CPM (cost per thousand views). This is the traditional way television, radio, magazine, and newspaper advertising is sold. A few higher value sites can sell ads this way on the Internet, but it's not easy. CPC (cost per click) or PPC (pay per click). In this pay-for-performance model, the advertiser pays only if a potential customer cares enough about the ad to click on it. By far the largest amount of Internet advertising is sold via this model. CPA (cost per action) is either pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale. Affiliate marketing (which we'll explore in another article in this series) runs on this model. Now let's look at the 8 steps to ad revenue generation.
Unless your website is related to an industry that is commercially viable, the chances are you won't be able to make much money on advertising. Simply speaking, advertisers will only pay you for advertising if it helps them make money.
I have a friend who is a true expert on English grammar. He has developed a whole website around correct grammatical usage. It's even getting some traffic. Consider who such a site might attract:
English teachers Non-native speakers trying to learn correct English Students who have an assignment to complete for class Are these people likely to spend money on this topic? Not likely. A dictionary publisher might want to advertise here, but since the book sells for $25 or less and there isn't hot competition for dictionaries these days, publishers won't pay much for advertising. If you had online English classes, you might want to advertise. But still, these ads wouldn't sell for much.
Should my grammatical friend expect much advertising revenue? No.
I have another friend who has a nursing website that has attracted interest from pharmaceuticals. Since the drug industry is very competitive and sells some high priced products, this kind of website has the potential to make good money, if developed properly.
Not only do you need a commercial field, you must also provide high quality content:
You won't get much attention if people don't learn from your website. If they learn, they're more likely to return. The Google Panda algorithm update tends to give lower rankings to sites with poor content, measured by such things as bounce rate, the presence of obtrusive ads, and evidence of "scraping" or duplication of something on another site. Internet users are getting more sophisticated and won't settle for mediocre content. They'll leave quickly if they don't find what they're looking for. Assuming that you've got step 1 under control, now move to optimize your content around high-priced keywords. You can use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to find out what keywords get the highest bids in your niche.
You optimize your content in two primary ways.
Keyword focus. Select the two or three dozen highest priced keywords in your industry or niche. Then write content about these topics. Keyword placement. Put high-priced keywords (wherever appropriate) in your: Title tags Subheadings Alt tags for graphics Filenames for graphics and webpages In hypertext linked words and phrases. In the first and last paragraphs It's not enough to have great content. You'll want to focus your efforts on the most profitable topics, and then make sure your content is indexed correctly by the search engines for these profitable keywords.
Perhaps this goes without saying, but unless you have lots and lots of traffic to your website, you won't make much money selling advertising. How do you get traffic? This is a complex topic, but mainly three ways:
Search Rankings. Get highly ranked on the search engines for your keywords. In part, you achieve this by step 2.... Links. Get links and recommendations to your website from other sites, blogs, social media, directories, etc. Ads. Pay for advertising to get people to your site -- so they'll see the advertising there. You can learn more about how to do this by reading deeply at the Web Marketing Today website.
If you were to try to sell advertising directly, one of the first questions their media buyers will ask you is: What is your monthly number of unique visitors or pageviews? Unless you have healthy numbers, they won't pursue you. Get the traffic and you may begin to attract interested advertisers.
If you're pursuing an advertising revenue strategy for your site, you will have done a lot of looking at competition websites to see what makes them good -- and to determine how you can be even better.
Type and Size of Advertising. Is most of the advertizing in your industry Google text ads or display ads (that is, graphic ads)? If display ads are popular, what size appears most often?
As of February 28, 2011, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) lists seven standard ad units (dimensions in pixels are in parentheses):
Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) Rectangle (180 x 150) Leaderboard (728 x 90) Skyscraper (160 x 600) Half Page Ad (300 x 600) Button 2 (120 x 60) Microbar (88 x 31) One size that's shown as "delisted" is the Full Banner (468 x 60). You'll still see this widely on the Internet, but not on sites that are seeking to sell to advertisers that pay well. Sometimes you'll see other sizes, but for designing your own page, stick to the most popular sizes in your niche or industry.
Source of Advertising. Now look deeper to determine the source of advertising. Most third-party ads have two URLs.
Intermediate URL of the ad server. The adserver is the company that displays the ad as well as counting and collecting information on the click-through, then redirects the user's web browser to the... Destination URL on the landing page of the advertiser's website, where the Internet user is supposed to end up. If you can figure out what the adserver company is, you can learn something about the advertising type. The intermediate URL can sometimes be seen by putting your cursor over the ad (without clicking) and looking for a URL at the bottom left of your web browser frame. However, some types of ad technologies don't disclose the intermediate URL -- and it's hard to see in the URL in the bar at the top of your browser, since it redirects so fast. Another approach is to right-click to "view source."
What you're looking for is the name of the adserving company (not the brand of the ad serving software). For example, DoubleClick (now owned by Google) is often used to display higher-priced ads on better sites. Ad networks, on the other hand, display lower-priced ads. You'll see some of the names of ad networks in step 7 below. The detective work you do here may pay off in useful intelligence to help you develop your own strategy.
Now that you've gotten an idea of how companies tend to advertise in your niche or industry, you need to design your webpage template to accommodate the most popular ad sizes. Be careful not to so overload your webpage template so it looks cluttered. Don't be greedy. A few ads designed to fit nicely on your webpage will achieve a professional appearance without looking overdone. And only the most prominent ads will get many click-throughs anyway.
Typically, a site offering advertising will display a leaderboard (728x90) across the top, with another ad size along the right side of the page. Google AdSense ads can be placed anywhere on the page. But too often they tend to clutter the site and make it more difficult for readers to get to the information they desire. Be wise and experiment.
Now consider three types of advertising on your site. You may even end up mixing these types.
Google is the biggest advertising company on the Internet. Their AdWords ads that appear on search results generate a huge amount of revenue for the company. But you can put Google AdSense ads on your own website. To learn more, see https://www.google.com/adsense/
The advantage of AdSense ads is that Google tries hard to display only ads that are relevant to the keywords on your webpage. Also, they have millions of advertisers, many of whom are finding good results advertising on sites like yours. You don't have to find the advertisers. Google does it for you. And Google seems to pay publisher sites like yours about half of the revenue it receives from the advertisers. This can be an ideal solution for many small business sites. Since the ads are targeted according to your content, they command a higher bid price than untargeted ads.
Also experiment with display ads (image ads) through Google AdSense.
A second kind of advertising source are networks beyond Google. There are two main types of networks: ad networks and affiliate networks.
Ad networks. These are companies that you contract with to display their clients' ads on your website. They may pay you on a CPM basis (perhaps 50 cents to several dollars per thousand ad displays -- or less), or they may pay on a Cost Per Click basis. Search on "ad networks" and you'll find lists of these. Some of the better known include ValueClick, AdBrite, Burst Media, Casale Media, Kontera, Chitka, Tribal Fusion, and Bidvertiser. Some ad networks are focused primarily on one sector; others offer ads across many industries.
The problem I've seen is that ads aren't usually closely targeted to your content, but only to your general industry. Consequently, the click-through rate tends to be lower and your revenue is lower. If your website isn't highly targeted on a high priced commercial niche, however, an ad network may be your best source of ads.
Affiliate networks. We'll consider affiliate marketing in another article in this series. However, affiliate networks fit here, since they offer display ads from many advertisers. The major difference from ad networks is that, while ad networks usually pay on a CPM or CPC basis, affiliate networks tend to pay primarily on a CPA (cost per action) basis, when a purchase or lead results from the click. Search on "affiliate networks" to see lists of these. Some larger affiliate networks to explore are: CJ (Commission Junction), ClickBooth, ClickBank, Shareasale, and Linkshare. You can typically choose the ad and ad sizes you want to display on your site as well as the advertisers you think will provide the best revenue for you. However, the individual advertiser may want to approve your site before allowing you to place its ads on your site.
If you're finding good success in earning advertising revenue on your site, you might consider employing an agency to act as a sales representative to seek advertisers for your site. Sales reps are advertising professionals who are able to work out CPM deals directly with prime advertisers' media buyers -- deals that you wouldn't be able to land yourself, since experienced sales reps have inside industry knowledge and an extensive network of contacts. If you have a relatively lucrative advertising potential, this may the best way to get the most money for your ads.
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