This is the fourth post in my 6 Beginning Blogger Mistakes series.

Everyone loves making money on their blog. Money can buy happiness, new clothes and hookers (see happiness). Who doesn’t read Problogger.net and want to pull in the big bucks on their blog? I know I do, every single day.

Many bloggers start up their blog and immediately want to start pulling in hundreds of dollars a day. So they place pop-up ads, contextual ads (that’s what I run), those windows that pop-up on your screen when you roll your mouse over the word “camera” and affiliate links. The next thing you know, you look at their blog and it’s nothing but a series of ads. It’s hard to even see or pay attention to the content. Much like reality TV shows.

Let me go through different kinds of ads and talk about how they should be done on a beginning blog to work best:

Pay-per-view ads: If your blog is just starting out these are a waste of time for you. There’s no way you’re going to be pulling in the thousands of hits a day it takes to make these worth your time. Pop-ups and pop-unders often pay out in this way. They’re annoying and blocked in many browsers anyway.

Pay-per-click ads: These are becoming the most common ways to make money off a just starting up blog. I myself have made hundreds of dollars of this exact kind of ad running on sites without a serious amount of traffic. Believe it or not people actually like these ads because they often link to things of related content. The ads running on this article will no doubt be linking to “make money blogging” ads and things of that nature which is why you’re reading this article in the first place. I encourage you to click on them to make me some money.

Affiliate ads: These are ads refer people to other sites where they can purchase products. If you’re just starting out you probably won’t make much money on these. The odds of someone clicking from your site to Amazon or somewhere similar and making a purchase immediately are slim. You probably don’t have the traffic to make it worth your while. BUT these types of ads can make a hell of a lot more than a pay-per-click ad if someone follows through. If your blog is aimed at an area with products like photography or computers this could be a good alley for you. This is especially true if you build up the trust of your readers to the point where you say “buy this toy” they’ll go and buy the toy.

Those stupid automatic links in the middle of your blog posts. This is my second least favorite type of ad. They’re supposed to be based on the context of your website but they rarely are. If you type “As I stared at my computer I realized I was staring into my soul” the program will decide to highlight the word “computer” and link to Newegg and you’re not going to get a whole lot of clicks. Take the time to find your own affiliate links and work them in naturally, you’ll get a much better return.

Ads that slide over your website. Yes, my least favorite type of ads. Some major websites run them. You’ll load up an article and suddenly there will be a dancing monkey in front of you doing the cha-cha over the words. There’s often an “X” button to close it (not always) but never is there an option to blow the monkey’s head off. These are annoying on any website. Why drive your visitors away when they can go elsewhere for their information?

Direct Advertisers. Much like TV shows you can whore yourself out to advertisers directly. On TV they call it “product integration” on the web they call it direct advertisement. This is an excellent way to make money when your website gets bigger. One company could pay big money for exclusive rights to advertise in your banner and have you talk about their products. Problem is, beginning bloggers don’t attract nearly enough traffic to attract this type of ad. So don’t worry about it for now. Feel free to blog nicely about companies you like in the hopes that in the future they might reach out to you (or you to them) about being their puppet.

The idea of this article is to make sure you know there are options out there when trying to make money off your blog. It doesn’t take a billion different ads running at once to do well. That approach hurts and drives visitors away. Take the time to think logically about your ads and how your visitors will interact with them. You’ll make more money in the long run.

Stay tuned for the next installment of my 6 Beginning Blogger Mistakes series where I discuss sporadic posting. Whenever I decide to write that one. Ha.