What Monetization is Right For My Site?

photo credit: A Girl Next Door

Earning money on a blog is a likely dream for many bloggers because it means that we are making money doing something that we love.

We get to write about a topic that is so interesting to us and then, at the end of the month, get some money in our banks.

Despite the pull to making money on a blog, so few blogs do it. Now, that could be because they don’t have a lot of traffic. However, I have seen blogs make money with very little traffic.

It’s not the amount of traffic, but how it is used. However, the fewer number of visitors that are coming to your site, the higher the quality must be. That’s just a little side note.

With that said, what is the right type of monetization for a website? Is there one?

So many people have different opinions. It’s your job to sit down and really think hard about it. It can mean the difference between a lot of potential revenue.

Monetizing Your Blog

It should be noted that there isn’t any one type of truly perfect monetization. There are some that do make more money than others, but the trade off is difficult in finding those advertisers. And there are others that require a lot of work while others require no work.

To better help you determine what works for your specific blog, here is a list of the different ways in which you could monetize your blog. See what works for you.

Adsense

I say Adsense, but really, this can be any CPC program. Adsense just so happens to be the best.

This is the easiest way to make money on a blog. You throw up a few ad blocks on your site and if that’s all you’re going to do, you’ll start to potentially generate revenue.

I have a friend who owns over a thousand websites and, with his Adsense on them, generates around $50,000 a month. So, it’s obviously possible to make tremendous amounts of money with Adsense.

The problem is that it’s so easy. When something is so easy, it creates further laziness. Despite the easiness of Adsense, you should be testing different ad units. However, most people don’t do this and it results in lost revenue.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t normally suggest using Adsense. I hate giving up a percentage of my earnings to someone else and considering Google probably keeps so much, it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

CPM

Cost per impression is an interesting one. I tend to be in favor of this and it is also what a lot of newspapers do with their websites. They charge a certain amount per thousand visits and advertisers can spend as much as they want.

What I’ve noticed, obviously, is that CPM usually only works with high traffic sites. So, if you’re running a news blog, for example, you’re going to generate more traffic than a blog about something obscure. So, having the CPM on that site pays off.

The problem with CPM is that it doesn’t pay very well. You’re selling an impression only, so naturally, an advertiser won’t pay as much for it. For example, you might get $5 per thousand impressions. If your traffic is worth more, maybe $10. It all depends on the niche obviously; some sites can get more. The point I’m making is that if you are getting 10,000 impressions daily, that’s only $50 a day. It’s not exactly a full time salary.

There are obviously other, more effective ways, that you could generate $50 a day with 10,000 impressions. Does that mean that you shouldn’t try it? Of course not. If you’re getting a lot of traffic, why not try it out? You might generate more.

Private Advertising

This is one of the more favorites for a lot of bloggers and it is a personal favorite of mine. Using this method, you sell individual ad blocks on your site to people without the use of a third party company like Google.

The reason I like this one so much is because all of the revenue of the sale goes directly to you. There is no “partnership” as Google would like to call it. Instead, it’s all going straight into your pocket.

In my book, that’s pretty good. However, it’s not so simple.

Selling private advertising is a mixture of CPC and CPM. While the user isn’t paying for impressions or clicks–instead, they are paying a lump sum based on how many visitors you get per month–you still need to keep the CPC and CPM in mind.

If you’re getting very few impressions, no one is going to buy an ad. And, if no one is clicking on the ad, no one will buy the ad. So, private advertising does require that the traffic on your site be good.

The favorite for many bloggers is the 125×125; however, there are so many different ad sizes that you could sell and so many different places on a blog. Choose what works best for you.

There is a down side to this type of monetization and that’s the fact that it requires you to find the sales. When you have a very large blog, people will come to you. But, when you have a medium sized blog that might only sell an ad for $50 a month, how do you find the people?

Here are a few tips:

• Have your Advertise page and include as much information as you can. Be very honest with your potential buyers. Let them know how much traffic you have.
• Contact a few blogs in the same niche as you–or something very similar–to offer them advertising. Give them some sort of a deal where they get the first month for half off. They’ll see the value of the ad and then keep buying.
• Throw up an affiliate ad in its place. For the time being, you might just want to throw up an affiliate ad. It’ll still make money and it’ll help you diversify your site.

Private advertising is great, but even it can still be best by other ways of generating revenue. Private advertising and above are fan favorites for news blogs. The other two I’m going to touch on tend to be more for service blogs, but that doesn’t mean your niche news site can’t make revenue using these either.

Affiliate Marketing

This is one that can really make you a lot of money. With affiliate marketing, you sell other people’s products. And, every time someone from your site buys something from them, you get commissioned.

So, let’s say you run a blog about fashion. You might have an affiliate offer for women to buy a new pair of high heels. The shoes run $400 and the affiliate gives you 8%. Someone comes along and buys the shoes off the site. You just walked away making $32.00.

There are obviously other ways of making money with affiliate marketing. One of the best ways is with your newsletter list. If you haven’t signed up yet, head on over to Aweber and sign up. You want to gather leads because affiliate marketing can really produce a lot of revenue for you.

The reason for this is because people are more likely to trust you when you’ve got a newsletter. They trust you with their e-mail so they’re more likely to buy a product from you. You want them to because each commission could potentially be mega profit.

This makes the most when it comes to CPM, CPC and CPA. CPA means that you’re making money based on an action; the sale. There are obviously fewer sales than clicks, but each sale makes money.

But, there is one final way to make money with your site that trumps them all. And that’s…

Sell Your Own Product

The problem with affiliate marketing is that you’re selling another person’s product. You only get a percentage of the sale. You might get 50% of the sale, but you’re still only getting 50%.

What would happen if you sold your own product? You’d get the entire sale.

When you put out your own product, people see that as a way of developing authority. I talked about being an expert in a niche. If you have your own product to sell, that demonstrates you’re obviously an expert. Why? You’ve taken the time to create this product.

But, selling a product does require trust. You just can’t make one and hope for the best. You’ve got to actually market it. Once again, build your list.

If you have people subscribed to your list, they will more likely buy your product.

Make your list. And you’ll have more money coming in when you launch your product.

What’s Right For You?

With all of this said and done, what is the right method? That’s up to you. You know what ways to make money and you know how to make money, but do you know which is the best way? Figure it out. Experiment. Diversify. Don’t JUST have CPC. Throw up some CPM. Put together a mini-store on your site or just link to one affiliate offer.

It is better to get $100 from ten different places than $1,000 from one place. Should that one place disappear, you’re screwed. If one of those ten places disappears, you’ve still got $900.

What works for you? What sorts of monetization do you do? Chime in below.