Not John Chow asked “Where does your income come from. What has worked for you?”

For Zero and Up, the main source of income comes from private ad sales. In fact, so far, Zero and Up has been monetized solely by private ad sales - no middleman involved. Forums have been a great tool to sell ad space, resulting in additional exposure. At first I gave out a few ads in exchange for reviews, and after that I have moved into a sale price structure, which has worked really well for me.

However, it can be really tough to get people to be interested in buying ads from you, especially in beginning stages of blogging. In some cases, it’s more reasonable to consider using third party advertising such as Google Adsense or Adbrite. Nonetheless, I heartily recommend that if possible, you stick to private ad sales for the most part. You really maximize your earnings as well as the value given to advertisers by sticking to an ad method over which you hold total control. (Not to mention that since there is no middleman, you get to keep 100% of the profits!)  If I had to pick one thing that really impresses advertisers, I would guess that it would be your RSS feed subscriber count. Really focus on driving up that number.

As for my private ad sales, the majority of my income has come from image/banner ads. I’ve also sold a handful of no-follow text links as well, along with one paid review so far. My earnings aren’t huge, but they aren’t small either; they are higher than what you would expect a three-month-old blog to achieve. I’m hoping to keep this up over the coming months, and I’m hoping to keep building relationships with my current advertisers as well as any new people who wish to advertise here.

To the readers: What would you say is your best way to earn online? Do you sell ads privately, or rely mainly on something like PayPerPost or Adsense? Sound your opinion!