The majority of blog owners acquire most of their passive income by advertisements on their blogs. These ads can be located anyplace on the blog – in the footer, beneath the header, on the sidebars, or even in the content. Blog owners wish the ads to be as visible as possible since the advertisers are not going to pay to advertise on a blog that buries their ad on an unseen page somewhere on the site. Also, with a few ads programs, the blog owners only get revenue if the advertisement is clicked by a visitor to the blog.

There are quite a few ad networks around nowadays. One of the most popular ad programs is Google Adsense (http://www.google.com/adsense). Advertisers pay Google to advertise links to their site, these links are then featured on the sites of Google and their affiliates when certain keywords searches are brought forward, or relevant content displayed on the affiliates blog or web sites. Google then lets website/blog owners sign up for their Adsense program and provide these site owners with a code to place on their web site/blog. This code displays Google ads which rotate and are most relevant to the website/blogs current content. The Adsense code can be customized so that the ads match the blogs color scheme and you, the blog owner, can choose to display text ads or image banner ads of all shapes and sizes. Whenever a reader visits the link of one of the advertisers being shown on your blog you earn money.

There are many blogs that exist only to earn Google Adsense revenue. Quite a few are packed with Google ads in picture and text form with nearly no original content. I personally recommend against doing this since having a blog with too many ads and not enough original content can cause you to be penalized with the search engines. It will also prevent you from listing your blog in many quality blog directories and communities.

Another advertising program that lets you sell ad space on your blog is Adbrite(http://www.adbrite.com). The features are very similar to Google Adsense but the main difference is that they allow your blog to be listed in a Marketplace. This allows advertisers to browse sites and blogs in certain categories and buy ad space on a particular blog for the week, month, or on a daily basis. You can set your own rates or Adbrite will set the daily, weekly, and monthly rate based on your traffic stats and overall ranking.

I currently use Adbrite on all of my sites and prefer it to Adsense. My payout is usually higher with Adbrite since I am able to get paid per click or page impression revenue thanks to network wide cost per click campaigns some advertisers run. I am also able to sell advertisement space directly to advertisers that want to have a link on my site for a set amount of time. My favorite feature is that I am able to approve each advertiser myself. That means I can deny advertisers who have objectionable content or that are direct competitors. With Google Adsense you never know what link is gong to show up on your blog.

Adbrite and Adsense are the two advertisement programs that I have used the most but there are many others that have gotten great feedback and can be used to generate income for all types of blogs.

AdSonar: http://www.Quigo.com
Adgenta: http://adgenta.com
AVN Ads (adult ads): http://www.avnads.com
Black Label Ads (adult ads): http://www.blacklabelads.com
Clicksor: http://clicksor.com
Crisp Ads: http://www.crispads.com
Kontera: http://www.kontera.com
Kanoodle: http://www.Kanoodle.com/
IntelliTXT: http://www.intellitxt.com
Mirago: http://www.mirago.com/partnerships/contextualproducts.html
Miva MC: http://www.miva.com/us/content/partners/arx.asp
Nixxie: http://www.nixxie.com
Oxado: http://www.oxado.com
Revenue Pilot: http://www.revenuepilot.com
TargetPro: https://publisher.targetpoint.com/default.aspx
Text Ad Links: http://www.text-link-ads.com
Yahoo! Publisher Network: http://publisher.yahoo.com
Value Click: http://www.valueclickmedia.com/Publishers.shtml

The majority of these ad programs can be used together. Many blog owners use multiple ad revenue programs on their blogs in order to get more income from a wider variety of sources. While I primarily use Adbrite I have also used the Yahoo Publisher Network and Kanoodle to sell ad space. Some of these programs will pay you per impression which means you earn money by simply display the ads on your blog, regardless of whether a reader clicks an ad.

My personal favorite way to sell ad space on my blog is to sell it directly to the advertiser. I will occasionally make a post on my blog saying that I am accepting new advertisers or running a special on advertising rates to get email inquires. At other times I would create a small banner or button to place in my sidebar that was linked to my email address that read “Click Here to Advertise” or “Your Ad Here”. I usually charge anywhere from $20.00 to $50.00 per month for advertisers to have a small banner or text ad linking to their site for the entire month. I use a WordPress plugin called OIO publisher to manage the private ads from my advertisers.