Most people start blogging and get excited about the fact that you can actually make real money just from putting a few ads on your blog. This then leads to the main reason that ad-blocker and other ad blocking software has become so popular. When people to choose to monetize their blogs they seem to think that more ads means more money. This is true, but it is not now you monetize your blog efficiently and is exactly how you can trigger the downfall of your website. People do not want to visit your site and have to dig through layers of adverts in order to find the content they came for. Yes you may get a nice amount of money per visit, but over time the visits will slowly decrease until your site gets no visitors. Knowing how to effectively monetize a site with ads will save you a lot of heartache and is not as difficult as it seems. Sites like answers.com have become the most horrible websites on the web, you don’t want to become another site like this.
The first rule when running a site is never assume that your site is so good that people are going to flock from far and wide to view it. Unless you have a really particular talent or skill that is not something many people can do, chances are the content you post on your website can be found in several other places. In order to make your site work well, is to build a better user experience. If a user comes to your site and is plagued ad every corner with ads, the user will not enjoy their experience, and will likely avoid engaging with your site any further. A click from a search engine is like a fish biting a worm, you don’t want the fish to grab the worm and leave without biting the hook. You need to make the presentation as appealing as possible. If your site is better than other sites, you will get more traffic. More traffic means more ad impressions and more money for you. As always, never take advantage of the traffic by adding more ads. Make it look natural and never shove ads in visitors faces. More visitors will come if your site is good and this is how you get more ad impressions. Never sell out! Perseverance is the only way to make a successful website.
With everything that I have said above you are likely asking yourself, how many ads is too many and where should i place them. This is a very subjective question and there is no general answer that will cover all website, but here are a few things you should know to reduce the chance of making any mistakes.
Don’t bunch ads together
There is no point putting several ads all in the same location. Cluttered adverts look ugly, and usually cause the user not to look at this area of the page because they know its all ugly spam.
Don’t slow down page load speed
Adsense may be one of the most popular ad networks, but it is also one of the slowest. From experience i have seen each adsense advert add up to 1 second to the page load. Even when you use async ads, the page still is not considered loaded and it can make the users browser run very slow if they are not using a powerful device. Every ad you add to a page means more processing and more delay it takes to load the page.
Blend ads in with content
Putting ads in obvious locations with big flashy banners is exactly what most people have trained their eyes to ignore. You need to merge your ads in with the content. Never put more than 1 ad in the body of an article. Putting it near the upper 3rd of an article is usually the best place to put your ads.
Consider Mobile
Sidebars are a popular and often effective location to place adverts, but these do not work for mobile sites. If you have a responsive site, chances are the sidebar gets moved to the very bottom of the page when viewed on mobile. If you have all your ads here or a large number of them on the sidebar, it will slow down the page and a large amount of visitors will never go down to this part of the page and never see these ads.
Users don’t need to see an ad on every page
When placing ads people often set it up in a way so that a user will see an advert on screen no matter what part of the website they are currently looking at. There is no need for this. A user is here to view your website, this is more valuable than the couple of cents you get from a user clicking the ad. Don’t make a user leave your site for a couple of cents. It can also make users dislike your site. They don’t want to feel like they are subject to a plague of adverts. Subtle advertising works far better than in your face. If a user visits one page and sees the same add 10 times all they will remember is that the website sucks. If they visit 10 pages and see the same add once, they will subconsciously remember the ad. This doesn’t benefit you, but it does benefit your long term income since you can guarantee effective advertising.
Don’t use popups for ads
If you want to use a popup for your newsletter then go ahead, but use a cookie to make sure it doesn’t keep popping up every time the user visits the site. Making ads pop up or even pop under are horrible intrusions to the user experience. They make you quick money and also make your site look bad. If you are running a viral site that has a 100% bounce rate then do what you wish, but if you want to run a proper website, don’t do this. It makes your site cheap and will push users away.
