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.