In this five-part series on best ways to monetize your blog we’re going to jump into some rather specific examples and details to help you better profit from all that hard work you pour into your online blogs. Some of these ideas might be foreign to you but don’t let that stop you from researching them more extensively as this handy little series is only meant as an introduction and not an ‘all-in-one’ complete training guide. With that said, lets jump right into it!
Cpc Ads
Cost Per Click Ads, otherwise known as the majority of ads you’ll find on the internet to date will be our starting place. Just about every blog or webpage which monetizes itself with advertising tends to use this form of ad in one form or another. All the major networks such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and etc provide cpc ads as their primary source of revenue, this means you stand a pretty good chance of having plenty of ads to serve up on your websites.
These types of ads are often used with a self-serving style interface meaning you have a dashboard and are in control of your advertising bids and budget, as well as the actual ads themselves. You don’t work with an admin or anything like that, you’re pretty much on your own in most cases. This can be very handy for advertisers themselves (you’ll be acting as a publisher in this example however) for these type of networks often offer cheaper inventory in the way of what advertisers will pay per click for their ads. What this means for people like us who are putting these ads on our blogs is that we’ll get a larger volume of ads to serve up so the chances of inventory running out is much slimmer. Some networks will actually run out of ads to serve within certain niches despite your budget so sticking with larger networks (at least as a backup) is never a bad idea.
If you’re interested to look into a few of these networks for yourself to perhaps apply and start serving up ads on your own sites then you’re just a quick Google Search away. Something you must keep in mind however is that each of these networks have their own set of terms and each look for different things (granted, mostly the same) in terms of what your website should look like, or more importantly what it should not look like. You will need a working site with content and everything already in place so be sure to handle that before you start applying.
Cpm Ads
Cost Per Thousand Impressions, that’s what “cpm” represents. I know, it doesn’t make sense but let’s not think about it too hard and just roll with it. These types of ads may serve you better than cpc style ads in some cases. Take for example on pages which get a ton of traffic but minimal engagement with those ads, cpm just might come to the rescue.
You’re going to find this type of advertising is used more often for branding purposes or to simply make the target demographic aware of something, not necessarily counting on clicks but on views. For this purpose cpm ads are usually much less expensive to the advertiser which means you as the publisher will also see a decrease in revenue from showing these ads. This might put some off to the cause, but keep in mind that every ad-type has its distinct purpose and if you can find a proper way to serve these ads up they could wind up making you a fair bit of revenue in the long run.
The network keeps track of how many times your page has served ads on a given length of time and you will be paid out accordingly. For every 1,000 views of ads you’ll earn a specific amount base on the terms agreed upon when you signed up as a publisher and in many cases this amount will change based on the nich you are showing ads for… some pay much higher (or lower) than others.
Criteo
This one is a bit different than the rest, it’s a specific network and here is their website:
In the world of onlilne advertising there is a concept called “backfill ads” which simply means a backup network which serves ads to your webpages once your top choice has run out of ads to serve you for the day or they perhaps just don’t have a large inventory for your chosen niche. The difference here is that Criteo can be thought of as the opposite, a sort of “front-fill” network which specializes in serving ads to individual visitors as opposed to a broad demographic visiting your page.
It’s due to this fact that you can count on the inventory of Criteo to be smaller than your typical ad network, however, they are far more specialized and tend to convert at higher rates thanks to the idea of retargeted advertising. Criteo is basically a retargeting specialist and they use your webpages (along with the rest of their network) to serve ads up to customers who have already visited the websites of a specific advertiser. That is why you will see higher payout rates with Criteo compared to other networks.
Direct Advertising
These are ads which are sold and maintained by the website owner or administrator. It’s pretty straightforward and the great part about it is that you can set your own terms (provided they are fair to the advertiser of course) and if you are getting a fair amount of traffic per month then this might be more than enough to generate a full time income.
If you’re not interested in managing this type of thing for yourself you could always use a service such as https://www.buysellads.com
Just be sure that you review their terms of service and ensure that your website lines up with their expectations as they do have some in place. To be competitive with the other sites on BuySellAds your site will need to get a pretty hefty amount of traffic each month so keep that in mind also. It’s all laid out for you on their site so check it out.
Sponsored Content
If you’ve ever watched a YouTube video and seen a content creator mention the Dollar Shave Club or some makeup brand, maybe they’re promoting some other product… that’s them working with sponsored content.
It’s something which has been around for a very long time and was made popular by television and radio advertising. It also applies to things like newspapers, magazines and of course websites. This can be done one of two ways, either the sponsor makes their own content and you publish that based on the agreed upon terms, or you create the content and run it past the sponsor for approval and eventually publication to the website.
There are a number of details to keep in mind with this form of advertising, the most important to note is how temporary it is. This type of advertising usually requires a fairly popular website, it usually needs to already be established and getting a lot of traffic. On top of that, you’ll probably want to constantly be reaching out to various product & service owners to strike up ad deals and of course leave yourself open to being contacted by these companies, usually in the form of email. This takes work but it can lead to some fairly large bumps in revenue if you work out a lucrative deal with a sponsor.
Until Next Time…
This concludes the first part in the series, be sure to check back in a week for the follow-up. We will be back with more best ways to monetize your blog. In the meantime you can check out our affiliate marketing courses over at the main Powerhouse Affiliate website. We teach you how to take advantage of blogging for profit in great detail as well as handing you an extensive list of ad platforms on a silver plate!
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