6 Easy Ways to Monetize Your Blog or Website

Once you have a site up that is regularly updated and gets a steady amount of traffic, you should start thinking about monetizing. The list below provides ways to monetize that won't take up a lot of your time, so you can focus on building your site with good content and growing your traffic. These are the most basic (and arguably the least profitable) methods, but they are effective interim monetizing strategies.

As with most strategies regarding money, diversification is key. Try a combination of these methods to maximize earning potential (without making your site too ad heavy). Play around with your layout, if it's flexible, to give different ads more or less exposure (don't let them overshadow your content). Test a variety of networks. Make sure you are being paid accurately and in a timely manner.

Monitor your performance and if you are not happy with the service or results, try another company.

1. PPC Ads (Pay Per Click)

Google Adsense is the most popular and widely used option. They serve contextual ads (image or text) based on your content, and pay when someone clicks on the ad. How much you make on Adsense depends on several things. First, advertisers bid on keywords, so if you happen to write about a topic that has high paying keywords, then each click will be worth a lot more than another topic with low valued keywords (keywords that has really low bids). Also, people who came to your site from search engines are more likely to click on these ads than people who are repeat visitors. It makes sense then to spread out your Adsense ads to provide easy access for search visitors.

2. CPM Ads (Cost Per Thousand)

Unlike CPC ads, CPM ads pay per impression. Viewers don't need to do anything for you to be paid. You just need to serve the ad to them. The downside is that you're paid almost nothing for each impression. Rates can go as low as $0.10 per thousand impressions. But it's still a good option to use in conjunction with CPC ads. CPM ads can be placed in less prominent spaces (below the fold) whereas CPC ads should have better position. Most ad networks that offer CPM ads have CPC ads thrown in as well. You can set your own prices and remove unappealing ads.

3. CPA / Affiliate Ads (Cost Per Action)

CPA ads pay per action. Viewers don't just need to click on them, but they actually have to do something, either sign up/register or make a purchase. Not surprisingly, they are the highest paying ads. However, how likely your visitors will click on the ad and perform the desired action will depend very much on how relevant the ad is to your content. For example, a site about digital photography may do very well showing digital camera CPA ads. Some sites are much better suited for CPA ads. Consider whether any CPA ads would add value to your visitors.

4. Text Links

Text links work the same way as the above. You set aside a space on your page and text links will start showing up when they are purchased. You need to submit specific pages into the inventory, so enter your most popular pages (homepage, category pages, and very popular articles). Rates are based on your PR, which has to do with how many other sites link to your page. If you often get linked and mentioned, text links may be profitable for your site.

5. In-text Advertising

In-text ads don't require any additional real estate, which is attractive to many site owners. Ads are attached to text in your content, showing up as underlined or double underlined words that are clickable. Some will pop up a little advertisement when the word is moused over. Many viewers, however, find these ads distracting.

6. RSS Feed Ads

Offering a feed of your content is essential. More and more readers are using feeds to catch up with their favorite sites, and not offering one will alienate a lot of readers who would be interested in your content. There is yet to be a lot of advertising options within feeds, but for now you can still monetize the traffic to your feed.

AdSense Optimization Tips (from google)

Google recently held a webinar for AdSense publishers. They gave out some adsense optimization tips that they have gathered over the past few years. The transcript is pretty lengthy, so here's the summary:

• Ad Location - "the middle, above the fold location perform best." Also "if you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is actually pretty successful"
• Ad Formats - "the top three formats are the 336x280 that you see on the page; the 300x250 medium rectangle; and then the 160x600 wide skyscraper." Additionally "the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user."
• Ad Colors - Pick colors that blend well with the site. Matches the background color, and compliments the site. Make them feel like a part of the site. They give an example where a customer went from blended background to yellow, and clicks dropped 65%
• Ad Blindness - if the colors stick out too much, readers may immediatly identify them as ads and not even look at them. Also frequent readers may stop reading ads so you could alternate positioning and colors to get their attention. "The more you blend in with the site, the less chance that ad blindness will occur."
• Experiment - this was a big theme in the webinar echoed by all experts. Use channels to test different colors, positioning, and formats to find out what works best. They show that you can more than double your revenue just by finding the right color, position, format combo.
• Image Ads - If you want to maximize revenue they recommend turning them on. I personally disable them in my account, because I find them too distracting/annoying to the user. Yes you may increase your CPC, but you will probably decrease impressions over time.
• Link Units - Don't take up much space, and also "allows the user to refine what they're interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they'll be able to specify that they're interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear." I also bet google remembers what they click on and then tries to generate better ads for the page... just my speculation.
• AdSense For Search - You can use this for your site search, and you get a percentage of ad clicks.
• Focus on Content - Duh!
• Don't click on your own ads - One of the callers asked the question "I was just noticing that someone asked about clicking on their own ads and it says you're not supposed to. And I don't remember reading that. And I occasionally do click on the ads... So is that detrimental in some way?" - I can't believe they said that to google. Google's response was: "Yes, that's sort of chief among the terms and conditions".
• Impression Counter - Google confirmed that Page Impressions are counted when a public service ad (or alternate ad url or color) is displayed.
• Your site is unique - all these things may not matter, the best location, format, and color is different for every site. So again, go experiment.

Haven't signed up for AdSense Yet?

Google Adsense Tips Part-5

This article is the fifth of a 6-part series in 100 Google AdSense Tips.
Here is the full series:81. Watch your statistics and pay attention to articles that bring in visitors.

82. Write more articles within the subject that attract visitors.

83. Web-savvy visitors are less inclined to click on ads.

84. Have patience. You need time to build the traffic, and to optimize it.

85. Think long-term. Analise what your visitors need, provide value and good experience to visitors.

86. Consider buying websites. If you do it right, you can get back your investment in a relatively short time.

87. Watch your AdSense earning. Notify AdSense Team if you find anything suspicious. Your competitors might try to sabotage your account, or your well-meaning friend keep on clicking on the ads thinking they are helping you.

88. Use Google AdSense section targeting to help AdSense deliver more relevant ads.

89. Use AdSense Alternate Ads in case if AdSense can’t find any relevant ads.

90. Use rotating color ads. It keeps your visitors from getting AdSense blind.

91. Try other contextual advertising networks too. Yahoo Publisher Network is still in beta and only available in U.S., or you can try Clicksor, Bidvertising, etc. Just make sure you don’t put the on the same page with the AdSense.

92. You can put your clickbank, amazon, or other affiliate links on the same page with AdSense. You can also put other advertising network, so long as it is not contextual ads. Try Chitika, and disable the contextual ads option.

93. If you don’t follow the Terms and Conditions, your AdSense account will be disabled and you’ll get banned for life.

94. If you didn’t do anything wrong and your AdSense account is disabled: write them a polite and professional email, be patient and be persistent. Offer them your server logs to prove your innocence.

95. Spread the links to your website: put it on your email signature, put comment on blogs, participate in your niche forums.

96. Promote your articles in social bookmarking sites: del.icio.us, digg, reddit are good start.

97. Provide ?Email a Friend? option to visitors.

98. Familiarize yourself with AdSense earning report. It can help you determine where your money is from, and optimize accordingly.

99. Offer newsletters for visitors. It give you chance to get the visitors back regularly.


100.On AdSense support page, you can find almost every information you need about AdSense.

Do's and Dont's Part-4

This article is the fourth of a 6-part series in 100 Google AdSense Tips.
Here is the full series:
61. If you blog, Darren has some tips for you.

62. Inside AdSense is official AdSense blog, where you can find latest developments about AdSense.

63. You can get help of other AdSense pulishers at AdSense Help Group.

64. If you are serious about making money from AdSense, get Joel’s AdSense Secrets.

65. Don’t put too many ad blocks on your site. Find out the highest CTR block and remove the others. Few clicks on the 1$ ads are better than many clicks on the 3-cent-ads.

66. Experiment, experiment, and experiment. You can never stop trying for new ad format. Even if you think you can’t improve anymore, one slight change might increase your earning significantly.

67. Remove the “Advertise on this site” from your AdSense block until your site is big enough to attract real advertisers. This will help to clear off many MFA (made-for-adsense) sites. You can disable it from AdSense account setting.

68. Use AdSense Preview Tool to test the ads that will appear on your site. You can click on ads in the AdSense preview tool, as the advertisers are not charged from it.

69. AdSense uses geo-location to deliver advertisement. So, what you see on your site might not be what your visitors see. Use AdSense Preview Tool to view your AdSense advertisement displayed for visitors from other places.

70. Use AdSense Competitive Ads Filter to remove scrapper sites ads. Scrapper sites are sites without real content. They are either link farms, content theft, or meta search engine.

71. Use AdSense Competitive Ads Filter to remove irrelevant ads.

72. AdsBlackList.com have good list of URLs to block. Try it.

73. Try variations of AdSense colors, format, position on different pages to make it more unpredictable for your visitors.

74. Learn some CSS.

75. If you are putting multiple ads block on your website: put most clicked block to appear first in the HTML. Higher position in HTML = higher paying ads. You can do this using CSS.

76. Try to put contents on different subject topics. If it can draw visitors, write more on that topic.

77. If you have dynamic pages, use htaccess rewrite rule to make it appear as static, e.g. http://www.hundredtips.com/100-google-adsense-tips.html instead of http://www.hundredtips.com/?p=6.

78. Validate your site HTML and CSS.

79. Break your long articles to few short articles; this way the users are exposed to the ads for more times.

80. Keep each article focused on one topic.

Adsense Tips Do's N Dont's Part-2

This article is the third of a 6-part series in 100 Google AdSense Tips.
Here is the full series:
41. CTR isn’t everything. If your CTR is high but gives low conversion rate for the advertiser site, it will trigger AdSense smart pricing.

42. Follow good design guidelines. Avoid the common design mistakes.

43. Help your visitors by creating easy navigation. You want your visitors to stay for as long as possible.

44. Use Google Analytics to see your website statistics. It can help you optimize your site.

45. Google AdSense Heatmap works. Just above your main content is the best position to put your AdSense block.

46. Forum sites have different Forum AdSense Heatmap. Best positions for AdSense for forums are: on the left panel, after the first post, and just below the last post before the footer.

47. Forum is interactive medium. Be sensitive to your visitors concerns.

48. Try 300×250 medium rectangle, 336×280 large rectangle, or 160×600 wide skyscraper ad formats. These are the best performing AdSense ad formats.

49. Choose colors that blend with your content.

50. Wrap the AdSense block around your content.

51. Put images next to or above your AdSense block can help improve your clicks-rate. Edit: take note, however, to make it clear that the images are not part of the ads. If not sure, consult AdSense support before doing this.

52. Use channels to track the performance of different format, colors, and positions.

53. Opt in for both image ads and text ads. Google will choose better performing ads for you.

54. AdSense have both CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click) ads, and will choose the one it thinks can perform better.

55. Both image ads and text ads can be either CPM or CPC.

56. Put link unit ads. They can add to the bottom line.

57. Try Google Search unit. They provide value to your visitor while adding to your bottom line.

58. Put in lots of efforts in creating contents and promoting your website. AdSense is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

59. Clear low-value links from your site. You want your visitors to exit through the ads. Put only links that are really useful for the visitors.

60. Search “AdSense Tips” on Google. Most webmasters continuously try to optimize their AdSense and many are more than willing to share their result.

Full series Do's & Dont's Part-2

This article is the second of a 6-part series in 100 Google AdSense Tips.
Here is the full series:
21. Consider signing-up for AdWords and create a mini campaign. It can help you to understand the working of AdSense.

22. Put your targeted-keyword on Page Title.23. Repeat the keywords in your content.24. Learn HTML.

25. Put emphasis around your keywords by using HTML tags like.

26. Get domain name that contains your targeted keyword.

27. Submit your website to directories for inclusion, e.g. dmoz.org, yahoo directories

28. Submit your URL to search engines for crawling.

29. Create and submit your sitemaps to Google Sitemap (sitemap.xml) and Yahoo (urllist.txt)

30. Google is not the only search engine. Optimize for different engines as well. You are very likely to face less competition than in Google.

31. Invest for original fresh content. Write or pay for contents regularly.

32. Use copyscape.com to find content theft. You invest for your content. Don’t let it be taken by unscrupulous webmasters.

33. Article marketing is one of the best way to deliver traffic to your site. Write and submit articles to article-submission sites. Include short summary and hyperlinks to your website in the author information box.

34. Don’t use objectionable methods to draw visitors to your site; buying traffics, spyware, hidden-texts, page cloaking etc will get your AdSense account terminated.

35. New visitors have higher chance to click on the ads than regular visitors, thus higher CTR (click-through rate).

36. Regular visitors have higher chance to recommend your site to others.

37. Search engines are where most of your new visitors come from. Learn a bit about Search Engine Optimization, or pay people to do it. Doing it yourself will save yourself from troubles created by not-so-honorable SEO (Search Engine Optimizer).

38. Don’t create mirrors. These are sites with different URLs but same contents. It hurts search engine ranking.

39. Its easier to create many websites with low earning than few websites with high earning.

40. Forum generally have high impressions count, but very low CTR.

Adsense Tips Full series Do's and Dont's Part-1

Webmasters everywhere can participate in Google AdSense programme where Google will serve advertisements on the webmasters’ sites in exchange for some payment. If you are a webmaster and have not put AdSense, consider to do so.
This article is the first of a 6-part series in 100 Google AdSense Tips.
Here is the full series:

1. AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor.

2. Impression count is basically referring to your traffic. It means the number of times AdSense block is displayed.

3. Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.

4. Cost-per-click (CPC) is the earning you get per click. While traditionally it refers to the amount advertisers pay for each click, it can also mean the amount publishers get for each click.

5. Smart-pricing is AdSense method to determine how valuable clicks from your site is worth. If clicks on your site doesn’t provide good value to advertisers, e.g. from visitors’ geo-location that seldom translate to sales, you will only get a fraction of the supposed CPC.

6. Apply for AdSense account via blogger.com for faster approval.

7. Once you get your AdSense publisher code, you can put it any of your websites without requiring further approval.

8. Read and reread Google AdSense Program Policies and Terms and Conditions.

9. Don’t click on your own ads, or ask people to click, even if you are using proxies.

10. Don’t use click-bots.

11. Don’t encourage your visitors to click on ads. The only acceptable text is “Sponsored Links” and “Advertisements”.

12. Don’t put competitor contextual ads on the same page as your AdSense, for example: Yahoo Publisher Network, Clicksor. Non-contextual ads are ok.

13. Don’t put your ads on objectionable material, e.g. adult sites, gambling sites, mp3, etc.

14. Basically, don’t cheat AdSense. Google will catch you, sooner or later.

15. Viewing your on website will not get you banned. Just make sure you don’t click on the ads.

16. However, repeatedly reload your page to jack up page impressions can get you banned.

17. When in doubt don’t hesitate to contact the AdSense team. They are very helpful.

18. Choose a high paying niche without too much competition.

19. You can try highest paying keywords from cwire.org, but know before-hand that you’ll face very fierce competitions.

20. Use Overture Bid Tool and Search Engine Keyword Tool to find suitable keyword.

Top 15 AdSense tips

AdSense Tip #1: Find your keywords

Before serving ads on a web page, check its keyword density. A free and advanced tool for finding the most prominent keywords in a page can be found here: SEO Density Analyzer. Copy the most important keywords to a text file ([web page name]-adsense-keywords.txt).

AdSense Tip #2: Improve your keywords

Get keyword suggestions from Overture Search Inventory and from Google AdWords Sandbox. Get new keywords that can help you improve your ad relevance. Enter the keywords from [web page name]-adsense-keywords.txt and save the suggestions to [web page name]-adsense-suggestions.txt.

AdSense Tip #3: Keep your website focused on a theme

Use the keyword suggestions to enhance your web pages and to build theme-based content. And also try to get your keywords into the anchor text of your incoming links as much as possible. Don't forget that Google AdSense is keyword-targeted advertising: Google AdSense bases its advert topics on your websites content, this means that content-rich websites of a popular topic should attract a large amount of ads.

AdSense Tip #4: Write a new page every day

One of the best tips is to add a new page to your web site every day. The more content you have, the more visitors you will get. Put an Adsense unit on each and every content page of your site. But where? You will find more about that from the next AdSense tips.

AdSense Tip #5: Choose the right AdSense format

Wider formats are successful because the ads are compact, easy to read and are complementary to the content. The top three AdSense formats are:

1. 336x280 large rectangle
2. 300x250 medium rectangle
3. 160x600 wide skyscraper

Another successful format is the 468x15 horizontal ad links, that can be placed under your navigation bar.

AdSense Tip #6: Color tips

When creating your Google AdSense ads it is recommended to use the color scheme and style of your website so that the ads blend in well. Ads without background color and borders perfom better than ads within borders with background color.

Create a custom AdSense palette:

• border color = background color of your web site
• background color = background color of your web site
• link color = blue, color of your links
• url color = black, #999999
• text color = black, #333333, color of your main content

You can also rotate your color palette: select multiple color palettes that blend with your site to create variety.

AdSense Tip #7: Position tips

Visitors tend to look at the big headlines to see if your page is worth reading. If you get them interested, they will read the text and look for your navigation links.

Place the AdSense ads in a prominent place around the top/left part of your page or under your headlines, where your visitors are most likely to look at.

If you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is a good place for AdSense ads because your visitors read the text and then they want more resources.

AdSense Tip #8: Increase the number of ads, but not too much

If you have a lot of text on a page, use multiple AdSense units. You can use up to three AdSense units on a page, two AdSense search boxes and one unit of ad links.

Link units allow the user to refine what they're interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they'll be able to specify that they're interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear.

AdSense for Search allows visitors to search Google.com or your sites (up to 3 domains). You earn money whenever they click on the ads that come up on the search results. If you click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox in the AdSense for Search settings, you won't lose your visitors.

AdSense Tip #9: Preview Google ads

You can find out what ads will be served by Google AdSense if you install Google AdSense Preview Tool, a very simple tool available only for Internet Explorer 6.0. Click to advertiser sites without generating invalid clicks, and easily add their URLs to your URL filter list. Because AdSense uses geo-targeting, Google serves different ads for other countries. Instead of faking your IP or travelling abroad to test your ads, use this AdSense tool to see what ads see your visitors from France, Germany or other countries.

There may be no Google AdSense ads available for your webpage, so Googlw will display Public Service Ads. You can hide them using alternate colors or images. Make sure you include the image in a simple html file as a link (use target="_top"). The image size should be the same as the dimension of AdSense units. In the alternate url box, enter the absolute url of the html file.

Read more about alternate ads.

AdSense Tip #10: What not to do

• Don't click on your own ads
• Don't ask others to click on your Google ads
• Don't manually change AdSense code
• Don't place Google ads on sites that include prohibited content (e.g.: adult sites)
• Don't employ cloaking, hidden text or farm links
• Don't use AdSense ads on the same page with similar ads (e.g.: Yahoo Publisher Network)

AdSense Tip #11: Show images above or next to your ads

Placing images above AdSense ads is not necessarily prohibited by program policies. However, depending on the method of implementation this could be considered encouraging users to click on ads. So you should include a border line between the ads and the images. Don't show specific products in your images, in order not to mislead the visitors. Just use generic images that will increase the visibility of your ads.

AdSense Tip #12: Use section targeting

Use section targeting to emphasize some content in your page. On your site, place this code where you want to emphasize.

Content you want to emphasize.


If you want some content to be ignored, use

AdSense Tip #13: Alternate the colors of your ads

AdSense allows you to have up to 4 color variations for each variable for which you can specify color. You should do that if you put AdSense ads on pages that receive many impressions from the same visitors (for example forums) to reduce ad blindness. For example:

google_color_border = ["628098","628098","000000","000000"];
google_color_link = ["000000","BBB90C","BBB90C","628098"];
google_color_url = ["000000","628098","000000","000000"];
google_color_text = ["628098","628098","000000","000000"];

AdSense Tip #14: Your Google ads should be visible

Make sure your text ads are visible to the surfers in all screen formats. If you put the ads in a table, give sufficient breathing room, i.e. proper cell padding and cell spacing to make the ads stand out from the rest of your content.

AdSense Tip #15: Use AdSense channels

You can categorize the content of your website into channels and then track your performance. This way you can experiment with different types of ads and see which is performing the best. Instead of buying an AdSense tracker, you can enter the most important pages in your site and see how they are doing. Create up to 200 channels for AdSense.

What is Google Adsense?

Google AdSense is a pay-per-click (PPC) program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.

AdSense delivers relevant ads that are targeted to the content people find on your site.

In many advertising networks and websites, including AdSense, the advertiser is charged for advertising their ad only when a user clicks on their ad. How much they pay (for that click) is called their Cost Per Click or CPC.

Here you will find some simple and effective AdSense tips that will increase your revenue. If you haven't already joined AdSense program, you should sign up first.

Now it's time to show you some tips and tricks that will optimize your AdSense ads.