Light Within

Blogging is no more a new phenomenon in Pakistan. Many Pakistani online users are writing their own and rest are reading others' blogs and interacting in meaningful ways. Their voice is being heard in the blogsphere. Getting paid for blogging is still a new idea in Pakistan though.


There are reasons for this. Ironically, corporate Pakistan is yet not aware of blogs as economical, effective and interactive marketing tool. Like anywhere else, blogs can be a welcome mat for local businesses to reach out across the world but this has not started happening yet. Which is why Pakistan blogsphere can be characterized by only anti-establishment, noncommercial write-ups and rants, mostly. Exceptions aside, Pakistan blogs are mainly personal where bloggers post purely because of their own interests.

One wonder why local businesses have failed to notice the growing readership and influence of these Internet postings and the buzz corporate blogging can create particularly as a process of Search Engine Marketing or targeting online segment of consumers. But this is not about how Pakistani businesses can harness the power of blogs to reach out. This is about the options available to Pakistan bloggers to get paid for their work online.

Payments by most online advertising programs and affiliates are made through Paypal - widely used online money transfer service. Sadly, Paypal is not available in Pakistan so far. This alone puts Pakistan bloggers at a great disadvantage because without Paypal account they cannot join most of the programs.

That said, Pakistan bloggers are exceptionally good (and I am not being ethnocentric here). They have acumen for corporate writing. Their language and blogging skills and networking capabilities can be compared with any bloggers' community in the world. Internet coverage and users ' base is constantly growing. Even trend to shop online is taking off. Given chance, all this can indirectly help in efforts to make making through blogging.

Despite the odds, some of the savvy Pakistan bloggers are already using different methods to make money from blogs; Google AdSense advertising program being the first choice. Google pays through check and is liberal in taking small blogs in their program. Only recently, Google has started paying in Pakistan through Western Union and now bloggers here don't have to wait for 40 long days to get their checks cleared through normal banking channels or pay them $ 12 for every transaction.

Google's AdSense program, which started in 2003, pays Web publishers including bloggers based on how many times advertisements on their sites receive clicks. Google places the ads on participating Web sites using contextual word matching, in an attempt to ensure that the advertisements relate to the content on the page. Users' friendly AdSense also offers the opportunity to monetize site searches while providing a powerful and fast search engine for blogs sites. Google places relevant ads along with search results pages. Clicks on these ads also earn the site owner revenue. Earnings are not big mainly because there are not many local ads in Google's AdWord inventory. "Things are changing," says Badar Khushnud, Google country representative, "as Pakistan businesses have started using AdWord program."

AdBrite and Bidvertiser - both click based advertising programs that make payments through checks - closely follow AdSense.

Bloggers can also make money through "affiliate networks," which, in contrast to Google's automated system, allow blog writers to choose which advertisements to put on their pages. They also can be paid based on how often ads on their sites lead to sales rather than how often the ads receive clicks. I have experience with Text Link Ads (they pay through check) and it is fun working with them. They sell space off my blogs and I have control over what appears on my multiple blogs.

Then, businesses and organizations from all over the world offer to pay bloggers for mentioning them, their products and or services in blogs in order to create an online buzz, get more traffic and better page rank. Many online services like Pay Per Post, Sponsored Review, Loud Launch - paypal required - and Reviewme to name just a few, have come up. These services manage growing demands by advertisers and arrange supply through interested bloggers. Few months ago, I had signed up for Reviewme because they also pay through check. Reviewme offers products or services for review. I write about whatever I like and they pay me fifty percent of what they charge the advertisers. This arrangement works fine for me.

I have tried with merchandising through my blogs as well. Attempt to sell my own books (and the one I had translated) was a good experience. While I did not have a lot of success with merchandising - I am sure other bloggers can see this as an opportunity to make some money from blogs by selling products. That is not all. Bloggers can sell branded products whatever way their entrepreneurial heart desires using CafePress by creating and adding online store's link to blogs and CafePress will do the rest. There are so many more ways to earn money by blogging for those who are interested in earning using blogs. Driven by demand, more advertising programs, affiliates and sponsors and others are coming up every day. Bloggers can experiment with different programs that suit them and can create diverse stream of earnings.

A word of caution; earning through blogging does require persistent postings of quality contents and blog promotion. Best is to keep blogging for joy and monetize blogs on the side; keeping money making expectations realistic. It is a long and slow process. Only "17 percent of most popular bloggers in NYC earn more than thousand dollars a month. That leaves a whooping 83 percent earning less," revealed a NYC Blogger Summit Survey earlier this year. But again these figures are relative.