The Most Profitable Way To Monetize Your Site With Ads

21 replies
Hi Warriors!

Just wanted to share this tip with you.

If you are using Google Adsense or any other ad network out there you are loosing money.

Why? Because they are are the middle man between you and another business.

My recommendation if you are making money this way would be the following:

Use Adsense to see what type of ads are being displayed on your site.

Once you identify this, remove Adsense and negotiate directly with the businesses advertising on your site.

Not only you will make more money but it will be cheaper for the businesses so they will be happy to do it.

To your success!
#ads #monetize #profitable #site
  • Profile picture of the author Silentkiller1
    Good tip but it might be time consuming .
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  • Profile picture of the author jasondinner
    Originally Posted by Esteban Gomez View Post

    Hi Warriors!

    Just wanted to share this tip with you.

    If you are using Google Adsense or any other ad network out there you are loosing money.

    Why? Because they are are the middle man between you and another business.

    My recommendation if you are making money this way would be the following:

    Use Adsense to see what type of ads are being displayed on your site.

    Once you identify this, remove Adsense and negotiate directly with the businesses advertising on your site.

    Not only you will make more money but it will be cheaper for the businesses so they will be happy to do it.

    To your success!
    And you know this from personal experience?

    Maybe in the make money online niche, but not the case in most other niches.

    You don't really know how Google Adsense operates.

    If you're getting a lot of traffic a lot of advertisers will target your site through Adwords, PLUS at least half of the ads you will see on any given site running adsense will be retargeting ads from sites you've already visited.

    I'm averaging $1500+ a day in publisher revenue from Adsense and other networks, so I'm not just talking out of my ass
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  • Profile picture of the author Robert Puddy
    Originally Posted by Esteban Gomez View Post

    Hi Warriors!

    Just wanted to share this tip with you.

    !
    Esteban A word of advice, you and your brother are plainly newbies at this. and your regurgitating tips someone else has fed you.

    Your not ready to be giving people tips. instead look at commenting in other peoples threads, ask questions, don't presume to give advice when everyone can see your not at all experienced.

    All your going to do is convince people to ignore you, or shoot your advice tips down

    I applaud your enthusiasm, but for your own good don't antagonise the majority of experienced folks in here by starting threads with at best questionable advice.

    This meant to help you, its not at all meant as a put down
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  • Profile picture of the author NathanO
    I'd rather enjoy the steady income stream from adsense, than to consume my time looking for potential businesses who would like to display their ads on my website. One of the things money can't buy is time.
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    • Profile picture of the author jasondinner
      Originally Posted by NathanO View Post

      I'd rather enjoy the steady income stream from adsense, than to consume my time looking for potential businesses who would like to display their ads on my website. One of the things money can't buy is time.
      Only people who discount Adsense or the publisher model as a whole are the ones who don't make money that way or who tried and failed.
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  • Profile picture of the author jgant
    There is no way I could generate the revenue I do with display ads spending umpteen hours per week contacting advertisers, negotiating rates, embedding banner ads etc.

    Adsense does the job for me and gets top rates so I can focus on traffic which is what generates the revenue. Besides if I wanted to I could contact advertisers to advertise in addition to Adsense ads and enjoy more revenue... But I don't bother because I use Adsense, Media.net and gumgum whic is more than enough ads on my site.
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    • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
      Originally Posted by jgant View Post

      There is no way I could generate the revenue I do with display ads spending umpteen hours per week contacting advertisers, negotiating rates, embedding banner ads etc.
      There are a few problems with this statement.

      There is no way I could generate the revenue I do with display ads
      With a targeted audience and good traffic, selling your own ads would be far more lucrative than adsense from a pure dollar amount if done correctly. OP was, in fact, correct - AdSense is just the middle man who takes a large cut.


      spending umpteen hours per week
      This is a typical hurdle for IMers. You said "umpteen" hours per week. Making a full-time income working "umpteen" hours per week is a winning proposition in my book. The problem is that IMers typically don't want to spend more than 5 hours a week doing any kind of work.

      contacting advertisers, negotiating rates, embedding banner ads etc.
      Again, if your site is quality and your traffic converts, it should only take a small number of advertisers (maybe 10-20, give or take) to make a full-time income, depending on traffic. As for embedding banners, there are far better ways to handle that. To be honest, there are FAR better (and more lucrative) advertising options to offer clients.
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      • Profile picture of the author jasondinner
        Originally Posted by wolfmmiii View Post

        OP was, in fact, correct - AdSense is just the middle man who takes a large cut.
        Google pays the publisher much more than they keep for content (68%).

        Plus they command higher advertising rates due to the fact that on quality sites with good traffic multiple advertisers compete for the spot which drives their advertising costs up and Google and their publishers' revenues up.

        Try to convince a single advertiser to pay the same CPM you get from Google in any given ad spot you have adsense running and are hoping to replace with the advertiser directly.

        It won't happen - unless they're stupid.

        What you need to do is get multiple advertisers in the same spot and hope they ad up collectively to what you were getting in publisher revenue.

        It's not as easy as you make it out to be. Have you been able to accomplish this in your business?

        And the OP does not know what he's talking about. He's just starting threads blindly regurgitating something he heard in some audio from some one claiming to be an "expert" in an area they know nothing about.

        In the make money online space, it could be the case, but in most other niches, it is definitely not.

        Otherwise you would see all of the super high traffic getting websites run my multi million dollar companies doing it.

        What they do is get the publisher network revenue from more than one network in many cases AND sell ad space.
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        • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
          Jason...

          Your comment illustrates what I said - AdSense is, by definition, a middle-man. I've made lots of money with AdSense over the years so I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that in may cases, selling your own advertising can be far more lucrative than AdSense.

          Case in point - I run a local website. I receive 500-1500 uniques per day, depending on what's happening in my area and how much I feel like writing about it. My traffic is almost entirely local and virtually none of it is from search or paid traffic.

          Because of the makeup of my site, I would never consider AdSense for it because my local demographics are far, far more valuable to local businesses than to random advertisers in the AdWords program.

          Have I implemented yet? Not really - site is only a year old. That said, I have zero doubt that direct sales will far outpace any AdSense placements on it, especially since I've already been approached by a handful of local businesses about advertising on it.

          I do agree that OP seemed to just be regurgitating info. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the info is completely incorrect.

          Ultimately, different things work for different people/businesses. You seem to have a real good handle on AdSense and I commend you. Maybe I'll experiment a bit.

          Tom
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          • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
            Tom and Jason both have good points.

            If you have a general-audience site, getting Adsense income makes sense. If you have a tight niche, especially a local one like Tom's, direct selling your ad spots makes sense.

            One of the things I like about Adwords is that ads show on sites I may not have found or considered, and on a spread of such sites. It's not worth my time trying to negotiate with every wannabe mogul who thinks I want to pay a fortune for their 12 visitors per month.

            If a site does start showing enough results, I can target a campaign to that site, and even specific pages on that site, at rates much less than most "I wanna sell ads directly" types want to charge.

            The OP is talking out of a dark and musty place in his nether regions. I do get proposals like he described. They get my attention just long enough to determine that's what they are, then they hit the junk folder.
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      • Profile picture of the author jgant
        Originally Posted by wolfmmiii View Post

        There are a few problems with this statement.

        With a targeted audience and good traffic, selling your own ads would be far more lucrative than adsense from a pure dollar amount if done correctly. OP was, in fact, correct - AdSense is just the middle man who takes a large cut.


        This is a typical hurdle for IMers. You said "umpteen" hours per week. Making a full-time income working "umpteen" hours per week is a winning proposition in my book. The problem is that IMers typically don't want to spend more than 5 hours a week doing any kind of work.

        Again, if your site is quality and your traffic converts, it should only take a small number of advertisers (maybe 10-20, give or take) to make a full-time income, depending on traffic. As for embedding banners, there are far better ways to handle that. To be honest, there are FAR better (and more lucrative) advertising options to offer clients.
        I respect your local model and it may be best selling ads directly. The point I was making is it's not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Like you, I publish local sites and work directly with local businesses. I also publish affiliate and newsletter focused sites.

        But I also publish a popular site that does several thousand dollars per day in display ad revenue via display ad networks. I would have to contact a lot of businesses just to try to come close to matching Network display ad revenue... and I don't think I would come close it. Besides. if I wanted to, I could just rent ad slots in addition to my network display ads.

        JasonDinner makes good points about bidding etc. that results in Adsense being an efficient model for publishers.

        High traffic competitors in my niche seldom sell out their BuySellAds slots, which aren't priced all that high.

        Also, Adsense does retargeting which results in additional advertisers and the retargeting portion of my revenue is quite good. Retargeting means more competition for the ad spots. I'm not saying Adsense will always be the best option, but in some cases it is, including mine.

        That said, I'm open to selling ad space if a good offer is made, but I'm not chasing down offers because the amount of outreach required to come even close to my revenue would consume too much time, time that is better spent getting an additional million visitors per month.

        The reason I don't wish to spend umpteen hours per week finding advertisers is because I'm pretty busy managing my site's social media, newsletter, daily publishing schedule, video creation, reviewing content, etc. I do employ people, but I find their time is best spent on content and social media management. I do work more than five hours per week to earn my living. I put in a regular 8:30 to 4 day, Mon. To Fri.

        With respect to sites like John Chow and Matthew Woodward not using Adsense, in addition to JasonDinner's explanation, MMO niches typically have a very low ctr for Adsense and those sites will definitely perform better with affiliate offers and promoting a newsletter.

        While I also generate affiliate commissions, my site monetized primarily with network display ads is in a popular and fun niche which happens to do best with display ads. I've tested more than fifty cpa offers and hundreds of other affiliate offers with millions of page views, but nothing performs as well as display ads. I guess some niches just work better with display ads.

        I'm not an Adsense-or-bust guy. I run other profitable sites, including profitable local sites, which don't use display ads because affiliate offers and direct deals with advertisers are far more lucrative. I go with what performs the best; I do a lot of testing to figure it out.

        At the end of the day there isn't a one-size-fits-all monetization strategy, including selling ads vs. using a display ad network.

        I'll end with I used to focus my online biz promoting affiliate offers exclusively, but I have to admit publishing wide appeal sites is a lot of fun even if the best monetization option is network display ads. In fact not selling is refreshing because I just publish stuff people really enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I sell my fair share on other sites, but the broad appeal sites can be a breath of fresh air... and lucrative.
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  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    This is not really a viable idea. Businesses buy adwords for the wide reach at a CPC rate. Going after a business that has a working relationship with Google is a tough haul. Never mind trying to reverse engineer the ads to find viable ad partners.

    Not to say you couldn't make more running your own ads instead of AdSense. But there are better markets than going after active adsesne advertisers.

    If you have done it, then more details on how you found the adsense buyer and how you negotiated a direct deal would help.
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  • Profile picture of the author Esteban Gomez
    This is exactly what I was referring to. (Wolfmmii)

    I'm not saying Adsense is not a good way to make money but if you have a targeted audience its logical that it's going to be much more profitable to sell your own advertising space.

    If it wasn't this way why aren't johnchow.com, matthewwoodward.co.uk and other sites using Adsense?

    In any business when there is a middle man you are loosing money.
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    • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
      Originally Posted by Esteban Gomez View Post

      If it wasn't this way why aren't johnchow.com, matthewwoodward.co.uk and other sites using Adsense?
      I can't speak for Chow or Woodward specifically, but a lot of big sites don't use Adsense because at some point they got caught in the sights of Google's hair trigger ban finger.

      You're making a classic rookie mistake, Esteban. You're saying that "if [insert guru name] does it, it must be right" without knowing what's going on behind the scenes.
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    • Profile picture of the author jasondinner
      Originally Posted by Esteban Gomez View Post

      If it wasn't this way why aren't johnchow.com, matthewwoodward.co.uk and other sites using Adsense?
      Because they are blogs about making money online. Google isn't a big fan of that.

      Try running a make money online campaign with Google Adwords for any length of time and you will know why they don't have adsense on their sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author hometutor
    Seems to me a better way would be to Bing or Google your keywords. Find sites under you and offer them banner advertising on your site for a set rate. The decision about whether you'd lose or gain money would be yours. I have about 20 websites some of which I rarely look at. I could do that with some of those and make them more profitable possibly.

    Rick
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  • Profile picture of the author rongindamix
    Well, instead of them being the middle man YOU are now being the middle man. The best method is actually creating your own product. That way, you have full control of everything including prices
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    • Profile picture of the author hometutor
      Originally Posted by rongindamix View Post

      Well, instead of them being the middle man YOU are now being the middle man. The best method is actually creating your own product. That way, you have full control of everything including prices
      Making your own product is not really pertaining to this thread, but you make a good point about being a middle man. Brokers (middle men) can make a lot of money. No inventory, no use of your own time, just connecting people to product or service providers for a commission.

      Rick
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  • Profile picture of the author Robert Puddy
    Originally Posted by Esteban Gomez View Post

    Hi Warriors!

    Just wanted to share this tip with you.

    If you are using Google Adsense or any other ad network out there you are loosing money.

    Why? Because they are are the middle man between you and another business.

    My recommendation if you are making money this way would be the following:

    Use Adsense to see what type of ads are being displayed on your site.

    Once you identify this, remove Adsense and negotiate directly with the businesses advertising on your site.

    Not only you will make more money but it will be cheaper for the businesses so they will be happy to do it.

    To your success!
    If your really smart you would find a similar product with an affiliate program, and add that text link below the adsense module so it looks like and adsense ad with your aff link and make it a little bolder

    That way you get the best of both worlds
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  • Profile picture of the author btina
    i have monetized my video on youtube still no ad running.. Please anyone suggest me to resolve issue, thanks..

    my video link is -- Crazy Jokes (Husband vs Wife) | Funniest Gags on Married Couples - YouTube

    thanks
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