I hear ya, but you or anyone else can still make the Trulia Partner program work for you without having to place a link or banner ad on your site or blog. And, it’s totally up to you who you introduce to the program. You can email anyone or any local business with your partner link that would take them to a page on our site where they can find more information. And since you have already spoken with local businesses and restaurants in the past, this program might interest them as it’s a great opportunity to showcase their local business to targeted home buyers and sellers on Trulia in up to 20 markets.

Just thought share this option with you too

Happy Sunday!

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia

I have a rule on my blog – no links to platforms that advertise other agents and may take away from my blog. So you’ll never see a link there to Trulia, Zillow, Active Rain, Viva Real……..Although you will see see links to other agent blogs that add value to the industry and are not in my direct market.

Thanks for the heads up btw.

Re: Blog monetization, there are lots of options for blog publishers to consider, many of which have already been discussed. Some monetize their businesses and blogs by getting clients directly from the blog posts they write, comments they leave on forums, referrals, crumbs they leave on twitter, some via word of mouth, some via affiliate programs, etc…. For those interested in another option, we recently launched our Trulia partner program for companies and publishers to offer our products directly to their readers, members or sphere of influence. I wrote about it on Trulia blog if you want to learn more about it.

Have a great weekend!

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia

In other words, they are trying to buy Page Rank. They know darn well no one will ever click on that link. I think those are what G is targeting. And while I wouldn’t really care if that page went from PR4 to PR2, that advertiser certainly should as they’d no longer be getting what they paid for.

Personally though, I have a problem selling Page Rank. While it’s certainly not the be-all-to-end-all factor in search algorithms, my thoughts are if you want PR, earn it, don’t buy it.

Jay – I totally see where you’re coming from. To me, there’s a difference in a site like yours versus a site from a less web-savvy agent, or an agent hosting a site with less authority that wants to monetize. The G can whack you for paid text links, sure, but it will never speculate. The person who loses out the most there, though, is the advertiser, IMO, unless they only want to piggyback off a site’s traffic.

As for paid text links, I get multiple request a week, and simply don’t have time to vet them all, so it’s easier to just say “no text links”. Some very reputable SEO experts say Google will whack you for paid text links, some say they don’t. To me, it’s not worth a few bucks to find out.

Jonathan – thanks for the specifics. I don’t think the size of the ad would be such an issue – I would only be comfortable if my advertisers follow my blog’s guidelines (but that’s the OCD talking). – affiliate ads and text link ads are something to consider…..your information is definitely helpful.

IMO, having the code on text link ads doesn’t hurt your site, but if the search engines can catch it… it will probably make the link worthless to your advertiser.

Two things to keep in mind:

1. Affiliate ads in the sense that we are speaking about here have a very low conversion rate (know this from personal experience), so if you use them, try to target Cost Per Lead ads for your site. They pay less, but your chance for conversion is better.

2. Text link ads seem to be better at converting, but anchor text links in blog posts covert the best IMO. If you want to monetize a blog, offer to do paid reviews with up to 3 permanent, “dofollow” links. This will bring an organic SEO benefit to your advertiser and monetize your site.

I was fighting with this idea earlier this year. Because my site is so specific to one niche market I get a few people a month asking to advertise on my site. The only paid link that I have on there right now is a utility company that goes with the theme of my blog and it doubles as a concierge service so I can send clients back to my blog to sign up all of their utilities but they are not required to use that utility provider (although most of the people I work with would want to).

The problem I have with it is reputation. I do not want to advertise someone’s services on my site when they suck. The list of providers I have on there now I know would do a good job and I would use them myself. But getting paid to put a link there….just seems…I dont’ know. Not charging to be on the list right now makes me feel better when I tell people no you can’t be there.

Jay – exactly what I wanted to hear – ty! I really like how you set up those 3 slots of advertisements on your home page – it’s tasteful and does not take away from the blog ( and really like the rotating idea) – I may have to consider going 3 column to make it work. You may not be charging enough, but a quiet passive income sure covers at least the blog expenses.

This is an excellent point, and one I never really considered.

Relevance is important, IMHO as is how ads are displayed. Flashing GIFs, “inline” ads (ads embedded inside actual posts) are all very distracting.

There is no question you can secure additional income from advertising, but you need some fairly reasonable traffic. Advertisers also look at things like Alexa and Compete rankings – flawed as those may be). Look at TechCrunch, they charge up to $12,000 per month. That’s significant money. Of course they get 3 million uniques and almost 8 million page views a month. I don’t think a real estate focused blog will ever remotely approach that kind of traffic.

I held off on allowing ads for a long time. It’s a personal choice. But if it is done tastefully, with the right kind of advertisers, then I think there is benefit to the advertisers, the readers and the blogger.

Sellsius is another RE blog that has ads. Joe’s been doing it for awhile and does have text link ads. I believe he suffered a PageRank hit for that, but PR isn’t the be-all-to-end-all.

At this point I do *not* do text link ads. Google has issues (according to some) with paid text link ads. I also don’t do Adwords, or contextual link ads or place any form of ads in posts – just block ads on the sidebar. And I’ve turned down far more than I’ve accepted. I personally vet each advertiser and will only accept ads that I think will help my readership — be they “consumers” or agents.

I’ve made local business connections from having ads, and made great contacts even from those that chose not to advertise.

Visitors and page views drive what advertisers are willing to pay. I’ll never retire from my ad revenue. I may not be charging enough ($100/month per ad, more for the single ad on the search page) but I want both the advertiser and the reader to benefit.

Some hyper-local blogs have become the place to go for information and resources….very much like a local paper – passive income from that resource doesn’t look bad at all (although I confess if you asked me the same question 6 months ago it would have been a clear “NO”)