Click here for the first post in this series
Placing ads on your website is something that most bloggers think about at one time or another. I know that there are plenty of people that feel that monetizing your blog "ruins" it.....that one should blog purely for the love of blogging. While I do love writing and the emails I get from people who tell me how much my site has helped them, I also like the fact that I am able to make a little spending money as well!
With that in mind, how do you get started placing ads on your site?
When people first think about putting up ads, the first service that usually comes to mind is Google Adsense. Most blogs (and many "regular sites") use Adsense....it must be the way to go, right? The truth is that unless you have oodles of traffic and the kind of content that can get you the really GOOD ads, Google Adsense can be an excruciatingly slow way to make money. The minimum payout is $100 and I know bloggers who have been at it for six months to a year and still haven't seen a check! But, it's somewhere to start and it is fairly easy to get accepted in to the program.
Ok - so then what do I do?
Another source of advertising revenue is to become an affiliate, and the best way to do that is through a network. A network is simply a bunch of different advertisers under one umbrella account. In most cases, you sign up with the network, and then apply to the individual advertisers.
Why would you want to do this? Because most companies that offer independent affiliate programs still have a minimum payout and signing up through a network allows you to reach that minimum payout much quicker (for example: if you signed up to be an affiliate for Macy's, it might be over a year before you reach the minimum payout. But if you sign up with a network and then with Macy's, Bloomingdales, Williams-Sonoma, etc through that network, your commissions for all will be combined to help you reach the minimum payout.) Applying to a network is fairly simple, although some are harder to get in to than others. Some networks to try are ShareASale, Commission Junction, LinkShare and Logical Media.
(FYI: the next post in this series will be: How to Use Affiliate Advertising To Your Benefit Without Being an Obnoxious Hawker of Crap and Making Your Readers Leave You In Droves....although the actual title will likely be shorter and slightly more eloquent)
Which brings us to (in my opinion) the Holy Grail of Advertisers....Cost Per Impression ads. Simply put, these are ads for which you get paid even if your readers never click on a single thing. Advertisers pay you just for the opportunity/possibility that one of your readers might click on the ad. Because they are based solely on your traffic, you need to have some traffic in order to get approved. I am assuming that if you are reading this post, you aren't at the point of 2000+ per day page views so for now, I would suggest BlogHerAds as they are the easiest of the CPI's for which you can be approved. BlogHerAds is currently closed to new applications, but if you sign up for their list, they will email you when they reopen applications (although it doesn't hurt to keep checking the site. I kept the site bookmarked and checked it every few days and found out that they had reopened and immediately applied 4 days before they finally sent me the email)
While very few will get rich from their blog, it can be a way to make a few extra dollars. Adding ads to your site is the first step. Make sure to tune in for the next installment of this series (see two paragraphs up for more info)....just gotta figure out a shorter title than the one I mentioned!
