Your website is ready and traffic has increased as well. Once you have a a steady amount of traffic, you can start thinking about monetizing your website. There are many revenue generating programs available and you just need to place a simple code in your website, and you can focus on building your site with good content and growing your traffic. We will review various revenue generating programs available and their pros & cons in this blog.
PPC (Pay Per Click) ads
Pay Per Clicks ads are the most preferred and popular type of ad programs. You will receive a certain amount of money for every advertisement that is clicked on. One of the most popular PPC program is Google Adsense. They serve contextual ads (image or text) based on your content, and you will get paid when someone clicks on the advertisement displayed in your website. Since Google Adsense serves contextual ads, the ads shown will be relevant to the content in your website. It is more likely for the visitor to click on the advertisement since it is related to your content. Google Adsense relies on its advertisor program called Google Adwords to server the ads. 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). The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. CPC, on the other hand, depends on the niche of the website.
CPM ads (Cost Per Thousand)
Unlike CPC ads, CPM ads pay per impression. Visitors don’t need to do anything for you to be paid. You just need to serve the ads to them by displaying them in your website. The downside is that you are paid almost nothing for each impression. Rates can go as low as $0.10 per thousand impressions. But it is still a good option to use in conjunction with CPC based ads or as an alternative. Most ad networks that offer CPM ads have CPC ads thrown in as well. You can even set your own prices.
CPA ads (Cost Per Action)
CPA ads pay per action. You will not get paid when visitors view or click your ads. They actually have to do something, either sign up/register or make a purchase. Not surprisingly, they are the highest paying ads. So it is important that you show relevant ads in your website 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.
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.
Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button. The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.
Here are our picks for some of the best CPC/CPM/Text based revenue generator programs:
Google AdSense
Yahoo! Publisher Network
AdForce
AdHearUs
AdKnowledge
AdSonar
Affiliate Sensor
All Clicks
AllFeeds
BannerBoxes
BClick
BidClix
Bidvertiser
CBprosense
Clicksor
ExpoActive
IndustryBrains
Mirago
Miva
Nixxie
One Monkey
Oxado
TargetPoint
Textads Dot Biz
TextWise
Text Link Ads
Vibrant Media
WebAdvertising.ca
AdBright
HyperBidder