The Ultimate guide to Maximizing your display Ad Revenue

The Ultimate guide to Maximizing your display Ad Revenue

Quick Tips

If you are just starting out, there are several things that you should absolutely do in order to get the most out of AdSense. The official guides offered during the signup process are fairly limited, not offering any particularly noteworthy advice. You may already be implementing many of these, but there are likely some pieces of low hanging fruit among the following.

1. Max Out Ad Units. We’ll start off with an easy one: AdSense lets you have up to three standard ad units on a page, so you’d be wise to take advantage by maxing out.

2. Max Out Link Units. Link units are a wildly underused AdSense option; placing up to three of these on a page should give you a quick, meaningful boost. For sample implementations of link units, check out these example pages.

3. Pay Attention to Link Units. This point is worth reiterating. While many publishers focus primarily on traditional ad units, link units have the potential to out-earn leaderboards and rectangles.

4. Set up a Custom Search Engine. This is another way to get more AdSense units on your site; custom search engines will generally see very high RPMs (though traffic is relatively light).

5. Enable Placement Targeting. This allows advertisers to include your website in their campaign, either by name or by targeting an interest group. Placement targeting should be enabled by default, but if you’re using DFP you may need to take a few additional steps.

6. Set up Custom Channels. Setting up custom channels will allow you to get better insights into what’s working and what isn’t, and will make testing down the road easier. It’s pretty easy to get these up and running, and worth making the up front investment to do so.

7. Allow Text & Images. One of the primary choices within AdSense involves either restricting an ad unit to “image only” or allowing both text and image ads. Permitting text ads to show gives AdSense a deeper pool of ads, and will almost certainly increase your click rate and earnings.

8. Use Standard Units. While AdSense lets partners choose from more than a dozen ad units, there are a few units that are more common with advertisers. Using these common ad sizes–300×250, 728×90, and 160×600–will give AdSense a deeper pool of advertisers from which to choose.

9. Monitor Fill Rate. Make sure that you’re serving ads and not blank space on your site. Monitoring fill rate is an easy way to do this; if there are any discrepancies, here are five reasons why AdSense and Analytics may not match.

10. Supplement AdSense. The terms and conditions of AdSense allow for only three ad units per page. In many cases, pages can comfortably accommodate more than three ads per page without overwhelming visitors and leading to a bad experience. If you think your site could use more ad units, there’s nothing to stop you from supplementing your AdSense units with ads from a competing provider. (For more on supplementing AdSense with additional ad networks, jump to this section.)

11. Place Units Above the Fold (ATF). This one might seem obvious: the higher up on a page your ads are, the more they’ll be viewed (and the more you’ll earn).

12. Relative Positioning Matters. While placing ads above the fold is generally advantageous, the relative positioning of ads (i.e., what they’re next to) is more important than their explicit location in the page. Scroll down to #24 on this list for an example of an ad that’s above the fold, but likely out of sight within the first few seconds of a visitor being on the page.

13. Beware of Overdoing It. When chasing AdSense earnings, it’s easy to get carried away and make decisions that are detrimental to the user experience in order to generate some additional revenue. While there may be a short term win, you’ll ultimately hurt the long term earnings potential of your site by eroding your traffic base. Here is the example Google gives of what not to do (on the far right):

Freelance Writing

 

Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is one of the most popular ways to earn money online. Many successful freelancers can earn an average of 50 cents to a dollar per word. Some are earning twice that!

Of course, it doesn’t start out like that. You’ve got to build your portfolio and your résumé, blah blah blah. If you’re interested in writing, I’m sure you know this. If you’re not interested in writing, I wouldn’t recommend traveling down this road just for the money.

It takes dedication and time, though it can be highly profitable if it’s what you love. Assuming it is what you love, let’s talk about making money with it.

Before you decide to start reaching out to all of these freelance writing companies, you need to have a web presence. You need a blog (in my humble blogger opinion, of course).

Or you could just have an online portfolio. Even a LinkedIn profile works to get started. When you’re ready to start, here are 150 resources to help you write better, faster and more persuasively.

If that’s intimidating, just start with these 50 resources.

Now for what you’ve all been waiting for; once you’re ready to actually start making money, here are 10 websites you can start with:

> Listverse – Listverse pays $100 for each accepted post. The article must be a list, it must be at least 1,500 words and you must include at least 10 things. Other than that, you can get pretty creative with it.

> TopTenz – TopTenz pays $50 for each accepted post. Again, the article has to be in a list format and it must be at least 1,500 words, with few exceptions. They post often so your chances of getting accepted are fairly high.

> A List Apart – A List Apart pays $200 for each accepted post. They’re not first on the list, because they tend to publish less articles, which means you have a smaller chance of getting accepted. Same guidelines as above, 1,500 word minimum.

> International Living – International Living pays $75 for each accepted post. They are mostly looking for travel experiences from countries you have visited. For this site, it’s more about your experience than your writing ability.

> FundsforWriters – FundsforWriters pays $50 for each accepted post. They are looking for articles about writing and making money with it. They only accept articles between 500-600 words, but they want you to make each word count.

> Uxbooth – Uxbooth pays $100 for each accepted post. They do tend to take four to eight weeks to accept and post articles, so don’t count on this being a quick money maker. They take so long, because they pair with editors to only publish amazing content.

> iWriter – iWriter pays up to $15 for each accepted post. That may seem small, but they aren’t as strict as many of the others above and they also allow you to pick exactly what you write. You can write as many or as few articles as you want.

> Textbroker – Textbroker pays up to five cents per word, if you’re a 5-star writer. You’ll start by submitting a short sample article and you will most likely start as a 3-star writer, but you can work your way up by writing more and writing great content.

> Matador Network – Matador Network pays up to $60 for each accepted post, but standard pay is around $20-$25. They don’t really focus on a minimum word count, but they have a maximum count of 1,500 words.

> The Penny Hoarder – The Penny Hoarder pays up to $800 (rarely), depending upon the number of page views you receive. The pay starts at $100 for 50,000 page views, so this isn’t a guaranteed paid article, but it can potentially be highly rewarding.

There’s no doubt that you can make money with freelance writing, but it’s a process. Once you start building your portfolio and your writing skills, you can start making some serious money. If you’re not an experienced writer, expect to put some time in before you really start to see some dough.

How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income

Part 4: – How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income

You’ve probably asked yourself the same question. Can I do it too?

Yes!

When I started blogging in 2015, I never planned on making money with my blog (making money with your blog is called monetizing). I had other ideas I wanted to pursue that would financially support my business:

• writing books (did that)

• building online courses (haven’t had time to do this yet)

• advertising on my podcast (not pursuing this right now)

• public speaking (did that)

• building a membership site (undecided on this one because it’s a bit time consuming)

Then I started learning about affiliate marketing and how easy it was to monetize a blog. Eighteen months after starting my blog when I first focused on monetizing it, I made $11,400 in my first month.

I share that with you because there is plenty of opportunities for new bloggers to make money. The thing that gets me is if I had known then what I know now (and what I will share with you), I could have made money with my blog much sooner. Lesson learned!

Keep this in mind – I’m new to blogging too. While I’m not new to online business, I’ve never had a serious blog like I do now. And I’m just getting started. That’s proof new bloggers are still making money.

I’ve met bloggers at conferences that made $50,000 – $100,000 in their first year! It’s crazy, and it’s possible.

It doesn’t matter how crowded you think a particular topic is (there are thousands of personal finance bloggers like me) there is room for you to carve out a piece of the pie for yourself.

How can you make money blogging?

I’m going to walk you through each of these topics in the upcoming lessons. But let’s look at the many ways you can make money with a blog:

• Affiliate marketing (which is free to do)

• Selling ebooks

• Advertising on your blog

• Freelancing and writing for other blogs and websites

• Having sponsored posts on your blog

What’s nice about some of these are they are passive income streams. Meaning your blog has the potential to make money 24 x 7.

• while you sleep

• while you’re on vacation

• while you’re watching TV

Katie & I have spent weeks away from home traveling the world – Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland to name a few – all the while our online business continued to make money for us.

How long does it take to make money blogging?

I’ll never forget when Katie & I launched our first digital product in 2007 and started selling it using PayPal. She made seven sales at $50 each on the first day, all the while she was working at an internship.

I want you to have realistic expectations, though. Those results are not the norm. My first month of monetizing my blog I made several thousands of dollars. But that occurred after I had been blogging for eighteen months. But do the math – I’m estimating my business will earn six-figures in ** the second year**. And I’ve never monetized a blog before!

Realistically I could have made money much, much sooner, but I focused on other parts of my business (like my podcast Financial Rock Star, and then writing my best-selling book 99 Minute Millionaire).

Yes, you can make money blogging, but it isn’t a get-rich-quick business. It’s like building any business. It takes time, effort, and persistence. But the more you invest in yourself, the faster you’ll become successful.

I’ve read a story in Forbes magazine about a mother on welfare who built a 7-figure online business in a little over a year. There are some bloggers that earn six-figures after one year, and others that earn several thousand dollars on the side after a few months of blogging.

Anything is possible.

If you’re a hard worker and a go-getter, you can really shine.

Making Money Blogging With Affiliate Income

Let’s start making some passive income from your blog through affiliate income.

I love affiliate income. It’s simple – your blog acts as a salesperson selling products. But there is:

• no inventory

• no costs of any kind

• no shipping of products

• no investment

• no fees to sign up and get started

It sounds almost too good to be true – but it’s real and 100% legit.

Let me give you an example. Let’s start with the biggest affiliate program in the world – Amazon.

Here is a link to a cookbook on Amazon (go ahead and click it). 

A new window will open up and take you right to Amazon where you can buy the book. If you bought that book, I would earn an affiliate commission from Amazon. Let’s call it $0.50.

If you’re over at Amazon, you might decide today is the day you’re going to spring for that new T.V. that costs $400. If you buy it, I get an affiliate commission on that too. We’ll call it $25 because I sent Amazon the referral.

All I had to do was put a link in my blog to the cookbook. That’s it. Someone visits your blog where you talk about the Joy of Cooking, and they click the link. The link takes them to Amazon. If they buy the Joy of Cooking (or anything else), you earn a commission.

It’s free to sign up and become an Amazon affiliate (it’s called the Amazon Associates affiliate program). You can earn up to 10% in commissions.

Affiliate income comes from links on your blog where you mention products you love. You might review a product or include a link as part of a personal story – I bought this awesome shirt on Amazon for my upcoming trip!

Here are some of the things on my blog I have Amazon affiliate links for:

• lightbulbs

• medical kits

• my favorite business books

• energy efficiency products for your home

• podcasting equipment

No matter what you blog about, there are going to be products for which you can have an affiliate link.

And the best part is the links on your blog may be around for years. You can end up earning money from an affiliate link for something you wrote about three years ago. That’s the great thing about passive income – it just keeps coming.

How to get started with Affiliate Income

Here are the step-by-step instructions to get started with affiliate income. Remember all of these programs are FREE to join.

1. Join affiliate programs

I mentioned Amazon in our example, but there are many other affiliate programs available.

• Amazon Affiliate Program

• AvantLink

• Commission Junction

• Flex Offers

• MaxBounty

• ShareASale

Some product websites have an affiliate program which may not be listed. If you have a product you love contact the company directly and see if they have an affiliate program.

You just have to click the link and go through the sign-up process. Amazon is the easiest and has been around the longest. You should at least sign up for Amazon to get started.

2. Promote the link on your blog

There are different ways to promote a product:

Product reviews

Consider doing a book review or writing an in-depth product review. In the first month of blogging, I did a few in-depth product reviews. These pages are some of the most highly visited on my website.

Product comparisons

Comparing two different products side-by-side helps your readers weigh the pros and cons of each. By helping them make a decision, you help build a loyal fan base.

You can see an example of where I compared two budgeting software products here.

There are many photography bloggers that talk about camera equipment. Camara equipment can be very expensive, and the affiliate commissions can be much larger.

Resources/recommendations page

Many people will be interested in what tools and resources you use to do stuff. For example, I have a resources page for all of the blogging tools I use. You can see an example of my resources page here.

It doesn’t have to be fancy – just a picture, product name, and a description. To go the extra mile include a brief summary of why you like the product.

Mentioning the product in what you write about

This one is easy. If you are writing an article on baking a cake, for example, you can include a link to the cake pan you like to use in the recipe.

Creating tutorials

You help your readers by saving them time with step-by-step tutorials. You can document anything that involves assembly or a process.

You can even document something that already has documentation if you think you can do it better! Just think about YouTube videos you’ve watched on how to do or fix something because the manufacturer’s documentation doesn’t make sense. I look up tutorials all the time on how to use the features of software I own.

I have several step-by-step tutorials on my website for using different personal finance products. If I like the product, I’ll include an affiliate link.

Tips for good product promotion

Honesty

Be honest in your review. Giving a glowing review of a bad product just to try to earn affiliate income is a bad idea. When you are honest and help your blog readers, they will reward you with loyalty and become a life long fan. That’s worth much more because they will help share your blog to other people.

Promote the benefits

People buy things because it helps solve their problems or makes them feel better:

• Does it save them time? (This ceramic pan cleans up in a flash!)

• Does it save them money? (This book shows you how to save money on groceries)

• Will it help them make more money? (This course gives you a proven plan to getting your dream job)

• Will it help them relax? (This hebal tea will help you sleep better)

I promote Betterment as a fantastic way to get started investing because it’s easy and only takes ten minutes to start saving for an awesome retirement.

The better you become at sharing the benefits of a product, the more likely the person is to purchase the product.

Good product placement

The longer your blog post, the more you can talk about a product or service. But that doesn’t mean you should include a link in every paragraph.

If it’s a short article, 1–2 times may be enough.

For longer blog articles it’s ok to include a link at the beginning, middle, and at the very end.

Action items

1. Sign up for free to Amazon’s affiliate program.

2. Write a blog post about some product you like and include an affiliate link to it in your post.

Part 1: Why Should You Blog?

Part 2: What Should I Blog About? 

Part 3: How To Create Your Blog? 

Part 4: How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income 

Part 5: How To Make Money Blogging With eBooks 

Part 6: How To Make Money by Freelancing, Staff Writing, and Advertising

Part 7: Why You MUST Build An Email List – And How To Get Started 

Part 8: How To Write Great Content That Gets Shared 

Part 9: How To Grow Your Blog And Get More Readers 

Part 10: The Resources I Use For My Business 

Part 11: How To Become Irresistible And Grow Your Following 

Part 12: How to make money with your blog?

Part 13: The Best Way to Make Money Blogging

Part 14: 7 Tips to Make More Money with Your Blog in 2021

Part 15: Only Blogging Advice You'll Ever Need

How To Make Money Blogging With eBooks

Part 5: – How To Make Money Blogging With eBooks

Now we’ll talk about how to make money blogging with eBooks. I’ve been creating eBooks since 2009. The best part about eBooks is they are easy to create, and you can sell them for a long time.

The eBook I wrote in 2009 was bundled with some other products. I didn’t have to update it again until 2014. I sold it for five years! That particular product generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for my business.

Here are some common questions and answers about creating an eBook.

How long should my eBook be?

As long as necessary. 🙂

Your book should be at least 40 pages so the buyer will see the value in it. That doesn’t mean it has to be 40 pages, single spaced, a 10-point font in an 8.5“x11” page size. Format it how you like – big fonts, pictures, charts, lots of white space.

Ask yourself this question:

If I bought this book, would I feel like I got a good deal?

How do I format an eBook?

eBooks are delivered in PDF format.

You can do it yourself by printing a Microsoft Word file or Google Doc to PDF format. It takes about 2 seconds.

If you want a nice cover you can hire a graphics artist on Fiverr or Upwork to create one for you. You will pay anywhere from $5 (Fiverr) for a simple cover to $299 if you use a service like 99Designs.

I used 99 Designs for the cover of my book 99 Minute Millionaire (just noticed we share a similar name). I was very pleased with the service. If you have the money to spend (which you will someday if you keep blogging) – they are worth checking out.

How much should I charge for my eBook?

I’ve paid $10 for eBooks that were 30 pages long. I’ve also paid $29 for eBooks that were 100 pages long.

How you price your eBook is based on the value you provide, and how your book compares to similar products (if there are any). A good price point is less than $10. Most people are willing to part with $10 for a book.

If you are an expert in a particular field, you can get away with charging more. For example, the $29 book I mentioned was a workout and diet program by someone that placed second at the Mr. Olympia contest. He obviously knows what he’s doing, so he can charge more for his eBook.

How do I sell an eBook?

Selling an eBook is as simple as setting up an account with PayPal and slapping a PayPal button on your website.

When Katie & I started selling our first digital products in 2007, this is what we did. When we started making more money we moved to a custom shopping cart.

Thankfully technology has improved since then. Here are a couple of great choices:

Gumroad is a popular service that connects to your blog and allows you to sell digital products. It’s only $10 a month for the service, and they take a small percent of each sale to cover the credit card transaction fees.

e-junkie is another great service which can have you up and selling in minutes.

Can I make money selling an eBook?

Have you ever bought an eBook or a Kindle book?

There’s your answer.

I own hundreds of Kindle books and have bought nearly 100 eBooks over the years. I’ll share with you some of the titles I’ve purchased to give you an idea of what people are selling (and making money on):

• Podcast Legal Survival Guide by Gordon Firemark

• Double Your Guitar Speed by Tom Hess

• Ultimate Sweep Picker’s Guide by Zack Uidl

• Phrasing Concepts for Rock Lead Guitar Soloing by Nick Layton

• Specific Carbohydrate Diet Lifestyle by Jordan Reasoner

• Road to Olympia 2015 by Ryan Terry

You can see I buy a lot of guitar books. There are some pretty obscure titles and topics in that short list. And I’m just one buyer!

Which brings me to my point – yes, it’s possible to make money selling an eBook on pretty much any topic.

Someone out there is willing to pay you for your expertise if you can do one of two things:

1. Solve their pain

2. Bring them pleasure

Turning Your Blog Into an eBook

Here’s something else to consider – people don’t necessarily want to read all your blog posts. You may write one blog post on a topic and then six months later write something else on a similar topic.

People will pay you if you consolidate your blog posts and turn it into a book.

Of course, you’re probably wondering – why would anyone pay me for an eBook when they can get it on my blog for free?

One word – convenience.

You’re saving them time because they don’t have to dig around your site for all of the information. It’s no different than if you’re searching the Internet to learn about something. What’s easier – searching out ten different sites, or finding the one site that has all of the information in one place?

Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche took all of her blog posts on budgeting, and rolled them into a best-selling book on Amazon! It was the same content, but people wanted something that had all of the information in one place that they could easily read front to back.

 

Action Items

1. Start writing! If you haven’t started writing in your blog yet – start writing. Sit down and write 500 words today about your blog topic.

The eBook you’re going to want to create for extra income can come right from your blog posts.

Part 1: Why Should You Blog?

Part 2: What Should I Blog About? 

Part 3: How To Create Your Blog? 

Part 4: How To Make Money Blogging With Affiliate Income 

Part 5: How To Make Money Blogging With eBooks 

Part 6: How To Make Money by Freelancing, Staff Writing, and Advertising

Part 7: Why You MUST Build An Email List – And How To Get Started 

Part 8: How To Write Great Content That Gets Shared 

Part 9: How To Grow Your Blog And Get More Readers 

Part 10: The Resources I Use For My Business 

Part 11: How To Become Irresistible And Grow Your Following 

Part 12: How to make money with your blog?

Part 13: The Best Way to Make Money Blogging

Part 14: 7 Tips to Make More Money with Your Blog in 2021

Part 15: Only Blogging Advice You'll Ever Need