More than half of all the Thailand blogs I read have adsense. And why not? Some people fall into the trap of writing off a blog as soon as they come across adsense, but I see nothing wrong with a blogger making money if a.) he or she has something to say, and b.) the whole making money blogging thing doesn’t get in the way of that person saying it.

Making money blogging is not rocket science, but it does require a little thought and know-how. If you have a Thailand blog and you put good time and effort into it, a financial return is not out of the question. At the end of the day, if you’re blogging regularly and have traffic to your site, you can either carry on doing what you’re doing without making money, or make a few tweaks and earn some extra cash. For me personally, making money blogging is a godsend because I’ve just taken a major pay cut in changing jobs. I’m also not at the stage in my life where I am financially secure, so every little helps.

So, you’ve got your Thailand blog, you’ve got some content up, what do you do next? The best Thailand blogs for making money are those with a lot of broad content focused on travel. Not only do these do well in search engines but they also hit high paying keywords with Google adsnese. Google adsense is the first place to go to monetise your blog. Anyone with a website can sign up. You can then add adverts (like the one at the top of this blog), referral buttons for products like Firefox, a search box which leads to paid clicks, or lists (like the one presently at the top left of this blog) which lead to paid clicks. I chose not to use Google’s search box because it gets messy having people search the content of your site by using a third party search engine. Instead I have my own search box which keeps everything inside.

With adsense, there is no easy scheme. You have to experiment. Google will determine what your blog is about to place relevant adverts on your site (so if you’re blogging about Thailand then most of the adverts will also be about Thailand). If for some reason Google gets it wrong, you can use section targeting to target a specific block of content. This tells Google what your site is about. You place two bits of code around the text you want to focus on.

When using adsense, you ought to remember a few things:

• Don’t blend adverts in with the rest of your blog.
• Experiment with different colours and positioning.
• Don’t put adverts next to images.
• The top left hand part of a blog is the area a reader will focus on most.
• Never click on your own adverts, not even to see if they are working.

If you’re a Thailand blogger and you aren’t making anything from adsense, you need to make some changes to how adsense is implemented on your site. Don’t hide the adverts out of sight. As a general rule, 1,000 page impressions per day should convert to around 50 or so clicks, which ought to earn a blogger $5-10.

Apart from adsense, there are a few other ways to make money from blogging in Thailand. The first is Text Link Ads. This works by links being sold on your behalf. If you’re using Wordpress you install a plugin, add a bit of a code, and when an advert is sold it will show up on your blog. The idea is even simpler than adsense, but it seems a bit random as to when links are sold. I’m still waiting, but I gather that for other people the process can be much faster. You essentially get paid for doing nothing.

Some people write paid posts. This works by a company paying a blogger to write about their product. This is something I’m yet to do. The amount you receive depends on how successful your blog is. It basically means you write an advertorial, and at the moment that’s not something I’d feel comfortable doing. The two main places to find paid posts are Loud Launch and Pay Per Post. Some people make thousands of dollars blogging through those sites, but for a Thailand blog there aren’t many paid posts that won’t look a bit out of place.

Similar to paid posting is The News Room, which works by providing news content for a blog post. You earn money just for page impressions. I haven’t used The News Room yet because I think the only way to make money from it would be to regularly use their news stories. But still, it might work out lucrative for other people. There are lot of stories about Thailand that would not look out of place on a Thai blog.

Blogging about Thailand is probably not going to get your rich quick, but should you choose to blog about another topic then there are doors open to everyone.

Techno' tags: Blogging tips, Make money online, Thai blogs