Whether you want it or not you will start earning from a popular blog. The world runs on money and anyone will get tempted to earn more and more money if the opportunity presents itself, but there are certain opportunities or income streams which you need to avoid as a blogger.
Most bloggers use Google AdSense, Affiliates and direct ad sales as their main source of income online. There are some other, more popular bloggers such as Harsh Agarwal and Rahul Kuntala who sell their services to help others blog. This too is a great income stream for a blog and is something all bloggers should look at when the time is right.
But there are certain other income streams which I would like to discuss below, which you need to avoid as a blogger due to the simple fact that THESE INCOME STREAMS CAN DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
You will see what I am talking about.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde
Lets look at these tempting income streams which you should avoid as a blogger –
Paid Links
I get mails every so often about people asking me if I can insert their links in one of my posts and what not.The answer to this should be a a big NO! But it is not always that easy, these guys offer like 50-100$ and sometimes even more for just 10 seconds work of inserting a paid link on your site, come on, how can you resist that? But you have to.
You may make a quick 500$ in a day by posting a few links to your site, but day by day your traffic and search ratings will reduce drastically as Google picks up on these paid links and penalizes your blog.
That’s not the only thing that can get ruined by paid links, the trust of your visitors may also get hurt if you are linking to a spammy casino site.
So be careful, paid links are not for true bloggers!
Sponsored Reviews
There is nothing wrong with sponsored reviews as long as the reviewer is not influenced by the people being reviewed. I do not mind doing a sponsored review if you want my honest opinion of your start-up, app etc. But definitely would not like to do a doctored sponsored review of something.
This may not have too much effect on search rankings but it will adversely affect your reader relations if you have a good review about a bad product.
Black-Hat Services
Trust me when I say that being a blogger for a long time, you will learn a few loop holes and black hat methods of getting things done easily while blogging.I will not give out examples of these black hat services, as it would only tempt you more 😛
Never try to sell the loop holes and tricks you have learnt as a blogger to your audience, you are only creating a group of people whose blogs will eventually get penalized, sooner or later.They will hate you for that.
Never use these black hat methods that you have learnt from experience too, you do not want your blog to suffer either.
Pop-Up Ads
Yuck.I hate these ads.
Annoying.
Irritating.
These are a few things I think if a pop up appears when I visit a blog.Have you noticed none of the top and renowned blogs use pop-ups as ads? There is a reason for that.
Pop-Ups can pay a lot of money, but they are the worst for user experience, blogs run on returning visitors, so you need to create as good an experience as possible for your readers.
Pop-Up ads are a total No No.
So these are the four tempting income streams you should probably avoid while blogging, however tempting or whatever money they may offer.If you guys have come across some other income streams which can harm your blog, then please let me know in the comments section!