Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Dave’s Recommendations

Make Money? Make Your Blog Better? We All Want To.

Below is a list of various resources, ad networks, plug-ins and anything else that I recommend to bloggers for use on their own sites. Anything I list on this page I have tried personally and give it my stamp of approval. Some of the out-going links are referral links (full disclosure), however you have my word that nothing makes it to this page just for the commission.

If it is on this page, then I give it my full endorsement.

Monetization

  • BuySellAds. BuySellAds is a network which brings buyers directly to publishers. BuySellAds takes a cut which is a bit high, but it isn’t as high as Google Adsense. BuySellAds is a nice way to put direct sponsorships on automatic for your blog.
  • Chitika. Chitika is a good way to get relevant product links on your blog through the use of their minimalls. Their Chitika Premium ads are a nice way to take advantage of search traffic to your blog. Works ideally on product-oriented blogs.
  • Kontera. Kontera is an ad network for contextual, in-text advertising. I have been using Kontera for some time over on PCMech.com and it works quite well for me. They are easy to work with.

Wordpress Plug-ins

  • Action Comments. People enter their name and email address every time they post a comment to your blog. Why not provide them a one-click option to subscribe to your mailing list while posting their comment? That’s what Action Comments does. It makes SO much sense and I can’t believe I didn’t do it earlier. Integrates beautifully with Aweber, too, but will work with most any email system.
  • MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate. I highly recommend this plug-in if you engage in affiliate marketing on your blog. It allows you to create your own clean URLs which re-direct to your affiliate links. It also allows click tracking and automatic keyword linking throughout your blog. If you make money with affiliate links on your blog, I consider this plug-in a necessity.
  • OIO Publisher. OIO is a full-featured ad manager for your Wordpress blog. But, it is more than just a banner rotator. It actually manages the purchase of advertising on your blog. You can manage banners, in-text ads, paid reviews, or even sell your own products with OIO. If you want to sell your own ads on your blog, I definitely recommend you check out OIO Publisher.

Services

  • Aweber. I use Aweber for managing my email lists and they are top notch. I recommend nobody else besides Aweber. Period.
  • Pair Networks. I use Pair Networks for my web hosting. I’ve been with them for years and they have served me well. I use two dedicated servers and they are managed by Pair Networks.
  • TubeMogul. TubeMogul is a service where you can upload videos and automatically have them distributed to several different video sites. It is free. Videos are an important component to power blogging and TubeMogul is a must-have tool. I use it almost every day.