Earning an ongoing income stream from a website is important for webmasters and is the impetus to continue producing good quality content for their readers.
Over the past few years webmasters have exploited many methods to monetize a website to produce income such as through text ads, Google ads, affiliates etc.
Here are 5 different ways which you can earn an income from advertising on your site.
1. Text Ads
Text ads can either be pop up ads which you hover your mouse over to get presented with ads, or they can be in a visible section of text that’s placed on your website – like in the sidebar of below your posts. You will find that each time a visitor clicks on an ad in your site the webmaster earns a small commission ranging from a few cents to a few dollars.
Google Adsense is one of the most popular forms of text advertising that is widely used and depending on the market you are in, you can earn a modest amount of money from displaying adsense on your site.
Other text based advertising networks:
Google Adsense
Infolinks
Kontera
2. Promoting Affiliate Product – CPS
Affiliate products are one of the more popular choices that webmasters use on their sites.
Affiliates sign up to an affiliate network and have access to a wide range of products which they can promote on their own site.
Every time a consumer visits the publisher’s site through your link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission on that sale.
I have found from my own experience that monetizing a site with affiliate links will earn more money long term, but text ads (like Google adsense) will earn recurring income daily, although again this will vary.
Affiliate networks:
ClickBank
Commission Junction
PepperJam Network
ShareASale
3. Audio Ads
This is relatively new to the internet world, but I have found that advertisers are taking a new approach.
You will find that Audio ads that are placed on sites are designed to play every time the user opens the site. When this happens the website owner earns commission on the number of times the audio ad is played to its visitors.
Generally, I would not recommend that you use audio ads on your site. The commission is quite low compared to other revenue sources (sometimes 0.01cents!) and hearing a voice when you open a web page, can scare off visitors.
4. Cost Per Impression Ads
These are similar to audio ads in how the webmaster gets paid and are based on how many people the ad is displayed too. In a nutshell the more visitors you get to your site the more opportunity there is for you to earn money from your ads.
Be aware though there can be a downside because cost per impression ads can come in the form of pop-up ads which load every time a visitor opens a webpage and this can detract people from visiting your site.
5. Advertising/Selling Web space
If your web site is popular then you may get approached by other businesses or webmasters asking if they can buy an advertising spot on your site.
Depending on your page rank and current traffic that you are getting to your site you can approach them with a suitable price per month.
Again, if you have a more popular site with an active audience then more people will come to your site, and businesses will be more likely to want an advertising spot on your site.
Conclusion:
In my opinion you should choose the type of ads that would be the best fit or in other words based on what your site is about.
For example, if your site manages to get loads of traffic daily then obviously you have the ability to earn recurring income through cost per impression ads or even audio ads.
If you have a review site on the best online survey sites on the web you may want to make use of affiliate links to direct people to the survey sites you review – it’s up to you to make the choice on which form of monetization fits with your website.
