Bryan Mullennix – Pressing Publish

Many web publishers dream of owning a blog or a website that can create a full-time income. But before you can make a living with your website, it's important to consider, the ways in which you can monetize your web content. One increasingly important stream of income available to website owners these days, is to place display ads on your pages, but how much money can you really expect to earn from having ads on your website? You can earn thousands of dollars a month or more by placing ads on your website. If you have enough traffic coming to your site, display advertising is a very profitable way to monetize your content. Ads are an incredibly passive way to generate income from your website or blog. Before you can start cashing those checks while sipping margaritas by the pool though, you'll need to understand a few of the basics. In this article, I'll explain how much money you can make by placing ads on your site, how display advertising works, the amount of traffic necessary to succeed, and the types of content most likely to earn a substantial amount of money with online ads. How Much Money Can Display Ads Make on Your Website? Currently, I'm generating over $2,000 a month from ads only, on just one of my sites with Ezoic. This website has had 44,349 visitors in the last 30 days which isn't a huge amount of traffic. There is still plenty of room to grow my site and monthly ad revenue considerably. The fact is that the sky's the limit when it comes to generating revenue with display advertising on your website. The income range for different publishers and websites, however, can be extremely wide. I've personally made as little as a few dollars a month after putting AdSense ads on one of my websites. It didn't help, however, that I really didn't know what I was doing in regards to blogging or ads at the time. There are, however, plenty of people regularly making thousands of dollars a month (I'm one of them), and even tens of thousands of dollars a month (I'm still working on it!) just from the ads showing on their content. https://youtu.be/QZeKUe4c9VM In the video above, Ricky from Income School shows you how much you can realistically make from having ads on your website. (The guys from Income School are the real deal and I'm now making thousands of dollars a month blogging after being a member of their course Project 24). If you're a web publisher who's interested in earning revenue from advertisers, you'll definitely want to know more about how ads on your website works. How Display Advertising Works For Website Publishers There are a couple of ways to work with ads and advertisers. The first way is you can work to directly sell ad space on your website. So for instance, if you have a website based around a certain hobby, you can reach out to companies who sell products and services in that niche (or perhaps they contact you) and you can charge them a monthly rate to have a banner advertisement placed in a particular spot on your website. If that sounds terrible to you, I'm right there with you! Personally, I have no interest in this type of ad model. This method requires a lot of time and effort, as well as ongoing negotiation and bill collection. There is nothing passive about this way of doing things at all! Thankfully, there is a much easier way to get ads on your site to generate income. Display Ad Networks (The Simple Way) Working with a Display Ad Network is a MUCH easier way to achieve the goal of making income with ads on your website, and it's the method that I currently use. So, what exactly is an ad network? An ad network is a company that connects advertisers and online publishers for the purpose of selling and displaying ads. As a website owner, the process is fairly simple. Sign up with an ad network (there are a lot of networks to choose from) They are usually free to work with, and take a cut of the ad revenue (generally 25% or less). Connect to the ad shop via a bit of code or a WordPress pluginAds will begin displaying throughout your websiteThe ad company will continuously work to optimize the ads on your site so that you receive the best revenue possible from each ad placement. The ads displayed to your audience are targeted ads, meaning that advertisers will only place ads on your property if they think you have the audience they want. Then they will bid against each other for the opportunity to place their ad on your property. This all happens in a split-second every time a new visitor arrives on one of your pages. For a more in-depth look at how this all works, and the best ad networks to work with, you'll want to read my article: How To Put Ads on Your Website (and Get Paid Like a Boss!) How To Make The Most Money From Ads On Your Website When it comes to how much money your website can make showing ads, there are a few factors to consider. Not all websites have the same earning potential. Even two sites in the same niche may have significantly different earnings. The following are a few of the most important factors to be aware of when it comes to the earning potential from ads. Niche - The topic of your website makes a huge difference in earning potentialTraffic - The overall amount of traffic the website receivesVisitor Location - Where in the world are your visitors are coming from Let's take a look at each of these in more detail. Which Niches or Topics Make The Most Money From Ads When it comes to making money with ads, all content is not created equal. Let's say you have a website all about the RVing lifestyle. Because your content is about motorhomes, trailers, camping, etc., the type of visitor you're likely to attract will be of a certain demographic. People interested in RV's generally have a healthy amount of disposable income making advertisers interested in getting in front of those viewers. As such, they will be more likely to compete (bid higher amounts) due to the competition from other advertisers. On the other end of the spectrum, say you have a website about video games. In this case, it's likely that the majority of your audience is made up of teens and young adults. What are most teenagers and young adults lacking? They're lacking high levels of disposable income and as such, are of less interest to advertisers. So comparing the two niches above, the website about RV's is likely to earn more from ads on a per visitor basis than the video game website. This is not to say that a website about video games is a poor choice of topics because there is another variable to consider. That variable is traffic. https://youtu.be/CcGn4ubDcV4 Check out a few of the niches with the highest display ad revenue. How Much Traffic You'll Need to Succeed With Display Ads As mentioned earlier, there is a lot of money to be made from placing display ads on your website. There's one thing you'll need, however, to really make it work, and that is traffic. So let's get an idea of how much traffic you'll need to make a substantial amount of income from displaying ads on your site? Needless to say, without traffic to your website, you won't be making any ad revenue at all. The amount of traffic you'll need to have to see substantial income from ads, is a balance between the number of monthly visitors to your site and the average earnings per visitor. In the table below, I've shown the typical revenue one can expect from various traffic milestones, based on average earnings of $20 per 1,000 visitors. # of Monthly Visitors$20 per 1,000 Visitors10,000$20050,000$1,000100,000$2,000150,000$3,000200,000$4,000500,000$10,5001,000,000$20,000Typical earnings from ads on a blog or website based on the amount of monthly traffic. In this example, the $20 per 1,000 visitors figure is a fairly average amount, BUT some websites will earn less per 1K visitors, while others will earn much more. Also, I want to point out that while many websites can reach 10k - 50k visitors in their first year, it will often take several years to reach some of the higher traffic numbers (if ever). The ultimate level of traffic one can reach and the earnings per 1k visitors are variables that are dependent on several things. For instance, above we compared an RV website to a video game website and learned that an RV website would most likely be able to earn more per visitor in ad revenue than the video game site due to having a more marketable audience with a higher income. It's possible, however, that due to high competition in the niche, the RV website may have a harder time acquiring high levels of traffic. While the video game website could have a much easier time competition wise and have significantly more traffic, making the earnings between the two sites in the end, very similar. Primary Audience Location The third factor that plays a big role in determining a websites maximum display ad earnings is the location of your visitors. Advertisers are willing to pay higher amounts to get eyeballs on their advertisements in the most lucrative markets. Without a doubt, the United States is the most profitable ad market in the world. So, if the majority of your website traffic comes from the U.S., your earnings will be much higher. Here is a list of a few of the top-performing countries for in terms of display ad revenue: United StatesCanadaUnited KingdomGermanyAustraliaSwitzerland Tailoring your website content to appeal to these primary markets will get and keep your ad revenue per visitor on the higher end. The three factors of website niche, traffic, and visitor location are all variables that will play a roll in your web advertising revenues and should be considered when making decisions about the type of content you're producing. If you're ready to start making money from display ads on your website, you'll want to check out Ezoic here. They make it easy to start making money from display ads on your website. Final Thoughts The bottom line is that if you're the owner of a website with consistent traffic then you've got an audience that's of value to advertisers. With so many variables affecting how much money a website can earn, the best way to find out for sure is to get some ads on your site. Putting ads on a website is easy! If you're ready to find out what display ads can earn on your website, then I recommend you check out Ezoic. It's the premium ad network I've been using with great success and could be the key to significantly increasing your online revenues. Sources WikipediaWordStreamBannerTag