Blog monetization is among the best ways to earn money online. Indeed, advertisements are a primary (and the only) source of income for most bloggers. Hence, online advertisements are extremely important, especially to a blogger. For most blogs, the type of advertisements can determine how much revenue is generated. Not only that, they can also impact a blog's traffic. Good, well placed ads can make a lot of money for you. But if you use poorly configured, irrelevant ads, then forget about generating a decent income. Such ads can ruin your blog's traffic. Hence, choosing the right advertisement is vital for your online success.
When choosing ads for your blog / website, there are many things you need to be mindful of. It's not just about ad size, ad colours, ad placement etc. Ad effectiveness also depends upon the type of ads that you choose. There are various online advertisements option available to you as a blogger. You can choose from Banner ads, in-line text ads, contextual ads etc. Let's look at some advert types, and compare them to see what they have to offer.
Popular Advertisement Options
Banner Ads
Banner Ads are a visual form of advertisements that contain colourful picture advertisements coupled with text. They can be flash files, animated GIFs or simple JPG images. Banners are the most popular form of advertisements, since they are attractive and known for drawing customers.
Advantages - Banner advertisements have a lot of advantages. First of all, banners are easier to make than some other types of ads, such as video ads etc. Secondly, banners can go anywhere on your size, since they come in different sizes. Banner ads attract more people due to all the colours and animations etc. They provide the 'eye candy' to visitors, and hence provide more click through rate than most other type of ads. Banner ads have become an important part of most websites, without which the site seem sort of empty.
Bad practices - Publishers need to be careful about their banners though. Banners with annoying animations can irk the visitors. Moreover, the heavier the animation, the larger the file size, making the website load slower. This is perhaps one of the greatest drawback of using large-sized banners. And if there is anything more annoying than a site loading slowly, it's the sounds that suddenly start to come from god knows where! It is recommended that you do not use sounds with animations, unless the visitor chooses to click on a banner.
Contextual Ads
Recent trends have shown that contextual ads are the need of the hour! Contextual ads are becoming more and more popular, since they are highly relevant to the blog. Contextual ads use your website information such as meta keywords etc and decide what ads are best for you. These are dynamic ads that change according to the advertiser's wishes. Mos such ads usually pay on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis.
Like I said, these ads are quite relevant to your website, which means a higher click through rate, since most of your visitors are interested in exactly the kind of things displayed on these ads. Such ads need to be handled carefully though. Blogs may need to redesigned slightly to optimize them for such ads.
In-line Text Ads
In-line text ads are another popular form of advertisement. In-line text ads are a form of contextual ads, and are embedded into the text on your blog. Whenever a reader hovers over the specified text, a small pop-up appears containing more information about the product.
In-line text ads have the advantage that they are not obtrusive and don't come in the way of those who don't want to look at ads. But they are highly efficient for those who are interested in some particular product.
Keep in mind, however, that in-line text ads mostly work on large blogs/websites, usually where there are a lot of daily visitors, and they tend to read between the lines. For small blogs, this strategy isn't very effective, mainly due to the low traffic.
Video Ads
Although Video Ads are not as popular as the above, the average revenue per conversion is generally higher. Videos also give exposure to your ads since they can shared on multiple social media networks. But unfortunately, the conversion rate for video ads is low. Not many people will click on a video to play it. Remember; do not make the mistake of starting videos automatically! Believe me, it's really annoying to the visitors, who don't want anything to bog down their loading speed.
Interstitial Ads
Interstitial Ads can be considered as a form of pop ups. But they appear on transitions. Meaning that they appear between user requests. For example if your website has a movie review with an excerpt at the main page, then such ads can appear after someone clicks on the excerpt to see the whole thing. Since such ads do not interfere much with the users' browsing, this form of advertising is preferred to pop up advertising.
Donations
If you have a blog that provides quality information that readers really need, then you might ask for donations. For this, you will need to build interactions with your audience, and resolve any troubles they have relating to the expertise you offer. Small and new websites don't benefit from this. Instead, they are seen as frauds. So if your blog / website has authority, only then should you go for donations.
And one thing more. Please don't claim that you will be giving the money for charity unless you are really doing so. Falsely claiming donations for charity is not only unfair and against social ethics, it is also a crime. Charity funding comes under a certain legal jurisprudence, with its own rules and regulations. If you claim that the money is for charity, some organization might approach you and ask for all invoices and audits etc. You could be tried in court then and there! So please just ask for donations for supporting your own business and/or your team.
There are a lot of advertisements types you can opt for. But only choose one that's right for your blog. Wrongly used ads can seriously effect your blog's reputation, while well configured ads can add meaning to your life :)
That is it for now. Thanks for all the support guys. See ya soon in the next post :)
Cheers :D
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