money: contextual advertising, collecting donations, custom posts. Some of these methods I will describe here.

My article is written for those who run a Russian-language blog for themselves and their readers, and not specifically for earnings. For example, for me blogging is a kind of training, one of the ways of self-realization, as well as new business contacts. However, I do not mind an extra couple of hundreds of WMZ in my wallet.

I learned various ways, and some of them tried on my blog . It is quite narrow in scope, and attendance ranges from 100–500 people per day.

Each way of earning is characterized by factors that determine the amount of income. One of the most influential factors is blog traffic . Some methods are very dependent on attendance, others are practically independent.

contextual advertising

Stronger than others depends on attendance methods associated with the placement of contextual advertising. AdSense, Runner and Yandex advertising network are available in Russia.

Adsense

At one time, a fever of adsensomania swept across Runet. Perhaps only the lazy did not write about AdSense. People enthusiastically showed each other photos of checks from Google for four- and five-digit amounts and hoped ... True, the checks belonged to English-language bloggers.

Efioria has been replaced by some disappointment: in RuNet, people who are seriously engaged in this receive tangible money from contextual advertising, or have a really popular blog. Others get no more than 5-7 bucks a month.

Of course, Russians can earn money on AdSense as well, but for this you need to make several spammer blogs abroad, steal content, ensure attendance for them, and then you can already talk about some sums.

The second option: your blog is very popular, and users are loyal to advertising and are ready to click to make you happy. Then you can get 150 dollars per month, as the author of one of the most popular standalone blogs.

The rest honestly earn their two bucks a month and expect that some fifty dollars will ever be saved up so that you can get a check from Google and learn all the "joys" of its cash out in Russian banks.

Earnings for AdSense strongly depends on the clickability of ads. Various techniques are used to increase clickability, for example, ad units are disguised as information of the site itself.

In my opinion, this way of earning is a distant relative of banners with bare aunts. The user clicked on the bodies, got to the site, selling tires, but then he left, swearing.
Here, people click on the link, thinking that they will find an interesting article on the same site, and get a completely different place. Click counted, but how well the advertiser from such advertising, I do not presume to assert.

"Runner" and advertising network "Yandex"

Domestic companies are also gradually catching up. At the end of 2006, “Runner” lifted the attendance limit. Previously, blogs with attendance of at least 500 per day were allowed to participate. However, they have their own problem. My friends who tried to connect to the "Runner" blog, waited for a long time to index.

The condition for admission to the Yandex advertising network is attendance: at least 300 per day. The rules say that “unmoderated and / or non-thematic forums, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, etc. are not allowed;”

Earnings in the "Runner" and the advertising network "Yandex" is also highly dependent on attendance and clicks, but the problems with getting money is much less than in AdSense.

Pros: you can really make good money.
Cons: earnings very much depends on traffic and clicks on ads. Ad units often interfere with readers, causing a certain negative. For AdSense, there is an urgent problem with getting and cashing money.

Internet begging

The bottom line is this: you are begging.

There are two options. In the simplest case, you simply publish the numbers of Webmoney and Yandex.Money wallets, but there are more technological ways. For example, SMS-piggy bank or PayPal. There is also a handler from Yandex.

As in the case of AdSense, this method is accompanied by their legends about bloggers, who received thousands of dollars a month. Bloggers, however, again imported.

These methods are highly dependent on attendance and on the mood of visitors. Beggars also tend to take places where the flow of people is bigger. More pass - more served. There is still such a moment: it is unlikely that the same person will systematically throw you a pretty penny. Therefore, it is necessary somewhere to take fresh souls. If your audience is constant, then after a certain period of time, when everyone who could file has already filed, the trickle dries out.

But the sediment remains. The presence of supporters can seriously change the attitude to the blogger.

Pros: you will be given as much as ten cents! Ten cents!
Cons: highly dependent on attendance and the number of new visitors. Negative impact on reputation.

RSS Feed Ads

This is a relatively new way to write about it. Advertising is embedded in your RSS feed, then your subscribers click on it. Oh, do not click!

The recently conducted test campaign in Feedburner.Ru bloggers hopes did not meet . They click a little, the result, in the opinion of those who tried it , is not impressive.

Pros: they probably are. Will appear in a year and a half.
Cons: depends on the number of subscribers and clicks on advertising. Clicking on RSS-advertising in Russia, as it turned out not often.

Sponsorship

For topical blogs with good traffic, it’s realistic to find a sponsor. For example, if your blog is about quitting smoking, you can try to get to the manufacturer of nicotine patches. In any case, you can come up with something.

Usually sponsors give their money in exchange for permanent placement of a banner or logo.

Pros: if you find a long-term sponsor for the blog, then you will not worry about attendance fluctuations. In addition, a small banner or logo "on the topic" almost does not cause negative audience.
Cons: the sponsor is not so easy to find. Still, they are interested in attendance, and it is simpler, as someone said, “to buy half of the Runet than to mess with some brilliant bloggers.”

Link selling and link brokers

For optimizers (they are also “SEOs”), the attendance of your blog is not as important as its parameters: TIC and PageRank. The higher these parameters, the more valuable the link from the site. There are demand for links from the main pages, it is desirable that PageRank be at least 4–5 and TIC hundreds of 3-4. For the link can give and five, and twenty dollars a month.

You need to have a blog with good TIC and PageRank and find yourself buyers. In addition, it is necessary to control the payments and terms of placement.

There is a second way, reference brokers. Advantages: you can sell not only the main, but also all the internal pages. Usually buyers are not found for them, and such links are cheap. But if you have several dozen pages, then you can sell them to many buyers at once through a broker, you get a noticeable amount. Disadvantages: you need to control what is placed there. Another such nuance: the site does not immediately reach full capacity, because places are gradually being redeemed. Much depends on the prices that you set for your links.

The system TextLinkAds is quite popular abroad. I connected to it while waiting for the results. I was pleased that for one link on my blog you can get bucks 15-20 per month. At the time of this writing, no one bought the links. Money is transferred either to a bank account or via PayPal. So far, the PayPal system is not too friendly to the Russians, but there are ways to exchange for E-Gold, and then for Webmoney.

Of the Russians I tried to connect to the three systems, in the end, only one remained, Sape . The other two, SetLinks and AdMan, were not impressed by either the interface or the moderation capabilities. In Sape, for example, there are, for example, built-in adult-filters that allow you not to allow links from online pornographers to the blog pages. There is also the opportunity to watch the average prices on the system and detailed instructions for bloggers . Other brokers have not bothered with this yet.

Evgeny Osokin on the SEO Place blog posted a screenshot of his Sape account. In the month he runs 50-60 dollars, that is, about 600 bucks a year. I have an experiment with Sape in full swing, for the first 4 days I sold links to $ 30 a month with not too prominent quantitative parameters of the blog. Some Sape glitches surprised me, but so far there have been no critical ones. Another hoster let me down, because of the transition to a new server, two thirds of the most profitable links were removed from me, but I hope to soon recruit new customers.

Pros: does not depend on attendance. Most not very visited blogs selling links can earn more than AdSense, and the problem of money withdrawal is not so urgent.
Cons: if you put on 20 links, theoretically, search engines may not like it and will definitely not like visitors.

Jeans

Abroad, the influence of bloggers on the market is noticeably stronger. Recall the acclaimed stories with the visits of Apple about the iPhone screenshots or the story of Microsoft laptops.

In Russia, they are also looking at the blogosphere. There are projects that offer bloggers to write custom articles. I do not know how it is for the money, but people do not like jeans. Especially in geek environment.

There is, of course, a way to openly accept new products for testing and write high-quality reviews about them. This way, in my opinion, can even have a positive impact on reputation. The main thing is objectivity, impartiality and professionalism.

Another way is to admire about the "new washing powder" and other goods. In a hypersensitized audience, even the suspicion of a custom post causes rejection and negative.

Pros: there will be a year and a half or two, when all sorts of “Hidden Marketers” will calm down, and really popular and professional authors will come to replace the floppy “thousand-horses”.
Cons: causes negative audience. Reputation do not wash powder for three minutes.

My favorite way

Of course, Adsense, TextLinkAds and Sape are good stuff. Keep a blog and get 30–50 bucks a month for hosting, internet and all the nice things.

Business contacts and self-PR can bring much more , but this method requires certain skills, time, and even a blog, preferably on professional topics.