Most bloggers today fix one or two monetization methods for their blogs, and expect to maximize their income from blogging. But the truth is, it’s better to monetize each blog individually if you don’t mind the extra work.

This is due to a few key reasons:

• The most profitable area in any blog is within the content itself
• Any click-based income generation method placed away from the content area into the navigation area becomes less effective
• Any impression-based monetization method placed in content areas are a waste of resources

Here are some ways I monetize this blog:

• By driving traffic to my own products
• By driving traffic to affiliate products
• By maximizing clicks on Google Adsense
• By selling text link ads

Therefore, if I put Google Adsense (click-based) into areas not within or near the content, you will not get as many clicks as possible. If I put Google Adsense and affiliate links in the same content area, some of my visitors will click away at Google Adsense and the others on the affiliate link, and I might be missing out of better affiliate commissions by just removing Adsense from that particular post itself.

The point is, there are many ways to make money from blogging but you should not use all at once, as this will reduce the maximum potential of each post or article on your site.

Here’s how I do post-level monetization:

1. Decide before you write – Before you write, decide what you want to do with the post. Are you pre-selling others on an affiliate product? Are you building buzz for your next product? Are you just writing content to benefit your readers? If you just decided to cover a topic because it’s beneficial to your readers but can’t find a good affiliate program for it, by all means put in one or two Adsense blocks into your content. If you’re trying to sell an affiliate product, do away with Adsense or other stuff that may distract your visitors from clicking on your affiliates links as much as possible.
2. Use Adsense Deluxe – Adsense Deluxe allows you to place Google Adsense codes individually into your blog content area, and you can place different ad formats manually anywhere in the post. Of course this is more work that just hard coding the ads into your WP files, but it tends to get a better click-through especially if you place it near images, videos or other eye-catching items in your content.
3. Use good tracking systems- Use an affiliate tracker like WP Cash Links to manage your affiliate links from a central location. If you don’t do this early on, when your blog gets bigger it’s going to be such a hassle scanning your content to change or remove affiliate links. For tracking Google Adsense, you may want to use XXX
4. Plan your navigation areas – A lot of money can be made by just putting impression based ads on your navigation are, but not all type of ads are going to make you good money. Text Link Ads is a great way to make money by placing other people’s links on your blog’s sidebar etc. Either way, make sure you remove all impression-based or link-based monetization codes from within or around the content area and place them somewhere else, because these are not dependent on people actually clicking on something.
5. Review and make changes – The catch about post-level monetization is that you must review and improve on your performance constantly. From your tracking, you can see how each post or content in performing. If you’re getting a lot of clicks on an affiliate product (at least 100 to be accurate) but not making any sales, you may want to cut down on the number of links in that post and insert Adsense instead. If your Adsense CTR is low, maybe you could try a different format or add in some images and videos above or below the ads themselves to make them stand out more. A lot of these strategies are already covered in my ebook, WordPress Adsense System

However, not all bloggers like post-level monetization as it means you’ll need to spend at least some time deciding how you’re going to make money from your post. Bloggers who write a lot of content day in and day out sometimes just prefer to focus on writing, and there’s absolutely nothing with that.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you can’t write as regularly as other bloggers in your industry, you may as well figure out how to squeeze the most amount of money from every post you write.

Most bloggers use some kind of RSS subscription service like Feedburner to manage reader subscriptions. Using Feedburner allows a reader to subscribe directly using “feed readers” like Google Reader and Feedblitz, or users can also choose to receive blog updates via email.

Feedburner is great for:

• Providing an easy way to subscribe to / unsubscribe from your blog
• Providing basic reports on your web traffic demographics
• Providing extra RSS tools via “Feed Flares” that build interactivity and embeds several important functions of social bookmarking

However, Feedburner email subscriptions have several limitations:

• You can only email your blog’s content to users, exactly as it appears on your blog
• You cannot send other commercial email to your email list
• You cannot segregate / manage / transfer your email list

For my ProfitBlogger blog, I have been using Aweber’s “Blog Broadcast” feature from the very beginning. This is because I prefer to create an ezine format for my broadcast, where I group together several posts and also add in other related content from the forum and put in some links to my products.

I can also use custom HTML for my broadcasts, and here’s how a ProfitBlogger Ezine edition looks like:

You’ll notice that I can manage and divide my content in a more presentable way, while also adding some custom messages anywhere in the email itself.

Here’s some characteristics and advantages of using Aweber’s broadcast service:

• You have 100% control over your email list and you can send them any message / email you want independent of the content on your blog
• You can broadcast individual posts, or manually group several posts at a time.
• You can also choose to send out a summary of the posts, or just the headers and link to your blog for the complete content
• You can automate the broadcast, or you can send it out manually. Sending out manually gives you the opportunity to review the content and also add in other stuff like ads and promotional messages.
• You can choose to broadcast only certain categories in your blog, by using the category feeds
• You can archive your email broadcasts, and obtain an RSS feed for the archive, provided by Aweber themselves

The only issue here is that Feedburner is free, while you’ll need to pay $17.00 / month for Aweber. However, Aweber is a complete mailing list management tool, not just a blog syndication tool like Feedburner.

If you’re just writing and building a blog, and you want to monetize your blog with Google Adsense, Kontera or other ads, you should go with Feedburner as it’s more universally accepted as a reliable indicator of a blog’s reach and popularity. A lot of bloggers advertise the amount of RSS readers they have using Feedburner’s additional tools right at the top of their blog to attract advertisers.

If on the other hand you’re not blogging for advertising bucks, choose Aweber. For example, if you’re an author or trainer and your money is made when someone buys your products or attends your events, create an Aweber opt-in form like the on you see on the right hand column of this blog and offer something of value to encourage people to sign-up.

You can then insert autoresponder messages into Aweber to follow-up with your subscribers, while driving traffic to your blog at the same time. You won’t need to show off your opt-in list, because you’re not interested in advertisers or Google Adsense.

By using Aweber, you will receive much more flexibility in terms of sending out promotional messages and special offers for your products and events to your subscribers.

Sign-up for Aweber here