How to Make Money with Your Website - Part 3 - Contextual Advertising
This is the third post in the series on how to make money with content websites . We’ve covered regular advertising (CPM) last time. This time we’ll talk about contextual advertising.
Contextual advertising (Google AdSense being the most popular) differs from regular CPM ads in two ways. First, advertisers don’t pay for impressions – they pay for clicks; hence, Pay per Click (PPC). Second, the ads are selected based on context – the ads that show up will be relevant to the content.
PPC is great for advertisers – you know in advance how much each visitor will cost you, regardless of how many times the ad is shown. Plus the ads will are shown on pages with related content, so you know the visitors you’ve paid for are relevant.
For website owners AdSense is fast and easy to set up. You don’t need to have a major website, you don’t have unused ad space – every slot will be filled. You get paid for every time your visitor clicks on the ad – how ever rarely that may be.
This is why you can find AdSense ads on most websites these days. But there is one reason why I don’t advise AdSense to people who have just started a content website and want to grow it – and why it’s even better for advertisers.
One of the things that make contextual advertising so successful is also what makes it a terrible choice of revenue. It’s the fact that contextual advertising is contextual.
Imagine this. You’ve worked hard to build an excellent website and put tons of great content on it. You work had on marketing it and creating a traffic stream. People come to your website, see relevant AdSense ads, click on them and go away.
Sure, you get paid your 10-50 cents for that person, but this will never let your website gain traction. But for an advertiser, it’s a great way to steal traffic from your competitors.
Posts in the series:
- Introduction
- Regular advertising
- Contextual advertising
- Affiliate offers
- Amazon and eBay widgets
- Premium areas
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