Commercialize or Monetize Your Blog

As a blog owner, you may not be consciously doing it but may happen without you even noticing it. Below are certain aspects that might help you understand the difference.

Commercialization: When you commercialize a blog it is heavily dominated with advertisement, content promoting commercial products and a lot of embedded affiliate links redirecting visitors to products/services on various sites. Visitors find it difficult to distinguish between the actual content and commercial part of the blog. In a nutshell, a commercialized blog would want to use every possible opportunity to make money online by using various ways of doing so.

Monetization: When you monetize your blog, you do not overly involve yourself making money online by using various ways outlined above. You would rather focus on the content that your visitors like and keep coming back for more information. Monetization involves using AdSense and other contextual advertising programs to a limited extent to make money, and occasionally writing about some products with embedded affiliate links. In this case, visitors can very clearly distinguish between the actual content and commercial aspects of your blog.

Payoffs and drawbacks of a commercialize blog: You may make money, may be a lot of money in a short period but lose visitors in the long run. How will you make money when there are no visitors to your blog?

Payoffs and drawbacks of monetize blog: You may make nothing at first or a very small amount of money but retain visitors and gain loyalty from them. One can expect to grow with this approach and then make large amount of money over the long term. Focus on the content and money will automatically come to you.


Commercialize or Monetize Your Blog from spiritwarrior on Comiqs

42 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey nice post Spirit ! I believe in monetizing rather than commercializing and you have explained them both really nicely in this post :)

spiritwarrior said...

Hi Kashif,

I'm with you on that idea. Thanks for dropping by.

Anonymous said...

doggy also can read letter???
maybe next time can train them=)

Anonymous said...

I think mine is monetizing... I got very little but hopefully get some loyal readers, which is more important to me.

I'm still working full time, so money is just a plus or for a long run.
But it certainly is fun and enjoyable to see people coming over to read my posts and post comments on them!

spiritwarrior said...

Joshuaun,

Yes dogs can read now. They even surf the net...lol
Thanks for dropping by. I hope your weekend is great.

Michael,

Yes, your site is monetizing but I bet you're making some bucks of your site already. You have interesting posts to read.

Rhea

Anonymous said...

You've made a good distinction between monetization and commercialization - sometimes, some sites forget about the difference and can go overboard with advertising on their sites.

Admin said...

Thanks alot ur spirit. I hope sucess....always

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Good point. I think monetizing is definitely the way to go. After all, why turn something you're having fun with into work? I hate those sites that have more ads than content. If I wanted spam I'd check my inbox. Interesting post :)

Petula said...

Good post. Informative.

Anonymous said...

that's really interesting, and different from most 100 ways to make money on your site.

And it's really true that too much ads will put of guests.

Mine is currently zero ads, right now just focusing on content & hoping the readers come.

Pisio808 said...

Working to keep visitors coming back is the hardest part of this so far for me... I only have so much to say, and eventually my mind just goes numb like over the last few weeks. Eventually that goes away and the creativity comes back... those lulls in creativity are traffic killers though...

Prayers...

Pisio

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Mel Avila Alarilla said...

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Mel Avila Alarilla said...

You are tagged. Please go to my blog- Random Thoughts, and read my latest post "10 Reasons Why I Blog." After reading it, please make your on post on "10 Reasons Why I Blog," then copy the tagboard after the meme and add your name next to mine. Then tag as many persons as you could, giving them these same instructions. Please copy and include the tagboard after your meme and instruct those you will tag to do the same. This will ensure a tremendous surge in the number of traffic and viewers in our respective blogs. Do this and see how traffic and viewership figures in your blog increase exponentially. Thank you very much and God bless.

Anonymous said...

Monetizing is such a husstle without good traffic.Ive been on DIGG as an aggregator for quite a while until i discovered Tagsumwhich allows you to generate and share revenue from the pages of posts you submit with them.Ain't that cool.Please try it!

Anonymous said...

Great article. I've just entered this blog world, and you're right; it can be overwhelming. With that in mind, here's the link to my own commercialized effort: http://bloghog247.blogspot.com/

MrAdVenture said...

Found you site from a spottt on my site,just thought I would let you know you earned a bit more from your ad sense :)
I would offer more choices then just ad sense though.
However if you are serious about earning more ad revenue,you should read about The Portal Directory.
You only show a portal or slash page to other members,so is safe,and most report their earnings triple or better
how much would 50 clicks a day pay you?

no need to publish,this was for you

Anonymous said...

Good post! Brought me back to the real world. My heart tends more to the monetizing side and yet sometimes I might be doing more of a commercializing. Got to keep the balance by improving on the contents of the site to retain readers.

Anonymous said...

I still working of it, I'm with you on that idea, thanks for this info

Anonymous said...

ganda, please email me the links. interested digiscrap (at) pinaymommyonline (dot) com

thanks!!

Unknown said...

Very good article. Yes - as they say "Content is King". I am constantly trying different things on my sidebar then stripping them away if I find them too commercial. I am slowly adding more useful "content" to my sidebar. I still find Google's Adsense the best addition to the site since so much of what they feed is valuable to my readers. Keep up the good work here and you wil have many loyal visitios.

Unknown said...

Blog Monetization is easy u dont need to put extra effort except writing good contents

Anonymous said...

If you look at my blog you can see how I have monetized my blog. I generally make between $500 and $1,000 a month. my blog is only 4 months old but I used to host it with blogger for a few years. I am a webmaster by trade and have been with Commission junction for 3 years now and earn well through them.Since my blog is about Gadgets, Science and Technology you can see why I get many organic listing through the major search engines for products and services.The thing is with monetization is to make your posts very SEO friendly using the right Keywords, Tags, Headlines and providing those important links as an additional resource to your post that makes you money

Frank Kanu said...

Rhea, I tagged you to reveal 7 things about you, your readers might not know...

Anonymous said...

Thanks for explaining the difference. I am a fairly new blogger and I want to monetize my blog but I seem to be heading the wrong direction. This helped explain the difference so I can get back on track

Anonymous said...

You've done your trafficking homework well ... I say let content drive the commercial engine, otherwise there isn't anything to see. Keep up the good work.

Gerri said...

That is very true. It is an issue that all bloggers will have to face at one point or another. I wrote a similar post last year. Check it out if you like: http://whereisthatmoney.blogspot.com/2007/07/is-blog-monetization-bad.html

Mel Avila Alarilla said...

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May I request, if it is not too much of a burden to you, to please subscribe to my Feedburner Feeds either through email or to my RSS Feed Reader. You can find them at the upper portion of my sidebars at all my blogs. This will save you the time of going over to my blogs to find out if I have made a new posting. The FeedBurner will automatically transmit, either through email or Feed Reader (whichever you choose), any new post that I make. This will facilitate linkages between us. I will do the same for you if you have your own feeds, but if you still don't have I will still visit your blog as often as I could. Just inform me via email or through your comment in any of my blogs that you have already enrolled in any of my feeds so that I can reciprocate your gesture. I will appreciate it very much if you could do this as it will definitely boost ranking for my blogs. Thank you very much for your usual kind cooperation and patronage of my blogs. God bless you and your loved ones always.

Anonymous said...

Very good clarification of the differences between monetization and commercialization and their objectives in relation to blogs. I personally have my blog on my website so that I can focus on content for my blog. Nevertheless, my blog is monetized with content relevant Google AdSense ads.

Anonymous said...

Quality of content is very important to the success of a blog. No matter how much you advertise your blog, it will be all for if your content is low quality. I agree with this post. Everything will follow with good content. Great post.

Gregorio said...

Thank you for the info.I want my blog to stay relevant to its subject and build devoted visitors.I think I'm going to monetize.Thanks :)

Nadine said...

Interesting post. Is it possible/plausible to do both?

Anonymous said...

Hi thanks for being the most loyal visitor to my blog, your post is quite informative on why it is important to ensure one laways maintains good content on the blog and satisfies the readers rather than adverstisers only,thanks

christian said...

i like this post! it help me figure thing on the blogging thing... im kinda starting... would you give me ideas and how i could make extra income. you may drop by in my site

Anonymous said...

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Check mine, http://johankruger.blogspot.com

Lou said...

Oooh, very nice post. This sums up the differences quite well, good stuff. It's a line that a good amount of bloggers either aren't aware of, or don't know which side of the fence to sit on.

Thanks for the Entrecard drop, also! :)

Jewelicide said...

Great post. You made an awesome point. I hate reading blogs that are overly commercialized.

Anonymous said...

Great entry. I saw this a while ago on some TE I think and took the to read it then. Over commercialisation is the problem of the internet. People are just posting ads and affiliate links and referral links all over the place. I mean the advertiser are making some money, after all the idea of marketing is to create brand awareness with repetition, but most of the time it's just a drag...

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