So how long before you guys started monetizing? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

As above, how long before monetizing your blog?

And what did you guys do? Affiliate marketing? Adsense? Advertising? 

I put up my first ad about 4 months after I started my site, after an advertiser contacted me. I didn't add AdSense until sometime in November/December (5 months or so into blogging). I wanted to build up content and see if I had a readership before I thought about monetizing. 

I guess the first point is to get a good readership. But sometimes, I start site with advertising on Day 1. As long as it's not abusive, you can start slowly and modify your ads as the blog grow ;-).

Adsense is the easiest way to make money (you just plug in the code)

Amazon has never done well with me (a few bucks here and there don't make a good side income)

Affiliate are tough, but when you have a good volume of visitors, it pays well!

Eric – NarrowBridge.net said:

I had the AdSense code up after a few weeks. I kept it there as a placeholder so I wouldn't get backlash when I added more later on.

I really was naive enough to think AdSense was going to make me any money when I first started out. But I think this is a good idea. Have at least one or two AdSense ads on the site, so when you get big enough that you can actually make money off the site, there isn't a reaction of, "woah, ads! Run!"

I started with Adsense when I first started blogging – maybe three months later, actually – but didn't really do much with it until a year and a quarter after I started blogging and switched to self hosted. I actually only fell into advertising ventures because of advertisers contacting me, otherwise I wouldn't have persued it. Mostly I've been doing sponsored posts, guests posts, links in posts, etc.

I added Adsense to my blog on day one.  I just figured I would add it in there from the start so people would know it was there and get used to it, instead of trying to add it in later on.  I was one of the lucky ones in that I wrote topics that tended to monetize well and I was cashing out of adsense every month after the 3rd or 4th month of blogging. I've cashed out every month since for 4 years or so.

I think a big thing about adsense is the topics you're writing, and if they monetize well. If you're writing about your cat, then you aren't gonna get many ads with high click values.  If you write about retirement accounts, you'll get more high value clicks.  

Know what you're going to write about, and how that niche and topic monetizes best (adsense vs. affilite vs. your own products/etc)

MoneyIsTheRoot said:

search the forums with these keywords…you will find this topic covered extensively in the past.

Hey – you're stealing my schtick! ;)

I put ads up right away. I want to make money with my blog so it just made sense to learn about it early. That said I have 3 ads on the entire site and do not intend to add that many more anytime soon. I think if you are concerned about readers being offended when you put ads up after blogging for a while your ads are to intrusive.

I think a lot of the people who visit my site do not notice the ads, so I do not feel like I need to worry about how they affect the readers. I haven't made any money but I have been gaining readers. Once the visitors start coming, the ads will begin to work, but if one day I had a huge spike in visits and didn't have the ads up, that would be a small opportunity lost.

There is no harm in having them there if you don't go overboard.

Nobody is forcing anyone to answer those same questions over and over.  If you don't let people ask existing questions, there would be a whole lot less activity on here and less community interaction.  Then people have to wade through excessively long posts to get the info and they can't get answers to the specific questions they have.  Personally I find it rude to just tell someone to search the forums.  It's not really 'selflessly helping' people.  That just discourages people from participating.

Daisy said:

I started with Adsense when I first started blogging – maybe three months later, actually – but didn't really do much with it until a year and a quarter after I started blogging and switched to self hosted. I actually only fell into advertising ventures because of advertisers contacting me, otherwise I wouldn't have persued it. Mostly I've been doing sponsored posts, guests posts, links in posts, etc.

Probably shouldn't disclose this is a public forum. Google doesn't like these things.