How to make money from adverts on your website

There are lots of free resources on the internet which are entirely funded through advertising. Online advertising is big business!

So, how can you get a piece of the action?

Well, the truth of the matter is that there is very little money in online advertising. It takes a lot of visitors (we're talking millions per month) to earn enough to live off.

But, with less visitors, you can certainly earn a nice side income.

There are basically 2 ways to manage advertisers on your website.

Firstly, you can manage it all yourself. You set your charges and try to attract advertisers. For a lot of businesses, this has proved the most lucrative method. This is basically because there are always plenty of people who know nothing about effective online advertising who will advertise anywhere if your sales patter is convincing enough.

There are plenty of unscrupulous businesses who are making money this way (including many generic online business directories).

The other method is to use an intermediary advertising agency.

There are many of these agencies around and most of them will pay you on a per-click basis. This means that you get a set fee every time somebody clicks on the advert, rather than a flat fee per month. This is how the advertisers prefer to pay. And this is why having low numbers of visitors means that you won't earn much. Keep in mind that probably only 1% of your visitors will click on an advert on your website.

Different advertising agencies pay different amounts, and most of them will actually pay differing amounts depending on the adverts you are displaying.

By far, the best intermediary agency is Google Adsense. Even though they never actually tell you how much they pay for the adverts you display, they actually seem to end up paying more than anyone else. Not because they are more generous than the competition, but because they generate more clicks.

Google knows pretty much everything about everyone. They are tracking you on almost every website that you visit. So they know what you like, and they know what you click on, so they can target very good ads to you when you are visiting websites.

Google AdSense is basically the opposite end of the Google AdWords system. When you advertise on Google using AdWords, the exact same system can be used to advertise on other people's websites, through Google AdSense.

You can advertise your website on other people's websites using Google AdWords, or you can advertise other people's websites on your website using Google AdSense.

It's two sides of the same coin.

The downsides of Google Adsense is that you dont choose the adverts that appear on your website, Google does. And it displays different ads to different people, so it's very difficult to see what adverts are being displayed on your website.

You basically just insert a snippet of code into the space on your website that you want the adverts to appear, and Google inserts the adverts into that space automatically.

This means that you could have your competitors' ads appearing on your site.

There are options to block certain ads, certain advertisers and certain types of ads, but this method isn't foolproof. You basically have to get used to the idea that you have handed this part of your website over to Google. It's the price you pay.

If you need to control the ads that appear on your site, forget about Google AdSense and choose one of the other providers. A lot of them will let you choose exactly which adverts to display from a list.

Like most intermediary advertising agencies, Google AdSense pays you based on how many people click on the adverts (although it varies for each ad and they haven't publicised what the rate is). So the more clicks your site generates, the more money you make. And because of Google's data on everyone, they can target ads better than anyone else to earn you the most money.

OpenGlobal aren't just web designers. We understand how the internet works and what can, and cannot, work online to make money for your business. Contact us today on 0845 269 9624 to find out how we can help you to maximise your online potential.