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How to Start a Website that Makes Money –

4 Ways
Aug 24, 2021 | Advertising, Marketing

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If you are looking for ways to monetize your website, selling ads is a
convenient and potentially profitable way to do it. You surely have
questions about how to start, requirements. Also, should you sell the ads
directly or join an ad network?

In this post

Don’t worry, the CodeFuel team prepared this guide to answer all
questions you may have for selling advertisements the right way.

What to Do Before Starting Selling Ads?

Before you sell ads on digital property, you need to be sure your website
is attractive for high-paying advertisers. Whether you plan on selling
directly from your website or sign up for an ad platform, there are some
common requirements.

1. Basic Requirements for Selling Ads

Each ad platform has its own requirements, but there are three basic
factors that determine your quality as a publisher for advertisers:

Traffic

For Google AdSense for example, your site must be active for at least six
months, attract 250 unique visitors a day and the majority of the traffic
must come from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Europe. Traffic that
goes against Google policies (fake impressions, invalid click activity) are
prohibited.

Content

The content of your website needs to be unique, relevant, and provide

value to users. The more niche the content, the better for advertisers
because it means the website is highly targeted to their audience. Your
site needs to have enough pages for a reasonable dwell time (20 to 30
pages) and allow visitors to browse, with rich, value-based content.

Design and Usability

Look at your site design. Is it clean? Entices the visitors to learn more
about your content? It should be professionally designed and visually
attractive. To attract conversions, it needs to be easy to navigate, with a
simple structure, and fast to lead to provide a great user experience.
Make sure the page is mobile-friendly so visitors can reach your site (and
its ads) from any device.

What Are the Requirements for Selling Ads on Your

Properties?
Two of the major programs are Google AdSense and Bing Network
Contextual Ads Program. If you want to expand your site’s reach, you are
not limited to AdSense. Let’s review both networks characteristics:

Criteria

Content

Domain

Site

Google AdSense

Unique, interesting, and helpful.

Comply with Google guidelines

Own site.

If using Blogger, different eligibility requirements apply.

Accessible, easy-to-use Readability

Functionality

Bing Network

Premium, high-quality original content.

English as the primary language.

Own site with a reasonable volume of traffic.

Most traffic from U.S/ Canada/ UK.

Good navigation

Readability

Functionality

Start Sell Advertisements With CodeFuel Now!

2. Understand the Current Site Audience

Before going on searching for advertisers first you need to understand
who your visitor is. Look into your website analytics: what are the
demographics? Check from where the traffic is coming. Do you have
peak traffic times?

It is important that your audience is targeted, comprising visitors that are

heavily interested in what your advertisers may offer. For instance, if you
have a website about video games, while teenage gamers don’t have a
high income as a collective, the audience is very attractive for game
console companies and game developers.

3. Make Your Online Property Attractive

How to make your online property attractive to advertisers? We already
mentioned some factors above but let’s explore this a bit more. The
golden rule is that if your site is appealing and engaging to visitors, it
will catch the attention of advertisers trying to reach those visitors.

A clean, engaging website design creates trust and enhances the user
experience. So, here are 8 tips to create an engaging website design:

Keep the layout simple

Make navigation intuitive

Design clear calls to action

Minimal and impactful content

Whitespace is your friend

Use eye-catching colors in your brand palette

Attractive and easy-to-read fonts draw attention

Add media and images but keep tabs on the load speed.

4. Check How Much You Can Get For Ads In Your

Niche
Including ads on your website is one of the most popular ways of
monetization. Online advertising is a cost-effective advertising method
for companies, compared to traditional advertising. While the average
cost to reach 1000 people with online ads is $3.45, offline ads cost $22 and
up to reach the same number of people.

The key to success monetizing with ads is to set your prices right. How
much should you charge for ads? Your rates (Cost per Mille – or per
thousand impressions) will depend also on your niche. You also need to
take into account how much the ad network will pay you for every click
on the ad (Cost per Click).

Related content: What is it, and How to Increase Your Page RPM?

So how much do you charge? We researched industry benchmarks for

the highest and lowest cost per click:

The average cost per click for most verticals is $2 to $4, but top industries
like lawyers, insurance, and loans can go by $6 per click.

The platform you choose to monetize your impressions is also

important, with a significant difference in costs between search and
display ads. Check the below table for average CPC and CPM costs per
platform (including social media):

Platform Average CPC Average CPM

Google Search Ads $2.32 $38.40

Google Display Ads $0.67 $3.12

Social Media Ads

Facebook $1.35 $8.60

Instagram $3.56 $8.96

Twitter $0.38 $6.46

LinkedIn $5.26 $6.59

How do you price advertising space?

Your rate should attract high-paying advertisers and at the same time
help you meet your monetization goals. Here are some questions you
should ask to find out your ideal rate:

1. How much is your minimum rate?Define how much you need to

charge for your ads to cover costs and make a profit. Take into account
your business expenses and how much income you expect to make from
sales. The remaining amount is how much sales you’ll need to cover from
selling ads.

2. How much can you sell from ads on your page?On the other side,
you should find out how much you can actually sell from ads on your
website. This will depend on your layout and how many ads you can fit on
your pages without cluttering them.

Look at the ad placement and format. Will you include video or

interactive ads? Banners? Check the size of the potential ads and the
position on the page.

Here are the banner ad sizes that perform better in 2021:

Maximum
Dimension Name CTR FREQUENCY
size

Medium
300 x 250 150 KB 0.13% 40%
rectangle

Large
336 x 280 150 KB 0.33% 1%
rectangle

728 x 90 Leaderboard 150 KB 0.08% 25%

Half-page or
300 x 600 large 150 KB 0.23% 5%
skyscraper

Mobile
320 x 50 150 KB 1.2% 12%
leaderboard

3. How much are your competitors charging?Finally, it is good to know

the market for ads in your niche. Look at how much your competitors
charge for ads on their sites, the types of ads they display, their
placement, and their frequency.

Selling Ad Space: 4 Top Ways for Selling Ads

Selling ads on your website is a great way to monetize your site’s traffic.
Still, it is not that easy to achieve a reasonable income from it.

Sell directly
This model doesn’t require an intermediary (ad networks, ad exchanges,
affiliates) and potentially enables a publisher to earn more by being in
direct contact with media buyers. However, this method requires a lot of
time and effort.

Pros

Publishers retain 100% of the advertising revenue.

You can set your own rate and control who advertises on your site, and
how they will pay.
By choosing the brands to work with, you establish unique and
potentially long-term business relations.
It is simple without hassling over clicks, conversions, and impressions.

Cons

It’s a ton of work finding advertisers manually and negotiating terms

with them.
It requires you have an established website, with lots of traffic, good
conversions, and a community of visitors that regularly browse on
your pages.
Requires manually controlling your ad sales and performance.

Affiliate advertising
This is one of the fastest ways to earn money with your website. This
method involves promoting a product or service in exchange for
a commission.

Usually, publishers place affiliate links, text ads, or banners on their sites.
When a visitor takes the desired action through the affiliate link (making
a purchase, opting into a newsletter, etc) you get paid.

Pros

Easy to enter. Most affiliate networks have minimal requirements: your

own domain, an email account linked to it, and a website layout that
supports different ad formats.
Free for publishers
High commissions per purchase. The average purchase commission
for a user clicking on the affiliate link and purchasing through it can
range from 30 to 50%.

Cons

Generally, you only get paid when the visitor completes a purchase
from the link. Very few affiliate networks will work on CPA (pay-per-
action) or CPC (cost-per-click). Learn more about pricing models: CPC
vs CPM Explained: What’s the Difference in 2021?
You need to promote your site and the products to encourage sales.
That means investing time and effort in social media posts and
posting content on your site to drive visitors to click on that link or ad.

The 80/20 rule for Affiliate Marketing

Most affiliate publishers (80%) are paid on a PPS basis—pay per sale—, 18
percent on CPA (pay per action), and only the remaining 2% use CPM
and CPC models as compensation methods.

That being said, affiliate marketing can make a website really profitable.
Commissions can be around 30 to 50 percent.

Ad Networks
The easiest option is to join an ad network that takes care of selling your
impressions, track your earnings, and arrange placement on your site for
a commission. Most ad networks set minimum monthly traffic you need
to meet. CodeFuel is an example of a complete platform that leverages
data management and artificial intelligence to maximize revenue from
ads for publishers.

Pros

Once you sign on to the network, the platform takes care of

everything, dealing with the impressions via real-time bidding (learn
what is real-time bidding).
Niche or premium networks can offer more revenue for ads since they
attract higher-intent customers, which in turn attracts higher-paying
advertisers.

Cons

Large ad networks have strict requirements for publishers to join their

networks.
The traffic minimum can be high for some publishers.

Native advertising
With this method, you create ads that blend with the surrounding
content. Sponsored posts, content, and reviews are examples of native
ads. Native advertising can be more effective than display ads since they
integrate with the content. For instance, native ads can have 18% more
purchase intent than display ads.

Source: eMarketer

Pros

Builds brand awareness because

They integrate into the customer experience, enhancing it.
Can be used to target specific audience segments.
Increase click-through rates

Cons

Time-consuming. Requires creating content, like articles, reviews,

social media posts.
It is complex to measure performance. You need to combine
measuring impressions, clicks, and CTR with website metrics like time
on site, engagement rate, views, and cost per action.

Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising is the group of technologies, tools, and
processes that publishers and advertisers use to automate the media
buying process. Publishers can leverage their available ad inventory by
using a Supply Side Platform (SSP).

A supply-side platform is an advertising technology tool that coordinates

and manages the sale of ad space. The platform sends the ad offerings
and requests for bids to the ad network. On the buyer’s side, the demand
side platform sends the bids. Check our guide if you want to know more
about how a supply-side platform works.

Pros

Reaching a much larger pool of advertisers

Automating the ad space sales, saving money and effort
Maximizing the yield by encouraging competition amongst bidders

Cons

Most supply-side platforms have high traffic requirements.

What’s Better – Sell Directly or Through an Ad

Network
Selling ads directly can be tempting. It may produce a high revenue but
it comes with a few caveats:

You need to have a top-performing website. That means, from the

traffic to the design, it should be optimized to generate maximum
conversions.
It is also extremely time-consuming. You’ll be handling all the
advertising sales and negotiation yourself.

So if you are not ready or you want to save time, it is better you join an ad
network.

Join An Ad Network Today!

Still not sure? Let’s do a quick test.

Should I sell ads directly on my site? Checklist

Do you have significant traffic? If your site gets over 50,000 unique
visits a month it may be worth it to target direct advertisers.
Is your audience highly targeted? Advertisers want their ads to go as
directly as possible to people who will buy their products. So, if you
have a high-intent, interested audience it may be valuable for
advertisers.
Can you find active advertisers in your market? Your success will
depend on clients that will actively (frequently) place ads on your
website. If your website is suitable for a dynamic market that releases
updates and new products all the time, check this item.
Do you already have direct relationships with companies? If you are
an expert on your niche and already have relationships with
companies it will give you the advantage to get them to place adverts
on your site.

Results: If you checked all the items on the checklist above there might
be a chance for you to generate money from direct ad sales.

Still, remember you need to invest time and effort. First, putting your site
in shape to attract advertisers, then investing time in contacting
potential clients.

Using an ad network takes all the hassle of chasing advertisers. The right
ad network increases the value of your website by placing contextual ads
that enhance your user experience. Thus, you gain for the performance of
the ads and you also make your online property more valuable.

How much can you make on selling ad space on

your website?
This will depend on the pricing model you choose. If you sell by Cost per
Mille (cost per thousand impressions). If your CPM is $2 and your site
generates 200,000 impressions per month, you can expect to make $400
a month.

If you sell by Cost-Per-Click (CPC), you will get paid according to the
number of people that actually click on the ad.

Can you sell ad space with low traffic?

The short answer is yes. It will depend on the level of engagement of your
audience. If your site boasts a highly engaged audience it may be a
valuable asset for advertisers.

Think about it. If you were an advertiser, would you prefer to present ads
massively to an audience that may or not convert? Or get your message
directly in front of a group of highly engaged potential customers? The
answer is clear. While traffic is a basic requirement, having an engaged
audience is a good asset to attract advertisers.

Where to start?
As a publisher, you have a great opportunity to generate revenue and
earn passive income from placing ads on your website. The easiest and
most effective way is to sign with an ad network.

CodeFuel combines the advantages of a large reach with the enhancing

of the user experience through contextual ads. You can leverage search,
shopping, and text ads in a single monetization platform to maximize
revenue and increase engagement.

Start monetizing your website today with CodeFuel

Ready to monetize?
Our monetization experts
are happy to help.

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