The right way to monetize your web site with out ruining your consumer expertise
If you have a website that publishes content, you know one thing is especially important: monetizing your traffic.
You have put a lot of time and effort into creating a great website, and there is nothing like turning all that hard work into money.
However, monetizing your website is not as easy as it may seem at first. To get the most of it, you need to employ some solid strategies.
Strategies for monetizing the traffic on your website
There are many ways to monetize your website. Below are some of the most common ones. But first let's talk about traffic:
The more traffic you have, the easier it will be to monetize your site.
Some of the common methods of monetizing a website (such as running ads) don't pay off until you have one certain amount of traffic.
There are still ways to monetize a website that isn't getting a lot of traffic. For example, you can use whatever audience you already have to start a business (like coaching or freelance writing) based on your website. You can also sell products to your existing audience.
However, with more website visitors, you have more options.
How do you build traffic to your website? There are tons of strategies you can use. Write an e-book, host a webinar, add to your email list, improve your SEO.
Monetize your website
After you've built an audience for your website, here are just a few of the techniques you can use to monetize your traffic.
Paid memberships or paywalls
The easiest way to monetize your website is to ask people to pay for your content.
Since there is so much free content on the internet, people are reluctant to pay for content. However, if your brand is strong enough, your audience may be ready to pay. Many major news publishers only offer a few free articles and keep the rest of their sites behind a paywall. This is what the Harvard Business Review looks like:
For bloggers and marketers, a more common approach is a tiered membership system, where most of the site's content is free, but some are member-only.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing means using affiliate links to direct people to other websites. When people buy products from these websites, you get a portion of the sale.
If you use affiliate links on your website, make sure to let users know. Try to only recommend products that you think your audience will like.
There are tons of companies with affiliate programs. Amazon has one of the most popular.
Sponsored posts
A third way to monetize traffic is by creating sponsored posts for brands. Businesses can get in touch with you and ask you to promote them with a link to their website. This is sometimes referred to as native advertising.
Here is an example of a sponsored post from HR Magazine:
Show advertisements
One of the most common ways to monetize your website is through the use of display ads.
Display ads are extremely popular and appear in the header, sidebar, and other locations on almost every website. In fact, the Google Display Network reaches 90% of internet users worldwide. Display ads allow you to “rent” space on your website to advertisers.
Here is an example of what Speedtest.net display ads look like:
Display ads are an easy way to monetize traffic. But to get the most out of them, you need to optimize them.
To do this, you need to understand how display advertising works and what types of ads work best. Ads can be annoying to users if you implement them incorrectly.
Read on to learn how display ads can make you more money without sacrificing your user experience.
What type of ads should I use to generate income?
First, let's talk about the types of display ads that are out there. There are many different formats for ads. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has guidelines for ad sizes and specifications.
Here are some of the types of display ads you might see on publisher websites:
Static Ads vs. animated ads
Static ads are the simplest and most traditional type of display ad. A static display is a picture and that's it.
A animated display usually consists of 2-3 static images displayed one after the other.
These types of ads are sometimes called banner ads and come in a variety of formats. You may have heard terms like "leaderboard", "skyscraper", "square", "full banner" or "half-page". These are all different sizes for display ads.
Google has a guide to some of the most common ad sizes (in pixels) for mobile and desktop.
Video ads
Another type of display ad is a video ad.
You can think of a video ad as something that is displayed on YouTube. However, Google video ads will also show on publisher websites if they are Google video partners.
Video ads can be embedded in content or displayed on the page.
Lightbox ads
Lightbox ads respond when users interact with them. When users tap or hover over the ad, a video expands or displays. Advertisers only pay when users engage with their ads.
Responsive display ads
Responsive display ads adapt their appearance to different advertising spaces.
Advertisers can upload a range of assets (videos, images, logos or headlines) and the advertising network will automatically select a combination of these elements to suit different ad slots.
Retargeted Ads
Have you ever looked at a website and saw ads for the same website a few hours later while browsing online?
You can thank retargeting (also called remarketing) for this.
Retargeting allows advertisers to show their ads to people who have already interacted in some way with their website or signed up for their email list.
Native Ads
The term native ad refers to an ad that blends in with the content around it and increases the likelihood of users clicking.
While you might think of a native ad as a sponsored post or advertorial, display ads can also be referred to as native ads if they're optimized for the content around them.
Here is a screenshot (from The Independent) of what a native ad looks like. It looks like an article, but notice the "sponsored" label below:
What kind of ads should I run?
As you can see, there are many different types of ads to choose from. What types should you do on your website?
As a publisher, it is in your best interest to serve ads in a way that helps them perform well. You want people to click so you can earn those advertising dollars.
But you don't want to compromise your user experience either. Serving too many invasive ads can have a negative impact on your website: it can slow down page loading speeds, potentially improve your search engine optimization, and make your readers run to the mountains.
So how do you know which ads work best? Basically, you should test your ads and use the right tools.
Read on for more tips on how to get the best possible ad experience for your website.
Tips for optimizing your website's ad experience
To effectively monetize the traffic, you want to improve the ad experience of the users on your website.
Here are a few different ways you can do this:
Optimize for web and mobile
Users will access your site from different devices. The advertising experience on the web and mobile devices is different.
Ideally, you want to optimize the ad experience for visitors based on the device they are using.
Optimize ad display
The way ads appear on your website can have an impact on profitability. This includes their size, their position on the page, the type of ad, and whether there are other ads.
Did you know that ads can actually affect the effectiveness of other ads? If there are too many ads on a page, each one may be less effective. Don't assume that adding more ads will lead to more revenue.
Offer your users a unique and customized ad experience
Advertisers treat each visitor differently and show them different ads based on their preferences.
Most publishers, however, treat every user equally.
You can achieve better results by customizing your ad experience for each user. You can do this by using automated website monetization software (more on this below).
The importance of A / B testing your ads for a seamless user experience
A / B testing has its advantages in optimizing your ad experience, but it can lower ad rates.
What is a / B test?
A / B testing is exactly what it sounds like: run a test where you compare two versions of something side by side (version A versus version B) to see which one performs better.
A / B testing gives you some clear indications of what types of ads you should be using. However, it won't calm everyone. The limitations of A / B testing mean that you can never satisfy your B-side visitors
How do I do an A / B test?
To run an A / B test, compare a variable that you, the publisher, can control (such as ad type or content position) with a variable that you cannot control (such as traffic source).
That way, you can see which ad content is performing better across traffic sources, devices, times of day, etc.
Which ad elements should I test?
As mentioned above, there are many variables that you can test for when running your A / B tests. You can control some of them and not others.
Ad placement
An important variable to test for is ad placement. This has to do with where your ad is on the page. Is it at the top, bottom, in the sidebar, or in the content? Ad placement affects the visibility of your ad to users.
Image size
Another variable is the image size. Obviously, bigger ads will make it more visible on the page. However, this does not necessarily mean that they will perform better. Remember, it's all about the user experience.
Traffic source
Which traffic source is generating the most ad clicks? Optimizing for the source will help you monetize your traffic better by understanding which traffic is most valuable to you. Perhaps it is worth investing more in certain paid traffic sources or you need to focus on your SEO.
Display color
This one is pretty self explanatory. What color are your ads? Should you aim for them to blend in or stand out?
Color psychology can have an impact on the conversion rate. So this is a more important factor than you might think.
density
How dense are your ads on the page? We've already discussed how ads can dilute each other so ad density can be a key factor.
Location targeting
Are you using location targeting to serve user ads that are relevant to their region?
Advertising network
One final variable that you can optimize for is the ad network. Different advertising networks may pay less or more for certain ads.
Tools for testing ads
There are many different tools you can use to test ads. I'll quickly go over some of the most popular ones, then I'll let you know about my secret weapon that I use to monetize traffic.
Google Optimize
If you need a simple tool to run A / B testing, you can use Google Optimize.
The upside is that Google Optimize is free. The downside is that you have to do everything manually, which takes forever.
Basically, you can call up Google Optimize and connect it to your Google Analytics account. You will then need to enter the information for each experiment that you want to run.
Optimistic
There are also a few paid ad optimization platforms that you can use. Optimizely is an example that is pretty popular in the industry.
I'm not a huge fan of Optimizely, however, as I don't find it particularly intuitive or easy to use. The free Ad Inserter plugin is an Optimizely alternative that many marketers love to use.
Ezoic
Finally, let me tell you something about my secret weapon: a tool called the Ezoic. Ezoic uses multivariate testing to allow the machines to automatically personalize ad placement / density.
Ezoic is fantastic because it allows you to customize your ad experience based on what your users want. This can help you monetize the traffic more effectively.
Ezoic enables you to run automated ad testing.
The software uses AI and machine learning to optimize your ads and makes decisions based on billions of data. These decisions are more effective than what you could do on your own.
Automating your tests saves a ton of time: you can test thousands of variables in minutes. If you try manually it could take months.
Ezoic has helped some websites increase total monthly revenue by 93% and average revenue per session by 87%. These are pretty amazing results to me.
Not only is Ezoic good for sales, it also helps you optimize the user experience for each and every visitor. If your display ads impact the user experience, Ezoic will remove the ad from the page.
Because of the enhanced user experience that Ezoic offers, users are likely to spend more time on your website. Companies have already achieved great results with it.
Simplypsychology.org saw an 84% longer time on site after launching the Ezoic platform.
And Askdavetaylor.com saw page views increase 49%.
You don't have to use Ezoic with Adsense only. You can use it with all the existing ad platforms and access thousands of demand partners to help you make more money, faster.
Conclusion
If you're a publisher, running display ads on your website is a great way to monetize traffic.
But there are tons of different types of ads and lots of different variables to think about as you run them. If you really want to make money from display ads, make sure they're optimized for the best possible performance.
Make sure you are running the right tests so that you get the most out of your ads.
What do you think of my tips for monetizing your traffic? Have you tried any of the tools mentioned? Let us know in the comments.