Advertise On Your Blog Or Website

Many of us are now looking for different ways in which we can supplement our monthly income and for most people that will mean looking at ways to earn money whilst working from home. Working from home allows us to fit our extra commitments around current jobs, whether they be full- or part-time, and around our family life as well.

Now that the internet access is increasingly available to a larger proportion of society, people are becoming more confident about developing their own web presence in the form of blogs and websites. There are many reasons why someone might wish to set up a blog or website: to promote a business for which they work; to share their thoughts and ideas about a certain subject; to sell their crafts or other items or simply just as a an online journal about their life and experiences.

How can I earn money from advertising on my blog?

Whatever the reason for setting up the blog or website, it is possible to earn money from it by placing advertising ‘boards’ there. In short, companies will pay you to be able to place adverts on your webpage so that they will be shown to your readers or visitors whenever they visit your site.

Most of the time, this payment will come in the form of a penny or two every time someone clicks on one of the advertisements. It will therefore be in your interests to do everything possible to drive traffic to your site, as only a small proportion of your visitors will actually click on the advertisements anyway, so if you have only have a handful of visitors each day the chances are that you won’t make any money from the advertising on your site.

Who is going to pay me to put advertising on my blog or website?

The biggest scheme you should be part of is probably Google Adsense, although it is definitely worth spending some time investigating whether there are other local or regional advertisers who might also be interested. You can use this link to take you to Google’s Adsense page to get started immediately.

If you apply to Google to join their Adsense scheme and you are successful, a Google representative will visit your site to ensure that it is legitimate and appropriate for inclusion in their program. Once your site has been verified in this way you will be contacted with details about setting up an account with them. As soon as this is up and running, Google will allow you to install codes into your website or blog so that the advertisements appear on your site. Should this seem a little too complicated, there are many internet tutorials available to help.

Google has access to an almost incomprehensible amount of data about how people use the internet in general, as well as specific types of sites within it. The advertisements placed on your web page will therefore be highly targeted to the intended audience of your website and will be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that they are still valid, the links still work, they still match your audience’s needs, etc.

How will I actually make money from advertising on my site?

At the point at which you register with a program such as Google’s Adsense, you effectively set up an account with them through which you will be able to receive any payments you are due.

Remember that you will need to get people clicking on the links rather than just looking at them and the vast majority of people will just look, so you need to drive a lot of traffic to your site in order to keep ‘click through’ rates up. Consider promoting your site through social media streams such as Twitter and Facebook, which will help to engage a wider audience. Think carefully about who you think would enjoy visiting your web page and work out how to get in touch with them, which could be via social media or could be by taking part in chat forums, for example.

Take the time to search the web and visit other blogs and websites yourself, as well as commenting on people’s blog posts regularly. Whenever you comment on someone else’s blog you are able to sign in using the profile from your own blog, so if you comment on more popular sites all the visitors who read the comments will see you there as well. This might spark their interest and encourage them to head on over to visit your pages as well.

Anything else I should know?

Google are quite hot on spotting fraudulent use of their Adsense opportunities, so don’t think that you’ll be able to cheat the system by clicking on the links yourself. In fact, you should discourage anyone in your household from doing so as Google will trace the activity back to your address and remove you from Adsense.

You will not be considered for advertising schemes if your website is not deemed to be popular enough, as it simply won’t be worth the time and effort if the predicted return is not sufficient. In the first instance, you should therefore make sure that you work on getting a decent blog or website up and running, then worry about making money from advertising a little further down the line.