How to Make Money from Your Website Using Advertising

You have managed to get your website to that magical point where you have established popularity, traffic, loyalty and a community of fans. Your site contains a wealth of information, resources and services that you provide free because that's just the kind of person you are. You may not have intended to make money from your site but now that you have an audience you realise that it's possible, or perhaps you have to start thinking about generating income because your costs to manage the site have increased and it's starting to hurt.

You have been diligent over the years to build up your community and wonder how to go about making some revenue by leveraging this audience (as the marketers would say, you want to monetise your site). Maybe you have some big dreams and plan to one day generate advertising income from your new web project. This is a very common plan for online business given people tend to expect information and services to be free. Advertising may be one of the only revenue generation strategies available to you.

How much traffic do I have to have to make money?

In my experience once you have about 500-1000 unique visitors per day to your site *at least* before you can start to make real money. You can make chimps change from day one from your 50 hits, but this article is targeted at those that have a larger audience, or perhaps are constructing a business plan (either real or in your head) and would like to know how to go about monetising your website. If you get more then 1000 unique visitors a day chances are you already make money from your site (if not you should be!) but my points are still relevant.

As per usual I will illustrate my article using real world examples from what I did to make money. Over about five years I managed a hobby site that started off as a very local site focusing on people in my area that played the game Magic: The Gathering. I wrote reports and did news coverage for the game. Later I expanded the site to Australia and eventually opened it to the world although it remained mostly Australian with a good chunk of Asians and New Zealanders.

Banner programs

At around the time I was getting 500 unique visitors a day I decided to start playing with advertising methods. This was before the advent of Google Adsense (more on this later) but there were many banner programs available that paid either on cost per click (CPC) or per impression basis. An impression is a banner being displayed to a user once, a click is someone clicking the banner and visiting the site being advertised.

These networks act as a middle man between business that want to advertise and people like me that have an audience and want to make some money by displaying banners. Unfortunately these programs display banners that often don't match your audience. I tried a few but it was a short lived experiment that made me a few dollars if that.

I recommend you avoid any banner programs. If you are confused about what I am talking about regarding banner programs do a search for Burst Media to get a grasp of how they work. For small sites they just don't make much money. For large sites there are much better ways to make money. There are people out there that make good money from these programs (I'm sure the program owners do!) but in my experience a little effort to find the right type of advertising can yield much better results.

I decided the best way to make money was to really leverage the demographics of my audience. I had a fairly focused niche, card game playing young males. I started by emailing all the local and international card game shops and asked if they were interested in exposure to my market. Instantly I had responses but I had to come up with a pricing structure first.

How much should you charge?

By this time my site was getting close to 1000 unique visitors per day, with about 300,000 impressions per month. I had done my research and I knew that advertising on websites was usually via the standard 468×60 banner so I would start with that. I also knew that many companies charged by what is called CPM or cost per 1000 impressions. Back then this was by far the most commonly used scale for pricing of web advertising and you could expect to earn anywhere from $0.10 to $10.00 CPM. I never liked this method of advertising because it didn't guarantee any visitors. Charging by click-throughs is a far better method, but didn't become mainstream until later. I decided that in order to keep my advertisers I had to offer value so I went for a blanket approach. I started charging a flat rate of $30 per month to have a banner on my site which offered as many impressions that my traffic could provide. I signed up my first few advertisers at this rate.

Banner management software

In order to "rotate" different banners across my site I needed some special software that would dynamically place banners. This allowed me to have more than one advertiser banner in a single location so I could optimise my adspace and make sure my audience didn't get too bored from seeing the same banner over and over again.

Let me save you some time, phpAdsNew is the best banner management software out there. It's under an open source license and has all the features you could ever wish for at a price you can't beat, it's free. If you don't believe me and absolutely have to try searching elsewhere try searching the PHP Resource Index.

There is a learning curve with phpAdsNew and you do have to install it on your own server. If you are like me and you do things like this yourself most of the time you shouldn't have too much trouble. Otherwise you might try contacting your favourite ITGeek and get them to give you a hand.

Statistics are important

The best feature with phpAdsNew is that it allows you to provide a unique user login for your advertisers to check their banner statistics in real time. This means at any point in time they can learn how many impressions and clicks there banners are receiving from your site.

Before you start searching for advertisers you should be very familiar with the statistics of your site. Do you know how many unique visitors you get? How many hits you get? How many impressions? Do you even know what the differences are between these? Try this stats terminology primer on for size if you don't.

Most web servers come with a statistics package. Ask your web host if you don't know. The most common are Awstats and Webalizer which often are preinstalled on many hosting packages. Become familiar with these packages so you can accurately assess your site traffic.

Increasing ad revenue

I now had the foundations laid and was serving the ads of my first few advertisers. From the point onwards I went to work attracting more advertisers by directly emailing North American online card stores and other related sites. I kept an Excel file to track which websites I had emailed and their responses so I could follow up in a timely manner.

I created new banner positions and started initiatives like a newsletter to generate more revenue. I created monthly packages that combined newsletter advertising and different banner positions and offered them at $500 per quarter. I increased the top prime banner position fee to $50 and started offering a tower banner position for $50 as well. Eventually I had to limit the number of banners I could take in the prime positions to avoid dilution. I had a guarantee in place that offered at least 30,000 impressions per month (averaging 40,000-60,000) to advertisers so that they always received a good equivalent CPM rate. I even had some advertisers purchase the rights to "own" a position for a certain period to make sure no other advertisers banners would be displayed.

Eventually I reached a point where I was averaging $500 per month and peaked at $1000 in one month. Some advertisers came and went quickly but many stayed loyal and in fact still advertise today though I sold the site a long time ago. The niche for the site was so focused that it became the pre-eminent site for Australia in it's marketplace and consequently some Australian advertisers simply stuck their banners up as a branding exercise. They knew that the exposure from the site would help to align their business as one of the pre-eminent retailers or event organisers for the game. Some advertisers stopped caring about click through stats and kept advertising purely for the branding exposure.

Google adsense

At some point Google Adsense popped up and I was in with other early adopters to try it out. My results were okay. The money wasn't nearly as good as the established relationships with advertisers I had, however the ads being displayed were a lot more targeted than banner networks. I eventually stopped using Adsense because I could better monetise the adspace with my traditional advertisers. However that was before Google went to work providing such a variety of banner sizes and display options. Nowadays Google Adsense is a viable income source for many websites so I definitely suggest you look into it as a possible option for generating revenue but remember it's not the only means and you can earn more if you get busy chasing targeted advertisers.

Ongoing maintenance

I wouldn't call web advertising income passive, but it sure is close. The systems I had in place handled everything automatically. While I did have to manually create advertiser accounts, pursue advertisers and control billing, once the systems were in place, in particular phpAdsNew, I didn't have to do much. Of course depending on your website often the maintenance of your community is were the labour is involved, but chances are if you started the site you either enjoy it or have plans in place to eventually remove yourself from the maintenance role. In the end I sold off my site but if it wasn't for the advertiser revenue my asset would not have been valued nearly as highly as the final sale price. Investing in advertising is like investing in any asset, the time and labour you put in today will lead to benefits in the future.

By Yaro Starak
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?

Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. He works part time from home on several web based business that generate between $2,000 and $8,000 per month. Get your free articles and audio now - visit his Internet Business Blog.

---

Google News Updated : Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:08:18 GMT Suicide blast kills 35 in Pakistan; Zardari set to take power - International Herald Tribune Boston Globe Suicide blast kills 35 in Pakistan; Zardari set to take power International Herald Tribune - 53 minutes ago AP, The New York Times PESHAWAR, Pakistan: The death toll in a devastating suicide blast has reached 35, officials said Sunday, as Pakistan prepared for Benazir Bhutto's widower to take over as president. Pakistan's Zardari urged to change image and focus Reuters Pakistan's Zardari prepares for presidency AFP PRESS TV - Los Angeles Times - Monsters and Critics.com - Xinhua all 3,657 news articles Publ.Date : Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:14:31 GMT Reuters Entertainment Summary - Washington Post Reuters Entertainment Summary Washington Post - 3 hours ago VENICE (Reuters) - Eleven days of red carpet galas, 21 films in competition and countless interviews, photo calls and parties at the Venice film festival boiled down to just one man in the end -- Mickey Rourke. Aronofsky Gracefully Wrestles Golden Lion Out Of Venice eFluxMedia Buyers mixed on Toronto films Hollywood Reporter San Jose Mercury News - Bloomberg - Variety - Los Angeles Times all 509 news articles Publ.Date : Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:41:41 GMT Health Buzz: Immunosuppressive Drug Warning and Other Health News - U.S. News & World Report dBTechno Health Buzz: Immunosuppressive Drug Warning and Other Health News U.S. News & World Report - Sep 5, 2008 The Food and Drug Administration has asked the manufacturers of Humira, Cimzia, Enbrel, and Remicade—which belong to a class of medications known as tumor necrosis factor alpha blockers (TNF-alpha blockers)—to strengthen the warning for risk of fungal ... FDA urges more caution over TNF blocker infections Reuters Arthritis Drugs Linked to Risks From Infection New York Times WebMD - eFluxMedia - Scientific American all 622 news articles Publ.Date : Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:23:08 GMT Federer is set for his fifth consecutive US Open final (Keystone) - Swissinfo San Diego Union Tribune Federer is set for his fifth consecutive US Open final (Keystone) Swissinfo - 29 minutes ago Switzerland's Roger Federer has won his semifinal at Flushing Meadows against Novak Djokovic of Serbia in four sets, 6-3, 5-7, 7-5, 6-2. Video: Federer Beats Djokovic to Reach US Open Final AssociatedPress Federer Reaches Final Before Rain New York Times BBC Sport - Los Angeles Times - Fort Worth Star Telegram - Boston Globe all 2,879 news articles Publ.Date : Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:38:36 GMT Michigan spared sting of West Nile - Detroit Free Press Michigan spared sting of West Nile Detroit Free Press - 6 hours ago BY SHERI McWHIRTER • RECORD-EAGLE • September 7, 2008 TRAVERSE CITY -- West Nile virus hasn't seriously bitten Michigan this year and seems to have spared the state's northern reaches. Yes, the mosquitoes were nasty this summer Yakima Herald-Republic Aerial survey being conducted to find mosquito breeding grounds San Jose Mercury News Lower Hudson Journal news - San Francisco Chronicle - Shelbyville News - Los Angeles Times all 362 news articles Publ.Date : Sun, 07 Sep 2008 07:53:44 GMT Fannie, Freddie Capital Concerns Prompt Paulson Plan (Update1) - Bloomberg ABC News Fannie, Freddie Capital Concerns Prompt Paulson Plan (Update1) Bloomberg - 1 hour ago By Dawn Kopecki and Alison Vekshin Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson decided to take control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after a review found the beleaguered mortgage-finance companies used accounting methods that inflated their ... Video: Obama Calls for Changes in Mortgage Giants AssociatedPress RPT-US Treasury sets news conference;GSE plan expected Reuters MarketWatch - New York Times - USA Today - Forbes all 2,446 news articles Publ.Date : Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:59:54 GMT Malkovich gets mad in Coens' 'Burn After Reading' - The Associated Press Canada.com Malkovich gets mad in Coens' 'Burn After Reading' The Associated Press - 36 minutes ago TORONTO (AP) - The Coen brothers' new movie gave John Malkovich a chance to blow off some steam. Malkovich's seething character in "Burn After Reading" bursts out in perpetual tantrums, a nice exercise in anger management, according to the actor. Toronto Film Festival vs. Brangelina – Who Gets the Spotlight? eFluxMedia Pitt Rocks to Madonna FOXNews Newsweek - Dallas Morning News - Los Angeles Times - Reuters all 331 news articles Publ.Date : Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:31:53 GMT Rss Feed Reader Increase Traffic

PARLOT::Ebooks, Scripts, Websites, and more...

Adsense websites

Paris Hilton? Your Online Marketing Fails Because You Market As If You Were Ms Hilton

Are you Paris Hilton? Is your name instantly recognizable when... Read More

Raising Your Rates Can *Increase* Your Business

How many times have I heard literal horror stories from... Read More

How to Turn Your Articles into a Viral Traffic Stampede

By writing articles you can send targeted traffic to your... Read More

Aesthetics and Web Marketing

For four years I worked in the editorial department of... Read More

5 Ways to Educate Your Prospects for More Sales

It's impossible to sell a product or service without demand... Read More

Top 3 Online Business Success Needs

1) Web SiteThis is for sure the most important part... Read More

Creating Multiple Streams Of Income Part 2

Over my years of experience in doing business on the... Read More

The Deadly Sin Of Inaction

"There is difference between knowing the path and walking the... Read More

Viral Marketing - Use This Free Reminder Service to Go Viral

The busier you are the harder it is to remember... Read More

Sales Training: How To Succeed Online By Networking Your Business

The backbone of business success is communication.And networking is one... Read More

Convey Website Credibility Authentically!

Your prospects want one thing and one thing only! They... Read More

Three Ways to Get Top Quality Content for Your Niche Websites

Three Ways to Get Top Quality Content for Your Niche... Read More

If You Build It They Will Come - Not Without Web Marketing!

I'm sure everybody has received an email from a company... Read More

Successful Internet Marketing Without A Budget

The following excerpts were taken from an interview held with... Read More

Converting Visitors into Subscribers

Copyright 2005 Javier SalcesVisitor conversion is a challenge faced by... Read More

What a Billionaire Balloonist Taught Me About Internet Marketing

Billionaire Richard Branson, the entrepreneur behind the Virgin brand, is... Read More

How SPAM Sells Sex, Greed, and Survival

The unsolicited email people react to most is what yells... Read More

What is Article Marketing?

Simply put article marketing is advertising your web site through... Read More

Internet Marketing Online: 8 Ways To Succeed By Helping Others Succeed

Do you remember the first time you got on the... Read More

10 Amplifying Ways To Turn Up Your Sales Volume

1. Make your potential customers forget about the competition. Just... Read More

Ten Tips for Getting More Sales From Your Website

(1) Create a Direct Response Website, with the minimum number... Read More

Dealing with Refund Requests ? Internet Marketing

I think we all cringe and dread when we open... Read More

Internet Marketing Requires Lots of Patience!

When you first make a decision to start an Internet... Read More

Be Different And Profit

I've just spent 3 hours surfing the web and found... Read More

Internet Marketing Secrets Spiel

Wouldn't you like to know all the Internet marketing "secrets"... Read More