Like most bloggers trying to pay the bills; as far as hosting and other related costs that are a part of trying to be a professional blogger, is something that we have to always find ways that will monetize the writing bug that has taken us full tilt. It doesn’t help that like many out there I’m not part of the A-List so my avenues of producing a revenue stream from advertising is pretty slim – meaning Google AdSense is about the only real method available.

However hell will probably freeze over before many of us see any acutal money from those AdSense blocks in our sidebars. This is especially true if we try to take our readers into consideration and not plaster the ads all over the page and as well it is true if we are just fresh into the fray and still in the readership building phase.

This leaves us to try and find other alternatives; with many  looking to the rapidly burgeoning field of text link ad networks. I had gone down this route as well for awhile but got fed up having to fill out form after form or being told I’d have to cough up a buck for the approval process – not bloody likely buddy.

So I’ve taken the last couple of days an spent some time thinking about this; especually in light of the fact that I made more money from my Lunarpages (my hosting company) affiliate program than I have from Google in 3 months and that was just from one click to purchase. 

One thing that I have always believed in is to support companies in anyway I can; which has usually been with the written word or word of mouth, so I have decided to change the advertising tactics used both on the blog and in the forums. Over the next week or so I will be going through my list of must have software and especially those with excellent service. Of those I will see which ones have affliate services that I can join and add to my inhouse rotation list of ads.

This way I get to support those companies who in my; or forum members, opinion are worth your dollars and in the process I earn a few bucks towards keeping WinExtra up and running. I have already started with the first affiliate ad for Sunbelt Software’s Kerio Firewall; which in my opinion is one of the best firewalls out there and you can’t beat the price of $19.95.

Hopefully going this route will provide a more targetted advertising to things covered by this blog and in our forums rather than the disjointed text ads served up by Google AdSense thereby helping you out more.

Also if you work for a software company that has an affiliate program for software that would be of interest to my readers; both the blog and the forums, you can email me at support @ winextra . com