When I started blogging, Adsense was the only known blog monetization way to me. That time it was not so tough to get approved by Adsense as it’s now. I was able to get Adsense approval with a subdomain site (like this).
Later I moved to self-hosted WordPress blog and started blogging more seriously. Soon I realized that Adsense is not generating much earning for me. I started looking for other monetization ways for my blog.
Adsense is still the best advertising network for bloggers. But it will be an exaggeration to consider it as the only way to make money blogging. There is a saying that “Never put all your eggs in one basket”. That means don’t depend on one source. What if your Adsense account get banned.

So if you don’t get Adsense approval or you got banned or Adsense doesn’t work for you, read on. In this post, I will be sharing 5 guaranteed ways to make money without Adsense.

1. Affiliate Marketing. It’s not as hard as it sounds.
Affiliate marketing is the process of getting commission by selling other people’s products. The idea is that you choose a product that you like and you start promoting the product on your blog. When someone buys the product through your affiliate link, you’ll get the commission.
When it comes to getting success in affiliate marketing, you might think that you’ll have to do PPC marketing or have to build a huge Email list. But you won’t have to if you have a blog with decent readers. Just pick the right products and promote those on your blog.
Affiliate marketing takes time. If someone tells you that he will make you multi-millionaire overnight, he is lying to your face. There are a lot of courses that claim to make you multi-millionaire and ask you to buy their products. Most of the cases, those are scams. To get success in affiliate marketing, you need to work hard.

ShareASale is an Affiliate Network that is used by thousands of bloggers.

2. Try alternatives. Adsense is not the only program out there.
To be honest with you, there is no REAL Adsense alternative. With the quality of Ads, highest CTR rate and recurring income, Adsense is the best Ad network.
But definitely Adsense is not the only advertising network for bloggers. There are some alternatives out there. You can earn some decent revenue by using those networks. Here is a list of some high paying Adsense alternatives.

• RevenueHits
• Bidvertiser
• Infolinks
• Viglink
• Adversal

I would suggest you to do some experiments to find out what works for you. Because what works for me, might not work for you and what works for you, might not work for me. Sign Up here

RevenueHits is one of the best Adsense alternatives out there.

3. Direct Advertising. Cut the third party out.
Direct Advertising is an awesome way to monetize your blog. The best thing about direct advertising is, you’ll cut the third party out. And you’ll get the full control of your Ads like where and how the Ads will be displayed.

But if you’ve just created a new WordPress blog, direct adverting may not work for you. You’ll have to generate a decent amount of traffic to your blog to attract advertisers.
Here are some tips for getting direct advertising.

• Create an ‘Advertise’ page with information like Blog stats, Audience profile, Advertising options etc. You can check our Advertise page to get some idea.
• Use OIO Publisher plugin to manage your ads.
• Visit other blogs related to your niche and check who are advertising on those blogs. Try to contact with those advertisers.
• Join forums like DigitalPoint to find advertisers.

OIOpublisher plugin helps you to maximise your revenue and keep you in complete control of your ad space.

4. Write Sponsored Reviews & Sponsored Posts. But don’t sell links.
Product owners or service providers pay bloggers to write about them. It could be a sponsored review or a sponsored post.
In sponsored reviews, product owners will ask you to write a review of their product. Sponsored post is about publishing a paid post about a product/service. It may be written by you or by the advertisers.
There is no harm in publishing sponsored posts or sponsored reviews if you do it right. In fact, it can generate a good amount of money for you.
But you have to be careful about sponsored post. Here are few things you need to consider before writing sponsored reviews/posts.

• The post should be related to your niche.
• Never accept casino or gambling sites.
• Add “nofollow” tag to the advertiser link.
• Write detail posts to attract other advertisers.

SponsoredReviews.com is a blog post service that connects advertisers with bloggers.

5. Sell a Product or Service. Don’t just rely on adverting and affiliate revenue.
A blog with targeted traffic can generate a decent amount of money by selling product or service.
A poll on Problogger found that 44% of bloggers sell their own product or service. If you have a decent amount of reader on your blog, you can offer a product or service to your readers.
The product or service you are going to sell must be related to your blog’s topic. Here are some example of products or services you can sell.

• eBooks
• Membership Site
• Courses
• Software
• Web Design/Development
• SEO Services
• Training Services etc.

E-junkie helps bloggers to sell products online.

Over to You