If you have a popular website, you have probably thought about using paid advertising on your site.
Out of all the ways to monetize your website, paid advertising is one of the easiest options, since you just need to paste the code or however it is set up and you are able to start making money.
However, you often need a high amount of traffic to make a good amount of money.
Paid advertising can be a great way to make extra money as you grow your site, but if you do not know much about it, this article will help guide you through some of the basics so you can make the right choice in a network and avoid some common pitfalls.
What Are Paid Ads?
Paid ads are what bloggers put on their site in order to make ad revenue money. It can be a good way for bloggers to make extra money.
If you have been on almost any popular website, you have probably seen ads on the site. They are almost on every major website out there, which is why it is also a popular option for website owners to start to monetize their work.
You will make differing amounts of money based on your niche as well. Some niche websites make more than others, which is something you might specifically look for in an ad network.
When Should You Use Paid Ads On Your Blog
Generally, you will only want to put ads on your blog when you have enough website traffic to make money from your ads.
Otherwise, you will have a ton of ads all over your blog but you will not have enough readers so it just clogs up your website.
Of course, you can put ads on your site at any time, but that is just a general recommendation from a lot of bloggers out there.
Keep in mind, most paid advertising does not make as much money as other ways you can monetize your site, unless you are getting a heavy amount of traffic. Paid ads can be the icing on the cake to an entire website monetization strategy, but you should not depend on it to make you rich.
How You Make Money From Ad Networks
There are a few ways that different ad networks frame their pricing.
CPM – Cost Per Mille
This payment form is based on how many impression your ads get on your site. These companies simply want to get in front of potential customers and are willing to pay for it.
Websites that typically have high traffic choose this option due to the sheer number of people on their website who could see an ad.
CPA – Cost Per Acquisition
This is when advertisers only pay for how many people sign up for their offer. These often pay the best, but you need to have top-notch copywriting skills in order to convince your readers to sign up for this offer.
CPC – Cost Per Click
This is one of the most common forms you will see along with CPM payment offers. With this option, you get paid every time someone clicks on an ad.
Fixed-Rate
When you have a fixed-rate agreement with an ad network, you are simply paid for having ads, no matter if they perform well or are clicked.
Paid Advertising — Different Ad Network Options
When you want to put paid advertising on your site, you will almost always go through ad networks. These networks provide advertisers and ads for your sites and then pay you based on the traffic on your site and the amount of people who saw the ads.
Google Adsense
Google Adsense is by far one of the most well-known paid advertising networks. One perk of working with them is that you can customize some of the ads to make them work better with your website.
Google Adsense mainly uses CPC and CPM models to pay website owners. Since it is so well-known, it is also trusted when it comes to actually keeping track of the data and paying you accordingly.
Keep in mind, Google is obviously a huge company and you will rarely get the personal touch that some other advertising networks can offer you. They also have a minimum of $100 account balance before they will pay you, but as long as you hit that, they keep to a regular schedule.
Ezoic
Ezoic gives website owners a 10% media share, unless you need a premium account, which lets you upgrade some of your options.
They have a ton of options, too, such as analytics, the ability to turn your written content into videos, and more.
Ezoic uses a version of CPM, which measures the traffic to your site by the 1,000’s.
At the time of publishing this article, Ezoic no longer has pageview limits on signups. They used to have a 10,000 visitor website traffic monthly minimum, but that is no longer the case.
Mediavine
Mediavine is one of the bigger and harder-to-access ad networks out there, because they have high requirements to access their network.
One of the requirements is that your site needs to have 50,000 website visitors in the past 30 days. For some sites just beginning, that might sound a lot. However, what is why they are one of the premium networks out there.
You also need to do things like write long-form content regularly instead of short-form content.
Things To Know And What To Avoid
Now, it sounds like a dream come true to just put ads on your website and rake in the big bucks, but there are a few things you need to know so you do not run into any problems.
Know how the ad network measures results
If you are signing up with an advertising network based on some of the above terminology (CPC, CPM, and so on), you will want to dive into how they measure and check for results.
Know their payment terms
Some advertising networks, like Google Adsense, will only pay you after a certain financial threshold. For example, Google Adsense only pays you after you hit $100 in your balance.
At the same time, not all of them have a minimum, and instead just pay based on a certain payment schedule. You will want to make sure you know and understand the terms before you are waiting a long time for your money.
Figure out what types of ad displays they have
If you have been on the internet for any length of time, you have probably come across some websites that use ugly advertisements.
The last thing you want is to have a beautiful, elegant website with flashing, annoying ads all over the place to distract people from your content and overall work.
Learn who they use as advertisers
The last thing you will want to look into is to make sure that they use advertisers who are safe. You do not want sexual, graphic, or gambling ads all over your site, which can quickly turn away readers.
What To Do Next
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