Comments on: Making money from your website using advertising

By: shawn

shawn — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:11:09 +0000

I made my website over a year ago and it has Alot of members I was just wondering if there could be a way to make a lil extra cash to keep the site maintained

By: Shun Smith

Shun Smith — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:17:19 +0000

Ok. This article was really helpful and confirmed what I wanted to do. As of right now I have affiliate links on my site, but I definitely don’t want to have to depend on another company giving me a certain percentage, like 8% of total sales. I definitely like the idea of hunting for advertisers and offering a flat rate.

By: Yaro Starak

Yaro Starak — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:14:12 +0000

CPM is definitely a viable option if you have the impressions. Bear in mind that it’s not easy to get CPM rates above $2 in many niches. What you should do is look at how much traffic you have and what CPM amount would make it worth while for you and see if that is something you think you could sell. If it’s$10CPM you might have trouble convincing advertisers to give you that if you are not in a high value nice.

By: aftab ahmed

aftab ahmed — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:25:45 +0000

Okay thank you i have a better understanding now. The only question i have left is if you have a high impression rate, would you have a greater chance of being able to get more money out of an advertiser for the payment method CPM? And what would you say in your professional opinion is a fair price to ask (with the CPM method) for a site averaging 500,000 impressions monthly ? 1,000,000?

I know this may be hard to answer considering you didn’t prefer the method i’m asking about but i would still love to hear your advice. Thank you for your time Yaro, I’m fairly new to this and you have already helped greatly from your article here and your responses. I really appreciate it.

By: Bruce Gillies

Bruce Gillies — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:14:44 +0000

I found this article very informative. I agree with the author that selling ads to businesses in your niche seems like the most productive way to monetize your sites traffic. I am just now setting up advertising spots on our golf review hq website. Thank you

By: Lok Bahadur Thapa

Lok Bahadur Thapa — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 06:04:47 +0000

I haven’t make money with banner programs and adsense yet…i found your story and found awesome and helpful…anyway thanks for your tips…

By: Joe in Toledo

Joe in Toledo — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:41:19 +0000

A Paypal “Donate” button? Are you kidding me? I would stop visiting a website on principle if the author flat out asked for money. Millions of free websites online, everyone posting information for anybody to use, and millions of worthwhile charitable causes to support, and you want people to just *give* money to *you* because you have the character flaw of begging?

By: DFord

DFord — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 21:59:22 +0000

I can only speak from experience but Google does such a good job optimizing ads for the highest revenue that it’s hard to compete. I have just opted to use Adsense and focus on building better content for the site. Your post is absolutely true though, its all about the statistics and numbers.

By: gopal

gopal — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:28:29 +0000

I am a beginner….getting about 600 unique visitors per day. Your article is quite useful for me. Thanks a lot.

By: iraqs0ft

iraqs0ft — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:10:26 +0000

Hi Yaro,

I’m Australian and am looking to set up something with a verys imilar model to what yout alked about in your article. My question is, what about tax? Did you ahve to register for an ABN? If not, how did you declare the money on your tax return?

Thanks,

By: Albert

Albert — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:03:53 +0000

Awesome article!
Initially I had not even noticed that it was an article of 2005, it seemed so relevant
However, I believe that for very small niches, focus on local business partners, is today the best solution
Generic banner ads are useless and often harmful, while in a program like adsense you can not find enough companies that invest in advertising, with the risk of having only generic banner as in other programs

By: Albert C

Albert C — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:11:46 +0000

This is an excellent article! Ive just put up my website and am working on generating traffic. Eventually, I’ll find ways to make some revenue. Thanks for the great tips, Yaro!

By: Online Opportunities

Online Opportunities — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:03:58 +0000

I have only use adsence and some affiliate links on my site and even though I have enough traffic I don’t have enough revenues from those programs, I will try that kind of advertising placement and see if I will have better results

By: Jamie Hudson

Jamie Hudson — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:36:58 +0000

Thanks for the info, and although it’s quite old it’s still all relevant. I’ve recently closed down my advertising spots as the pay sucks. Appreciate the tips though.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:33:13 +0000

Hi! Great info! I was wondering, don’t you maybe know of a good online site that allows for listings of sites that allow advertising. I’m using addynamo, but like you said…the ads are not relevant to content. I want a place where I can list my site…where other people who want to advertise can find me…so that i can work with them individually. Any suggestions?

By: Whitney

Whitney — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 05:14:22 +0000

Awesome article as always Yaro!! I have always been a firm believer in advertising, although up until now my audience wasn’t really big enough to “make it happen” so to speak, but I honestly am not gonna give up, and I believe it will happen eventually if I stick to it. My preferred method is Adsense, although I haven’t made very much with it yet, but I’m gonna stick with and see what happens. Like you said it’s very well targeted to whatever site you have, which is very important as we all know. I haven’t made any money with direct advertising yet, but I haven’t ruled it out, as I know the huge potential with it. At some point I’m gonna bring direct advertising back to my blog, once I get my readership up big enough. I do definitely agree that you should have a steady flow of visitors before you attempt to make money this way. Thanks for the great post Yaro!

By: Feargal

Feargal — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 22:20:48 +0000

Can you explain what a unique visitor is? If you get 500-1000 unique visitors per day does this mean that you are getting 500-1000 new people checking your website everyday who haven’t done so previously or can it be the same clientele of 500-1000 unique people coming back every day to use your website?
Thanks
Feargal

By: Abeer

Abeer — Wed, 04 May 2011 07:55:41 +0000

Great post I loved it!!!

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:37:34 +0000

Oh! and also, do i need my own dedicated server to run a site that may have a high traffic of users? I’m sorry for all the questions =x

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:34:53 +0000

By: Yaro

Yaro — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 05:19:42 +0000

Because getting a uniform $3 CPM every month from one advertiser is not easy AND my original stats packages report a lot more impressions than what Google Analytics would report.

However you are right, there are no doubt ways I could have made money with CPM, but I never liked it, I preferred to be paid a set monthly amount regardless of how much traffic the advertiser received.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 09:06:24 +0000

“How much should you charge?

By this time my site was getting close to 1000 unique visitors per day, with about 300,000 impressions per month. I also knew that many companies charged by what is called CPM or cost per 1000 impressions. Back then this was by far the most commonly used scale for pricing of web advertising and you could expect to earn anywhere from $0.10 to $10.00 CPM.”

So lets say ONE advertiser pays you $3.00 CPM. At the rate stated above your already averaging about $900 a month with only one advertiser.

but later near the end of the article you say…

“Increasing ad revenue

Eventually I reached a point where I was averaging $500 per month and peaked at $1000 in one month.”

So….if you peaked at $1000 dollars one month how is that a step up from the CPM method stated above with multiple advertisers not just one? it’s like 4 A.M where i am so maybe im just out of it, but if you could explain that’d be great?

By: Yaro

Yaro — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:18:03 +0000

It fluctuates based on the number of active sponsors I have Chris, but in terms of an overall stable and near-passive income stream, advertising has been by far the best. It’s not the largest source but it has been there the longest in my career.

By: christopher

christopher — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 06:35:17 +0000

I noticed this was written in 2005. Do you have any data to support current traffic needs to create income or has it remained the same for the last 6 years? Thanks for the post

By: Rick

Rick — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:47:44 +0000

How do you ensure that no one else steals the basic idea for you website? Essentially every website could be reproduced at any point in time. Are there any copyright or patent process that you must go through if you are trying to commercialize your website?

Did you set up a bank account for your website or can you use a personal account? Do you need a special license to be able to make money through advertisers?

By: Sharon

Sharon — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:31:34 +0000

Very Cool, just trying to get my site up and going with online advertising as well. Obviously its all about traffic, the more traffic the higher price you can demand. Kind of like a billboard.

By: J @ Make lots of money now

J @ Make lots of money now — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:28:06 +0000

I notice you posted this post back in 2005. It must have been something for you at that time to make money with your blog. I wonder what it was like. There was as nearly as much blogs at that time and so, I guess, not as much people on the internet. But I sure do think that blogging was much easier at that time?

By: John

John — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:26:39 +0000

There’s so much to learn and so many paths to navigate when first starting out, like I am. My biggest question is with the banner rotation method, does your site need to be formatted with php instead of html?

I sometimes wonder if Google adsense doesn’t turn users off. Sometimes I think it looks a bit amateurish to some, but I guess that depends on who you’re asking. For right now it’s really the only thing I have making me any money (though not much) so I’m sticking with it.

How about a PayPal donate button? Have you ever experimented with that, and what are your thoughts there? I wonder if that too might turn some people off with the thinking, you already have ads on a site, so why should I tip you? Then again it could be something that a handful of people might want to engage in, tipping you so to speak for your efforts. Has anyone had any luck with a PayPal donate button?

Anyway, thanks for this, Yaro. I’ll be staying up to date on your posts from now on. You seem to have quality content.

By: Dirk

Dirk — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:45:46 +0000

You are spot on about 500-1000 daily part. I was expecting miracles once i started getting 100 uniques every day, lol. Experience always helps.

By: Christopher X Gerber

Christopher X Gerber — Thu, 27 May 2010 01:13:49 +0000

I’ve often wondered if people might like to advertise their sites by posting a banner at a one-time cost. The other question I have is whether the advertising method itself can draw people to advertise on a site, as opposed to building traffic with content.

I know the general rule of thumb is “Content is King” but I’ve decided to experiment a little. Think about The Million Dollar Homepage: there wasn’t any content, just a buzz. There must be other ways to build traffic, no?

Spheres of the Web (spheresoftheweb.com) is the name of my experiment. Hopefully it will shed some light on a few advertising questions.