Blogging can be fun, but why not try and make some money since you spend all this time writing and blogging, right? I'll cover the following issues in this post which I learned while researching this topic.
There are many different advertisers that you can allow on your site, even in parallel. They differ in the relevance of the ads to your posts which is important because you usually get paid in clicks (CPM, clicks per million) not by the impressions of the ad. Usually AdSense displays very relevant ads.
However, Google pays only once you reach $100. Especially for beginners, this is an incentive to use an advertiser that pays earlier. Other may start paying at a lower limit, such as bidvertiser, which starts at $10, or adbrite, which offers an adjustable minimum. You can usually choose between payment by checks and paypal. AdSense also transfers money on bank accounts.
Adbrite rates your site by visits and unique visits. It offers the option of defining an alternative ad program, such as AdSense, which will be shown if a minimum ad price (in CPM) is not reached. AdBrite also allows selling space for text links by days, weeks, and months. Note that Adbrite's charges a 30% commission, so you should add 30% to your other ads CPM (multiply by roughly 1.42).
Both AdBrite and Bidvertiser offer a referral program, which means that you gain a little money if people sign up from a link at your site and once they start making money. I put the links below (if you consider signing up with them it would be nice, if you do from here).
Monetize your Website or Blog with BidVertiser
Another possibility for advertising is an affiliate program. The main difference is that you earn either from leads or from sales (EPC - earn per click). There are many networks you can join and choose ads by sales region and category. Google just started its Adsense Affiliate Network. Some affiliates provide product feeds, while others only provide static links which you have to customize manually.
I show one example for an affiliate program below. Abebooks lets you search books, first and second hand, among thousands of book stores. They pay 5% commission on sales generated from your referrals.
Very important to increase the click-rate is the placement of your ads. To know exactly the effectiveness of your ads at different locations, AdSense offers you so-called channels to look at the statistics. You can create channels together with ads on-line at AdSense. Google analytics offers observing AdSense statistics, so you can have everything in one place.
Note that, although ads with images may have more appeal, they can make your site load very slowly. As we all know, too many ads drive visitors away.
It is always good to be able share your knowledge and also to be able to generate income from it. Maybe I should have a look at each of them and plan for my own blog.
I personally think, beside choosing the best adv platform that suits your blog needs. It is also advisable for site owner to control how much adv that are running on their site at a time. Sometimes it is just very annoying to see a site full of adv than the content itself.
I am starting now to make a little money from my blog and it is certainly a nice feeling, although it is not much money (yet at least).
I fully agree with what you say about the amount of ads. To show too much ads can be very annoying to visitors. Also, the placement is important, showing them on top of the page, or within the article text is very annoying. Of course, the more they are integrated in the content, the more clicks you can hope to generate, but if the ads are too annoying your visitors just leave.
I have been experimenting with different advertisers since I wrote that post. I've seen that AdSense image ads sometimes contain irritating sounds (one had a sound like a fire alarm driving visitors away), so I am now very careful with AdSense image ads (thankfully with AdSense you have the option of text-only). AdBrite showed images of weight-loss programs (or others which are not related to my page content). Some of these ads were very badly designed.
In my opinion, ads should contribute to the user experience. If you don't want ads such as "you are visitor number 2,000,000" or weight loss, you can choose text ads, or button ads (125x125 pixels like on Entrecard, or small buttons of 64x64px). These buttons are often well-designed and advertisers pay to have them on a site which is related to their products. These buttons usually give a flat rate, which means they pay per time period, not per clicks. How much they pay depends on your unique visitors and page views. Possibilities to get such button ads are project wonderful, entrecard, or buysellads.
I am currently experimenting with technoratimedia, which you can see on the right. They are also nice to see, although not very related to my content. They pay by clicks.
Nice post. I only use adsense and bidvertiser now. Is technoratimedia revenue better than adbrite & bidvertiser?
Thank you
@DoFollow Blog: Good question. I just looked at my technoratimedia earnings for this month. I earned around 12 cents per click, which I think is worse than Bidvertiser and Adsense.
On the other hand, with technoratimedia, I can be sure the ads integrate well with my page and don't drive away visitors. The advertisers with technoratimedia are usually other blogs.
Further, I think, the click-through-rate (or say clicks-per-impression) varies a lot over networks. AdSense ads may be sometimes well-targeted, but sometimes they are off the mark and with BidVertiser you can get just anything. As for TechnoratiMedia, the mix of text and images possibly gives the ads a higher click-through rate than other networks.
Now that my alexa ranking is improving a lot (used by technoratimedia as one of the principal indicators shown to advertisers), I am hoping to sell ads by week with technoratimedia with better revenue. Let's wait and see. I'll post about my results later if I see they are interesting to more people.
You are correct too many ads will drive visitors away.I found out a simply way to help keep your visitor returning.Chitika offers your Non-Search traffic the option in your control panel to Collapse into nothing.
This seems to help your regular visitors have a nice clean ad free experience
I agree that chitika ads are un-obtrusive to your returning visitors. They are also nicely designed and targetted to the search keywords.
I don't use chitika at the moment because I found them to show up for all visitors, instead of only search engine referrals. I suppose there was some bug in the script, possibly they've already fixed it.
The problem with chitika and my blog is that Chitika mostly offers product ads. Their ads go well with blogs that do product reviews or technical news (about technical gadgets for example). I am skeptical that it creates a high CPM on sites that are not product-focused. On this site their ads seemed rather at odds sometimes. To cite an extreme example, I have articles about the latex layout engine (a software), where many people enter from google, and the ads are about fetish clothing.
I am more happy with ads that are thematically related about other blogs or websites.
Wonderful post... Very informational and educational as usual!
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