Whether you've just created a new website or blog, or you've had one for many years, many webmasters get to a point when they would like to at least generate enough revenue from their website to pay for the web hosting and domain costs. This is a perfectly reasonable goal, and with just a little work, anyone can achieve it. In fact, with a bit more work, website owners and bloggers are able to accumulate a decent income from the ad revenue generated on their website.
Types of Website Advertising
There are a few general forms of advertisements that you have to choose from when you want to find ways to add ads to a website. These include:
- Google Adsense and other PPC Programs
- Affiliate Network Programs
- Individual Affiliate Programs
- Selling Ad Space Directly to a Company
The type of advertisement that you choose depends mostly upon what your current traffic levels are, as well as the content of your website. Advertisers are often also interested in the revenue-generating potential of the content itself, as well as how tightly integrated into the targeted market the site or blog owner is. In other words, an industry expert will have far more success selling blog ad space than an amateur will.
How to Install Ads to Your Website
Once you've determined your basic website size and you want to install the ads on your site, in most cases signing up with advertising networks only takes a few minutes. Once you sign up, you have access to html code that you can paste anywhere on your site, which will embed the ad banner or box and display the advertising content.
Google Adsense and Other Pay Per Click Advertising
One of the most popular advertising networks in the online advertising industry is Google Adsense. This sort of service is called "pay per click" advertising, because advertisers pay Google for every "clickthrough" lead that they get when someone clicks on an ad that's displayed on your page. Google then pays revenue to the website publisher (you) for those clicks. The nice thing about such PPC programs is that you can simply choose the ad format (size of the ad), paste it into your site, and the network does all of the work to display ads that are appropriate to your content. Other than Google, other popular PPC programs that are available include:
- AdBrite Advertisement Service
- Bidvertiser Marketplace
- AdToll Publishers
- ValueClick Integrated Online Marketing
- ExoClick Publishers
Pay per click advertising's success comes from the theory that a certain percentage of your visitors will click on your ads. Since this percentage is so low, using PPC advertising when your site is very new will not be very successful. Save this approach for when your site is at least average in size.
Affiliate Network Programs
Affiliate marketing is a slightly different approach to website advertising. Instead of selling any click-throughs that may come from your website, you are actually selling specific products or services to your website visitors. You can earn a significant commission from every sale that comes from your website. Typically affiliate links will be in the form of text based or graphical links that are more embedded into the content than PPC ads will be. However, the HTML code that you'll copy and paste into your website is almost identical to the advertising code for PPC ads. The top Affiliate network programs include the following.
This form of advertising is perfect for new, as well as established sites, because just a few sales can generate a fair amount of income.
Individual Affiliates
Another option, especially for designers who are just starting a new website or blog project, is to focus on one or two specific companies that offer affiliate programs. By focusing on companies that sell products related to your content niche, you'll be able to sell their products without actually coming across as a salesman. For example, Amazon's affiliate program lets you earn commission from selling any Amazon product. Many major companies offer affiliate programs, just search the web for the company name and the phrase "affiliate program."
Selling Ad Space
Finally, once you've become a large and well-established presence within your particular niche, you will have the traffic and value to approach individual companies about advertising on your site. This is called "direct ad sales." Ad space on highly popular websites is becoming more and more valuable. So, if you have a popular website or blog and your readers are part of a company's core consumer demographics, then you become a very valuable advertising venue for that company. To determine the value of ads on your site, try using various link price calculators with your website link. Typical monthly ad rates range from $10 to more than $100 a month.
Final Words
Adding ads to your website is only the first step in establishing financial benefits from your website or blog. The next step, and also the most important step, is to grow your visitor stream by producing constantly updated, valuable content that people enjoy, and a website community that people like to visit. Once you've established a good visitor stream, you'll discover that the ad revenue tends to follow.