Making Money From Advertising
If you look at many websites, you will probably notice that there are banner advertisements displayed on most pages.If you are a newcomer to the scene, you might think that you must either be a company or that your site must be famous before you can get advertisers, just as it is the case in hardcopy publications. In reality, anyone with a website can get advertisers.
While it is true that if your site is well-known, you may get companies contacting you to offer to advertise on your site, you can get advertising proceeds even if you are just opening out and your site is relatively unknown. The way to do this is to join as an "affiliate" of various sites, either directly, or through an affiliate network. An affiliate network is simply an mediator where you can select from a variety of advertisers.
Payment Schemes:
Before joining any program, you should perhaps be aware of the different payment schemes available.
Pay per Impression:
Here, you are paid according to the number of times the advertiser's banner is displayed on your site. The amount you earn is typically calculated based on the number of thousand impressions of the banner (impressions = number of times the banner is displayed), often abbreviated CPM (cost per thousand, with the M creature the Latin numeral for thousand). That is, $5 CPM means that you get paid $5 for 1,000 displays of the banner. In general, the amount paid is usually small, but it is easy to earn since everytime a visitor loads the page, you earn. This is known as a "high conversion rate". Needless to say, this method will allow you to automatically earn more if your site attracts a lot of visitors.
Pay Per Click:
When you are paid per click, you are only paid when visitors click the advertiser's banner on your site. The amount paid is usually higher than the pay per impression scheme. Whether you get a high conversion rate here depends on the banner (whether it attracts people to click it), although in general, it has a higher adaptation rate than the pay per sale method. A high traffic site will probably enjoy a higher click rate than a lower traffic site, although you will probably get better results if your banners are carefully selected to suit the target audience of your site.
Pay per Sale or Lead:
While you will probably get the highest payment rates with this method, it has the lowest conversion rate of the three schemes. You will only earn if your visitors click through the banner and either purchase an item from the advertiser or take some other prescribed action (e.g., sign up for a service). Like the Pay per Click system, you get much better results if you vigilantly select your advertisers to suit the target audience of your site.
To join an affiliate network or program, simply go to the site and complete their online application form. Some programs will give you instant approval while others require a human to check out your submission before it is accepted. Once it is approved, you'll be given some HTML code which you can cut and paste into your web page. Note that some affiliate networks and programs will not accept you unless you have a domain name.
How To Choose An Affiliate Program?
How should you choose an affiliate program? if you are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience. Another point to consider is whether you really want to join every single affiliate program that comes your way. Some studies advise that sites that make the most money from affiliate programs are affiliates of only a small handful of programs. Furthermore, concentrating your advertisements from one network may allow you to be paid faster. If you advertise for hundreds of dissimilar affiliate networks on your site, you may wind up earning only (say) a few dollars per month from each network. If your advertiser's minimum payment amount is higher than what you can earn each month, it may take you a long time before you accrue sufficient to be paid.
On the other hand, that formula does not of necessity hold true for every site (or every page on your site, for that matter).
For example, if your site has a particular theme, and an affiliate network only supports one or two suitable advertisers, you might want to sign up for a few affiliate networks so as to get a greater number of relevant advertisers.
After all, advertisements that are relevant to your audience are more likely to be taken up than general advertisements. (What's the point of putting banners from only one affiliate if nobody is going to click them?)
