Jon Dykstra’s guest post that includes ad layouts.When ads are well-optimized, refocus on traffic generation.Sign up for an auto-optimization platform like Ezoic or AdThrive.Use a plugin like Ad Inserter to get them on the site.Sign up for one or more of the popular networks ( AdSense or ).One of the best display ad experts I know bought a site in a niche he didn’t know much about, and he was never able to pull the RPMs out of the gutter. There are like a bajillion CPC networks out there, and they all promise the same thing. The number of networks can be overwhelming.We usually don’t even recommend spending the five minutes it takes to set up AdSense unless you’ve got 1,000+ visitors per day. until the cows come home, and there always seems to be a bit more money to tap into.
You can test ad networks, layouts, colors, etc. I increased my revenue by 50% using CPC ads and saw RPMs as high as $9 on single ads (very atypical, but I did see them). You need very little technical knowledge to join a CPC ad network and get them running on your blog. In other words, CPC ads are ubiquitous, and it’s because they represent one of the oldest and simplest possible transactions for advertisers on the internet–paying for clicks–as well as one of the oldest and simplest ways for publishers to earn money: selling clicks. In addition to a massive interstitial CPC ad you have to click around before you can even access the content on the site, they also have ads all over their content, including a ad at the bottom. Sites as big as Forbes put them front and center. Of course, we independent site builders aren’t the only people who use CPC ads. This is a pretty old screenshot, but it also captures the “lightbulb” moment - the moment in which I finally started to figure out CPC ads.Īt the time, getting CPC ads to work on my site increased my revenue by about 50%, which was massive. Here’s screenshot of my earnings from HerePup. The easiest and most obvious example is probably from my own site, since I talk about it all the time anyway, and because this particular site represented my first foray into CPC ads. Just because they’re easy doesn’t mean they donke money, however… Examples Let’s start with the one everyone knows: CPC ads.ĬPC ads = ads that pay when someone clicks on them.Ĭost Per Click (CPC) ads are one of the predominant ad types on the internet, and most of you have probably used them.Īnd most people use them because the most popular CPC networks have an extremely low technological barrier of entry (it takes all of five minutes to get an AdSense ad on your site). …an exhaustive list of every single blog monetization tactic. This post outlines the fruits of that quest. If I wanted to create a high-power, ultra-optimized revenue stack, I needed to find and understand all of the pieces of the puzzle. Recently, though, when I was sitting down to plan the business model of my new site last year, I realized I only really knew two (pretty simple) monetization methods in any real depth.Īnd so I went on a quest – a quest to learn as much about the different ways in which you can monetize a blog as I possibly could.