There's no reason that your real estate blog has to be a drain on your finances or time.  Truth be told, monetizing your blog is a good idea.  It will boost your income when times are good and carry you when the real estate market lulls. 

Two of the most important things to a Realtor are money and time and your blog should make you money and save you time.

For example, if your blog makes $600 per month for you - you now have recouped whatever fees you are charged for hosting and can save time by hiring someone to blog for you.  Makes sense right? Well, let's look at the logistics of how to do it to ensure you end up a winner with the monetization programs you choose.

Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, according to Steve Pavlina, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal. His 19-month-old Web site generates a healthy $3,000 per month. Do I think a real estate blog will generate that much income? Probably not for a while, but a realistic goal is around $600/month. It may not pay your mortgage but $600 is a respectable IT budget that you can reinvest into your blog to grow traffic and leads.

Examples of successfully monetized real estate blogs

1. Check out RSS Pieces, still less than a year old. We run AdSense and raise a      steady income from it. In fact, within the first 3 months of putting AdSense on our site we had climbed to a steady $600/mo in ad revenues. Similarly, UrbanDigs, another relatively new blog, generates a steady income from AdSense by managing the campaign regularly.
2. Joe and Rudy of Sellsius recently mentioned in an Inman audio conference that they drive consistent revenue from their many site sponsors.
3. Another real estate site using affiliate programs to generate income is Bloodhound      which offers up recommended books and digital cameras for sale in its side bar through the Amazon Affiliate Program.

Things Losers Say: AdSense and Affiliate Programs Don’t Work

I’ve often read posts from people saying that you can’t make any real income from your real estate website or blog from AdSense or Affiliate programs. And my response to those people is, “You clearly don’t know how to use the tools properly or you don’t drive enough traffic to justify the ads.” Just look at the above examples and then take a quick tour across the internet and see how many sites are using these methods to generate income. If AdSense and affiliate programs didn’t work, I seriously doubt so many respected sites and blogs would be utilizing them. The trick to the whole thing is learning how to use these tools properly. 

The most common reasons why sites can’t generate income from AdSense and Affiliate Programs

1. The site does not generate enough traffic to justify the ads (you need to have a minimum of 10,000 hits or 100 visitors per day to justify AdSense or Affiliate Programs)

Read also: Boost traffic by 40% in less than one hour per day

2. The site does not have  enough content to justify the ads ( you need at least 100 posts of keyword rich, quality content before placing AdSense or Affiliate programs on your site to generate any real income).

Read also: The secret formula to a quality blog post

3. The ads or affiliate products are not targeted to the site visitors (make sure each post is rich enough in keywords to pull contextually relevant ads that will appeal      to your market).

Read also: Get the most out of your meta tags

4. The site owner isn’t adapting the ads or affiliate programs to optimize performance regularly (AdSense and Affiliate Programs are just like any other marketing campaign: they only work if you regularly adapt your strategies to suit your target      market).

Rules of monetizing a real estate blog

1. Keep the content fresh and useful to drive the right kind of  traffic in bulk.  You also want to be aware that implanting any of the following techniques before you at least 100 pages of content and some decent traffic will be useless. Remember that traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more      ad clicks, more product/service sales, more affiliate sales and more donations.
2. Commit to the plan.  This means that if you are going to put up ads-place them at the top of each page where they are visible and most likely to be clicked.  If you’re going to request donations,      then post a visible “Make a Donation” link toward the top of each page or      in the middle of your posts.  If you’re going to sell products, then      create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors      compelling reasons to buy.
3. Set a goal and make a plan.  Set a goal for your blog to      generate $x/month within the next x months.  Then make a plan to      achieve you goal by combining the available revenue generating tools like      direct product/service sales, affiliate product sales commissions, pay per      click advertising or donations.
4. Regularly analyze, manage and optimize your ads and affiliate      programs.  Programs like AdSense and YahooAds allow you to      customize and adapt the service to filter out your competition and target      the ad topics most relevant to your site so you can tailor the ads shown      to your visitors and generate greater click throughs. Similarly, Amazon and Chitika allow you      to hand select the products that would most appeal to your visitors so you      can assure higher sales quantities.  Keeping an eye on your sales/referrals      while constantly optimizing them is the key to increasing your ability to      make money with these types of programs. Affiliate Program management takes less than 30 minutes per week      but could mean the difference between your site generating $1/day or $100/day.      

Designing a monetized real estate blog.

Pay Per Click Ads like AdSense and LinkShare

Consider where you will place your ads, products and donate button on your web page.  The number one reason people fail at monetizing their site is that they don’t want to offend people and place ads prominently.  So, be blatant, place ads at the tops of each page near where the readers eyes will fall naturally like in the post itself not on a side block.  Be sure to display multiple ads per page- 3 is a nice compromise.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship requires a little more legwork than these other methods but it can also generate substantially more consistent income. If you have good relationships with local businesses like mortgage brokers, stagers, moving companies, storage facilities, etc, leverage them into site sponsorships. Be aware you should really give your potential sponsors some hard metrics on your site traffic and the potential click throughs. If possible, you should also track click throughs and provide a regular statement of clickthroughs. Although that seems like a lot of work, you will be able to charge between $100-200/month per sponsor based upon your traffic ad membership. You may even be able to charge them a little more if you do a monthly post on the company. This is similar to the concept of editorial visitation, most magazines offer their premium advertisers.

Products/Affiliate Programs

For product displays, again either place them at the top of the page, within the main body of a post or in a side bar.  Strategically select products from Amazon that your market would like and say that you personally recommend these books on your local area or buying/selling homes.  It will funnel people to the shop and help conversion.

Select multiple streams of income
Make an effort to select more than one income generation tool so you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. 

Some of the most popular blog monetization programs are:

1. Google Adsense ads (pay per      click and pay per impression advertising)  You can very narrowly      target which ads get displayed on your site to filter out illicit or      competitive ads.  A good target to set for your site is to generate      $300-500/month through AdSense revenue.

Special Notes about AdSense:

Running AdSense on your site allows Google to track your page traffic (Reference: O’Reiley)

Theories abound that by running contextual advertising like AdSense you can boost your keyword density and increase your desirability to search engines in organic placement. I personally do not ascribe to these theories, but I believe they are worth mentioning.

How to get started with AdSense

AdSense’s Affiliate Program Website

2. Affiliate programs like Amazon and      LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books, electronics      and personal items).  This one works well for Realtors.  You can      select and recommend specific books or products to your visitors and sell      them through your site.  You will receive a monthly commission check      for all products sold through your site.

How to get started with Affiliate Programs

Amazon Affiliate Program

Chitika

3. Donation

While donation is not my favorite method for income generation, it can generate some quality revenue if done correctly. If you choose the donation route- make sure people can see it and you write some quality text around it about how hard it is for you find that time to blog and you need to be compensated to keep the electricity on in your house because your husband is in an iron lung (just kidding- but you know what I mean- be sure that people know that quality content comes at a price).

Resources for the money making blogger:

ProBlogger

Steven Pavlina

Robin Good

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