| 28 December 2009
So you came here trying to figure out how to make money with your website or blog? Yeah, it can be done. Is it easy? No. Not really. In fact, most people don't even have a portion of the stamina it takes to create a website that can continually bring in enough viewers to generate revenue. However, if you're ambitious enough, it can be done.
What you need:
-Your own website
--This cannot be something like a live journal or basic blogger account. You need to make sure you have the permissions required to place advertisements on your website.
-Your website statistics (for most ad companies, but places like GoogleAdsense and Text Link Ads will gather these for you)
--Important note: Most websites require you to have a decent viewership of at least 100-200 unique users a day. Save yourself the trouble and place minimal ads on your website until you can get a decent following. Applying is a pain, and best saved until you're positive you will get accepted.
-A paypal account or the ability to receive checks or money orders.
There are different ways of making money with your blog. Most people go the easiest and most efficient way, though, and that is by selling advertising space on their website. Just think about it: There are billions of ads on the internet, much like on radio and television. While often annoying, these are helpful. They generate traffic and revinue for people, as well as offer a service to a customer. While you might not like the idea of placing advertisements on your website, there are ways to do it without looking like an enormous, money-grubbing tool bag.
How do you do this? Simply put, you find an ad hosting agency, and you provide them with basic information about your website, and they review it. If they think they could make money off of advertising with your website, they give you a special code to paste into your website and you get money. How do they figure out how much to pay you? Well, it boils down to one of two ways:
CPM, or cost per thousand advertising (M is 1,000 in Roman Numerals, don't question it.). This means that you get paid every time an advertisement loads 1,000 times. This is great, because essentially you're making money just for having your website load on other peoples computers! The downside? Its a pretty small amount of money. But if you have a lot of viewers, it can add up fast!
PPC, or pay per click. Every time that someone clicks on your advertisement, you'll be paid a set amount of money that is determined by an ad agency and the advertiser. This usually makes more money, but only if people click on your advertisements.
Most of the time, you won't be able to tell if a specific ad is a CPM or a PPC ad. Normally, you'll run both. However, with most ad agencies, you can choose to run CPM only if you'd like.
Warnings: Using a page refresher (such as ReloadEvery), clicking your own links, or having your friends click all of your links will get you banned from an ad agency, and if you try to exploit them enough, can actually result in legal action being taken. Basically, the system isn't easy to exploit, you can't cheat people out of their money. So don't try it!
So, if you want to make the leap into advertising, who and what should you choose? Well, if you're trying to keep your website professional, I'd say try to stick with text-only advertisements, if any. These generally do not look bad, and can frequently be customized to match the color of your layout. They also are straight-forward to manage, which is a plus.
If you're going to go with image-based advertisements, be careful! A lot of image-based advertisements are very unprofessional. Everyone loathes seeing those scam-ads about getting whiter teeth or losing belly fat. If you have to, use smaller banners or box logos. These are about as effective as anything else, but are far annoying than large banners placed on your page. Ad placement is important as well. While you don't want them to be hidden from sight where people will not click on them, it is important to remember that you are trying to create a website with high re-visibility, rather than a website loaded with advertisements around every bend. Text-based ads are fine near written content, as they do not distract the viewer from your personal content. Banner ads look good placed on the sides, top, or bottom of your website. Try your hardest to resist the urge to put image based advertisements in the middle of your content. This looks terribly flashy and can often lead to people losing interest as it breaks the natural flow when reading a page of text. If you are using a column layout, group advertisements on either side of your content, sparingly. This creates a nice frame where people can view your content and notice advertisements, but not so much as to overload them.
An important note: Always, always, ALWAYS avoid popup, pop unders, redirects (advertisements that take you to another website before letting you view content on your page) or shadow box advertisements. These always look very unprofessional and can make people avoid your website. I know that I personally avoid all websites that are loaded with popups and similar advertisements unless it's 100% vital that I find information on that page. And guess what: It most certainly is not 100% vital to visit most websites.
A few great companies to pick from are Kontera, who I currently use, and GoogleAdense who I've used in the past. Both are text-based ad services that use keyword matching to display fairly relevant ads based on the content of your articles. GoogleAdsense is a bit more precise, but Kontera ads are less blatantly noticeable. Both companies are quick about updating their information on their websites, paying well (and on time), and are very good at allowing you to customize what the links look like.
Are there other types of advertising? Of course there are! Another great agency is Project Wonderful, a small agency who caters mostly to crafters, artists, webcomics, and bloggers. Basically, what happens is Project Wonderful places empty ad boxes on your website, and when a user of Project Wonderful visits your website or stumbles upon it on Project Wonderful, they can place a bid in to have their advertisement appear there. It normally starts at $0.01 per day. After all your ad boxes are filled up, people can bid higher (starting at $0.02 and working its way up.) to knock someone off and replace their ad for however many days they wish to bid. Its kinda like the eBay of internet advertising! I highly recommend them, but I will warn you: They're a bit slow to start.
Another type of advertising is affiliate advertising. Basically, you link to a website from yours, such as ThinkGeek or BestBuy, and if someone buys a product while under your affiliate link, you receive 10% affiliate bonus (so if they buy a $100 item, you make $10.) This is the slowest method of advertising, because on a personal blog or website, it's rare that people are going to directly purchase things from just seeing an advertisement.
So there you have it. Key facts to remember from this informational wall of text:
-Use ads sparingly, and try to incorporate them into your layout.
--If using text based ads, try to incorperate them into the color scheme of your website.
--Place these above or below your content (if possible) rather than front-and-center, where they come off as terribly tacky.
--If using banner ads, place them above, beside, or below, rather than in the middle of your personal content. This looks much more professional.
--If using banner ads, smaller is better! Don't use large, flashy advertisements. Opt for small banners and buttons instead.
-Be careful of what ads you are showing to your viewers. This is important! Relevant ads are more likely to be clicked, while scam-ads are likely to label you as someone who doesn't care about the content they provide.
