Monetizing Your Blog: Part 1 – Advertisements
When many people start a blog, one of their hopes for the future is that it eventually makes money. While you can certainly start a blog solely for personal reasons, earning a little money at the same time wouldn’t be so bad. There are several ways that a person can go about earning money from a blog, and each one offers its own advantages and disadvantages. In Part 1 of this series, we will look at the thing most people think about when they think of earning money through a blog – advertisements.
How Do Advertisements Work?
If you’ve surfed the web for more than a couple of seconds, you’ve likely come across an advertisement. A lot of websites use advertising to bring in money, from small blogs up to large news organizations. Sometimes the ad is a simple banner on the side of the webpage, other times it is a popup that you need to close in order to access the content, or it could be a short video message that you need to watch before your video loads. Ads are everywhere, but how do website owners make money from them?
It works like this – after installing the ad onto your website, the number of people who see it – or click it – begins being tracked. Then, the company that is being advertised pays the website owner for each view, or each click, depending on the agreement. As an example, let’s say a company agrees to pay you $0.01 for every view that they ad gets. After tracking the ad for a month, the ad received 1,000 views. As a result, the company now pays you $10.00. Companies will sometimes prefer to pay for each click their ad receives – known as PPC – and these rates will typically be better than for the ad being viewed, since a click is less likely.
Some companies prefer to pay you a flat fee to advertise on your website, but more often than not, the above model is followed in some form. The method chosen will largely depend on how you are getting your advertisers, the traffic you are receiving to your website, and how you will be displaying the ads.
How To Get Advertisers
There are a few ways to find advertisers for your website. The first method is to contact companies directly. Let’s say you have a blank space in the sidebar of your website, and you want to fill it with an ad. Since your website is all about how to repair cars, you decide that an ad for a car parts company would not be out of place. You then contact several large auto parts manufacturers, show them the considerable amount of traffic your website is receiving, and begin to work out a deal. There’s are a lot of ways to go about finding advertisers, and this guide from Daily Blog Tips sheds some more light on it if you’re interested.
The second method is by working with an ad network. Ad networks are essentially a middle-man between the companies that want to advertise, and the websites looking to bring in revenue. In most cases, the ad network will give you a snippet of HTML code you can paste into your site, and from there it will randomly display an ad from one of its clients. The website owner is then paid a variable rate, based on the clients being shown and how much traffic the website receives. Martech Today has a nice guide about how ad networks work, so check it out if you want to learn more. The Ad Pushup blog has also compiled a list of the top ad networks here. If you choose to go with an ad network, it is recommended that you look into each before making your decision, to see what kind of control you will have over the companies that advertise on your website, how much you’ll be earning, how easy it is to set up, and customer support available.
When You Should Use Advertising
Placing ads on your website comes with a few advantages. First, the income is essentially passive. Once you have placed the ad on your website, you don’t have to do anything else. The revenue will continue to trickle in a little bit at a time, leaving you free to focus on other matters. While you’ll need to monitor your traffic, and adjust ad prices accordingly, this method requires less maintenance compared to others.
Second, in terms of methods to bring in revenue, advertising is one of the easiest. Especially if you work with an ad partner, setting up an ad on your website doesn’t take long at all, and only requires a bit of HTML knowledge to get going.
Lastly, you should use advertising if you believe the ads will contribute to the user’s experience -or at least not harm it. No one likes visiting a website that is covered in ads, especially when these ads are not relative. If you can find a company related to your niche to advertise on your website, this can actually be of benefit to both you and your visitors.
When You Shouldn’t Use Advertising
Of course, placing ads on your website is not right for everyone. There are several instances when ads don’t make sense, and you should look for another way to bring in revenue. One example of this is a company website. If you started up a website for your at-home business, displaying ads on it is not really appropriate. Since the purpose of your website is to sell a product or service, that needs to be the main source of revenue. Sending visitors to another website will make it hard to achieve that goal.
Advertising is also not typically the most lucrative method. Most professional bloggers learned that rather than advertising another product, there is more money to be made from selling your own. Writing ebooks, publishing guides, or creating another product, and then selling it to a curated email list, is typically a better alternative to advertising.
Lastly, when you rely on other businesses as your source of income – in this case, the companies who are placing ads on your site – you could find yourself without an income if they decide to stop marketing with you. While advertising can provide a nice source of income, it shouldn’t be your only source, as it is not entirely in your control.
How To Use Ads Effectively
If you’ve decided to go through with placing ads on your website or blog, there are a few things to keep in mind. Placing ads all over a website will harm the overall appearance, annoy your visitors, and be less effective. No more than 1 or 2 ads on any given page is a good general rule, and placed in a way that doesn’t distract your readers. The sidebar is a great place for ads, or as a small block inside your article.
Remember that when placing ads they should not take precedent over content quality. A website littered with ads, and offers a low quality product, will lose viewership, and as a result, revenue from ads will drop. Google offers some additional advice on how to best display your ads.
Monetizing Your Blog Made Easy
Advertising is one of the easier methods for monetizing a website. Once you find a source for your ads – either through an ad network or by working with a company directly – it is simply a matter of placing the ads in a discreet spot on your website, and then letting them run. Little maintenance is required to keep the ads running, and over time the money will slowly trickle in as long as your website is getting views.
Hopefully this guide was able to introduce you to the basics of web advertising. If you have any additional questions, please leave a message in the comment section below.