Types of Ads and Payment Methods Vary Greatly
In an earlier article, we outlined how you can make money by displaying ads on your website. That article also had links to major advertising networks that will get advertisers for you.
To really make money from ads on your website, you should know the different options available. A familiarity with these options will help you select just the right kind of ads and payment modes that suit your situation and skills.
Contextual Ads, Banner Ads, Text Link Ads and More
Advertising networks offer different kinds of ads, and the CPM, CPC and CPA models of getting paid. If you approach advertisers directly (instead of going through the ad networks), you will have to negotiate everything, and might even have to install software to count impressions and clicks.
Contextual Ads: Contextual ads are tailored to your web page content. For example, if your page discusses pet dogs, the ads might offer dog food, dog collars and all other dog-related products and services. The ad networks will analyze the context and serve relevant ads.
Banner Ads: Though “banner” refers to a format, by banner ads we typically refer to ads that allow you greater control over what ads appear on your page. Contextual ads can mean that competitors get to display their ads on your page. When you select a banner ad yourself, you can select a merchant who is not a competitor, for example.
Text Links: Text links are short text that you display on your web page. These texts constitute live links to the advertisers’ websites. Text link advertisers typically seek “link popularity” in addition to displaying a sales message.
Popups and Popunders: These are advertisements that appear not on your own page, but as separate pages when your page is viewed. Popups appear in the foreground, often distracting the reader, while popunders remain in the background that you see when you close the main page.
CPM, CPC and CPA
You get paid in different ways for displaying the advertisements. CPM, CPC and CPA refer to these different methods of payment.
CPM: Under CPM, you get paid a certain amount per thousand impressions. Impressions are determined by page-views (not ‘hits’) that your website gets. If your site has many visitors, and they visit many pages of the site during each visit, you will have many page-views. Each time a page with an ad is viewed, the ad gets an “impression”.
CPC: CPC refers to the arrangement where you get paid when your site readers not only view but also click on the advertisements. You get paid a few cents or even dollars for each click, depending on the value of the click to the advertiser. Remember that if you try to get the ads clicked (or click them yourself) without any genuine interest in what the ads offer, the amounts paid to you can become too low to be worth it.
CPA: Under CPA, even clicking is not enough. Instead a sale or sales lead must be generated if you are to get paid. CPA ads can produce the highest level of income for you, even a hundred or more dollars per sale.
Your situation and skill level should determine which of these options you select. If you know how to promote products, and pre-sell them, CPA will be the best option. On the other hand, if you can only display the ads at your site without any active promotion of the offers in the ads, you are better with CPM or CPC.
