There are increasingly more webpages and online environments which are beginning to get a considerable amount of traffic and want to monetize this, in other words, make money from the insertion of advertising formats. For this reason, I want to teach you with this article how digital advertising works on webpages, how to sell and how much you gain.
“How can I “sell” my website?” If you have planned to monetize your website, surely the option of putting web advertising has crossed your mind, in order to get income with little effort. It is vital, however, to know how to have patience and realistic expectations. So in this article, we will explain how to put a price to your website’s advertising, what advertising formats exist and who can help you commercialize your website with advertising.
If you want to throw yourself into the market of website advertising, first you will need to know how to realistically value your page’s potential income. With particular emphasis on “realistically”: although we’ve all heard stories like the Australian guy Darren Rowse who made 250.000 dollars from his blog in 2007, the hard truth is that few webpages manage to bring in profits that significant. Furthermore, it would be wise to remember that web advertising should not be your only source of income, as it depends a lot on outside parties (like Google’s AdSense) and a small change in their policies could bring your profits crashing down in flames.
With that warning in mind, there are a few things you should calculate to value your website’s potential income:
With this data, you will be far better prepared to estimate the value of advertising on your webpage. There are various types of prices, but the most common are the cost per click (CPC), the Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM) and the Cost per Lead (CPL). For example, if your cost per thousand is 2 euros, and an advertiser hires 100.000 impressions, you will receive 200 euros once you are able to show the ad 100.000 times to your visitors.
Once your campaign is on the go, you can follow a few more pieces of advice to max your profits:
According to the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) these are the available web advertising formats:
As you can see, there is a whole world of options out there to choose from, and as such, opting for one or another depends on the requirements of your ad and the space on the website available. Always keep in mind not to saturate the available space, as this makes a bad impression on the user and loses quality, and ends up being counterproductive. Remember also that there are advertising providers specialized to video and mobile.
If your goal is to generate passive income through banners, your first choice should, without a doubt, be Google AdWords and its advertisement sales program for websites, AdSense. But there are many other options also: Smowtion, Infolinks, Chitika, Yahoo…
On the other hand, placing digital advertisement on websites is not the only way to profit from your site. There are other options such as content marketing, which is based on selling the influence of your online environment and writing skills through sponsored posts, product reviews, etc.
We hope this post has served as a useful introduction to placing advertising on your web pages. One last piece of advice: if you want your monetization strategy to work, concentrate on creating high quality content and never forget that web advertising is a long-term investment. Good luck!
Kelly Rogan
Image by Sensationimage.com and Empresariados.com