There are many ways to make money on your blog. One of the most popular is advertising. But what are the pros and cons? How do you actually go about it? And what do you need to do to make serious money with ads? Read on to discover how to make money on your blog with advertising.
I recently shared a post in response to a question I get asked A LOT! “How do blogs make money?”. I shared how there are lots of ways to make money, but basically, they boil down to 5 main categories: traditional advertising, affiliate links, sponsored posts, products and services.
It’s a great overview of the main ways blogs make money, but I wanted to go a bit deeper into the nitty gritty of exactly HOW to make money on your blog via these 5 ways: the pros and cons, the steps you need to take, and what you need to do to make some serious money. So today I am kicking off the first in the series, sharing how to make money on your blog with advertising.
What do we mean by advertising?
Traditional advertising, sometimes known as ‘display ads’ are the really obvious adverts you typically see in the sidebar of a blog, a popup along the bottom of the blog, within the content of individual blog posts and sometimes above the header of the blog. These ads are served by ad companies who automatically fill pre-determined ad spaces on your blog. You earn money by people seeing the ads and clicking on the ads.
Pros and Cons
The great thing about advertising is that you can make money from advertising right from the start. The bad thing about advertising is that until you have a really decent number of pageviews, you won’t make very much money.
To give you an idea, with a good ad network you can be looking to make $10+ per thousand page views (often known as RPM or rate per mille), so if you have 100,000 page views per month, you are looking at about $1,000 per month. If you really work hard to optimise your ads, you may be able to earn even more than this.
The bad news is that those really good RPMs are only available from certain ad networks like Mediavine and AdThrive, which will only let you join when your page views reach a certain level. When you first start out your RPM is more likely to be around $1.
The other issue is, of course, that ads can make your blog look cluttered and spammy if you are not careful. And if you are selling something, you may end up advertising your competitors – advertising is definitely not the right route for everyone!
So how do you go about it?
If you are just starting out, you can get ads on your site from Google AdSense. You just have to fill in a form and, so long as they approve you, you can start putting ads on your blog straight away. My experience with Google AdSense was I didn’t make loads of money – my RPM was about $1 – but it was better than nothing, and I didn’t do a lot to optimise my ads, so you can probably do better.
If you have a larger number of page views, you will almost certainly be able to get a better level of ad revenue from an ad network like Ezoic, Mediavine or AdThrive. The minimum requirements for these ad networks are as follows (based on Google Analytics figures):
- Ezoic – 10,000 sessions per month
- Mediavine – 50,000 sessions per month,
- AdThrive – 100,000 pageviews per month (Note: AdThrive will only accept you if the majority of your readers are based in the USA.)
I am currently with Mediavine and I can’t recommend them highly enough. The sign-up process is super smooth, they are incredibly helpful, and they do all the backend work so there’s no tricky tech stuff to worry about. AND they have an awesome Facebook community too. RPMs are typically $10+ when you first start out and once you’ve optimised your ads, they will be even better than that!
READ MORE >>> How to make money with Mediavine ads
READ MORE >>> 12 easy ways to grow your Mediavine income
How to earn lots of money with advertising
The only two things you need are a good ad network and lots and lots of pageviews. As far as a good ad network is concerned, I can highly recommend Mediavine (though there are other good ones out there). As far as getting the page views, the only way I have found to consistently grow my blog and get good page views month in, month out is through SEO. You can find my beginner’s guide to SEO here. But do bear in mind if you have a very niche blog, you may never be able to get the kind of page views needed to make a good income with advertising. The good news is there are plenty of other ways even a very niche blog with low page views can make a good income.
Find out more…
- How to make money on your blog…with affiliate links
- How to make money on your blog…with sponsored posts
- How to make money on your blog…with products and services
And for a good overview to the subject of making money on your blog do check out this post: How do blogs make money?
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Hi. Thank you for your articles. I’ve just started blogging, and not sure about making money with blogs. Affiliate program may be the most recommended. Since I’m a newbie, I’m not sure if these programs are safe, and would I be responsible for the promoted products?
Hi Chloe! Yes, I agree – if you are new to blogging, the best place to start is most definitely affiliate links. In general, if you join a reputable affiliate scheme (e.g Amazon, Share a Sale) then yes these programmes are safe. You should not be responsible for the promoted products – you are only linking to another website with a recommendation. But if it makes you feel safer, then why not include a line in your Disclosure Policy which says that the products you link to are recommendations only and you do not accept any liability for any losses/problems people may experience by buying them? Hope that helps! Eb 🙂