Want To Make More Money With Your Blog? Try Sovrn

So, as most of you know, I was a big fan of Yahoo! Voices (once known as Associated Content). I had an archive of about 400 articles on there, and around the time it closed its doors I was finally pulling down triple digit royalties. When that vanished, though, I had to pick up the pieces and find new homes for my old articles. A number of those posts wound up getting reposted in my InfoBarrel archive (which is still trying to make up lost ground), and some of them found new homes on the two blogs I run. Some of them vanished into the ether, never to be seen again.

Trust me, not all of them were worth saving.

It's taken three years or so, but I'm finally getting to the point where the loss of Yahoo! Voices is just a bad limp, instead of a crippling strike to the knee. However, there was something special about that site.

It paid you based on your traffic, not on the number of ad clicks you got.

Getting Seen to Get Paid

Anyone who blogs is likely familiar with the way providers like Google AdSense work. You place their ads on your blog, and then you wait for one of your readers to see an ad they like. The reader clicks the ad, and boom, money in your bank. As systems go, it's fairly simple.

In order for this system to work for you, though, you need to have a colossal amount of traffic. You also need to make sure your traffic doesn't use Ad Block, or a similar program to stop your ads from displaying. Lastly, you need to make sure the people who come to your page see ads for things they actually want. Managing those first two steps is hard enough, but the third one can be nearly impossible.

That was what made Yahoo! Voices such a great site. It provided huge reach, a lot of visibility, and you got paid a set fee for every 1,000 views your articles got. You didn't have to worry about people clicking your ads; they just had to see them. That was particularly useful when I'd put out a new article, and it would get 30,000 views in the first week. These days getting that kind of traffic is rare for me, but even if I did manage it, it wouldn't do me any good.

Until recently, anyway.

What changed, you might ask?

I say this because I recently added Sovrn ads to my blogs. I've used a number of ad services in the past, including Chitika, InfoLinks, Google AdSense, and others, but all of them worked off the same model I mentioned above. If no one actually clicks-through on your links, then it doesn't matter how much traffic you get.

Sovrn is only concerned about your traffic. So if you command a huge audience, or a post goes viral, you get paid for being a billboard.

Now, if you're a blogger like me, that probably sounds pretty sweet. You don't have to wait for the slot machine payout of getting just the right person to come to your blog, who just so happens to be looking for a new set of shoes, or a coat, or a particular book (since most ads will try to display something based on the viewer's search history). You just need to get them to come check out your site. That's it. As long as the ads display, you get paid.

If that sounds good to you, check out Sovrn to get started today. I'm glad I found out about it, so I thought I'd do my part and share it with all of you, too.

Also, if you're not a blogger, but like the idea of earning money off writing articles, you might want to check out an older post Make Money Writing (By Joining InfoBarrel.com).

Thanks for tuning in to this week's Business of Writing post. If you'd like to help support me and my blog so I can keep useful information coming your way, stop by The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. As little as $1 a month can make a big difference, and you get a free gift as well! Lastly, if you haven't followed me on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter yet, why not start today?