Earn Money With Ads
Earn Money On Your Own Website By Placing Ads (Image: Markgraf-Ave – Pixabay.com – CC0 Public Domain)

There are numerous ways to earn money online with your WordPress website. Placing ads on your website is one possible way and can be rewarding – given that you have enough traffic and produce content of good quality. Content that is helping people to solve problems, content that shares invaluable insights you won’t find elsewhere. Let’s take a look at several ways of promotion and advertising that can help you generate money with your WordPress site.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense
Official Google AdSense Plugin – Screenshot – WordPress.org

Placing Google ads is one of the most common ways of displaying advertisements on websites. Using Google AdSense is easy and it can prove to be really effective. After you’ve implemented Google AdSense correctly, Google will display advertisements that are related to your website content for optimal click-through rates. In the early days, niche websites like Plenty of Fish would make anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 USD every month – just from Google ads.

Here are some things to keep in mind when applying for an Google AdSense account:

  • Have at least 20 unique pieces of content on your website that have been published on a regular basis. Google is looking for unique, fresh and high-quality content.
  • Ensure that your website has an appealing and well-organized design. Don’t fall for the “AdSense themes” trap. Your design should reflect what your website or blog is about.
  • Don’t be frustrated if you got denied the first time. You can always populate your site with more unique and high-quality content and then try again.

The thing to keep in mind here is that while Google AdSense can be a great source of revenue, it won’t work by itself. To earn a decent amount of money with Google AdSense, you need to have a popular website with high traffic or a niche website with good click rates. Google AdSense is either for the very beginner who wants to earn some money to compensate the cost for WordPress hosting, or for those who know that they can generate thousands of dollars in monthly revenue.

BuySellAds

BuySellAds
BuySellAds: Automated Guaranteed Advertising Software | Screenshot – buysellads.com

BuySellAds, also known as BSA, is a premium advertising network that requires you to have at least a decent volume of traffic coming in every month to be even considered for approval. The benefit of getting approved is that your website is put in front of high-paying clients and companies that eagerly want to get their products advertised on high-quality websites.

Two things to remember when you apply for the BuySellAds network:

  • BuySellAds is looking for high-quality content blogs and websites only. You could be getting 200k unique visitors every month, but if the design of your website and the quality of your content isn’t up to part; they probably won’t bother accepting your website.
  • On the other hand – if you do get accepted, you get to price your advertisement spots however you like, and it’s quite common that sites on BuySellAds earn well over 2-3k every month. Something worth working towards to if you are willing to make your website stand out.

While we recommend to focus on your website, social media can be used to generate revenue through advertisements as well. If you have many social followers, you can also sell packages like promoted tweets through their platform; just another way of making an extra buck!

Affiliate Marketing

The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you can combine your efforts with the above two ways of advertising. When doing affiliate marketing, you promote services or products and if you refer new customers, you’ll earn a commission. You can easily have traditional advertisements on your website, amplified by the products that you’re selling as an affiliate. Here are some popular affiliate networks to go to when it comes to making money with WordPress websites or blogs:

  • Amazon – You can promote literally any product on Amazon, and make money.
  • Impact Radius – You can apply as media partner and gain access to several affiliate programs.
  • ShareASale – Good place to find great deals to promote.
  • ClickBank – Choose from thousands of great products to promote.
  • Rakuten – You can promote products and earn money – quite similar to Amazon.

Each affiliate network includes detailed guides and tutorials on how to get started to earn money online. It’s worth noting, that some of these networks also have WordPress plugins that will help you integrate those ads quicker and more efficiently on your website.

Sponsored Reviews

Calculator
Make money online through sponsored reviews (Image: TheAngryTeddy – Pixabay.com – CC0 Public Domain)

Another great way of earning money online with your website is writing sponsored reviews. This is especially interesting if your website covers a certain niche and if you are passionate and an expert on your field. People will trust your views on a product that you’re blogging or writing about and companies usually will be willing to pay a good amount of money for your opinion and reach.

Depending on your expertise and reach, earnings for sponsored reviews can vary from a few hundred dollars up to thousands of dollars per review, if you own a highly popular website with an appropriate audience. When you reach a reasonable and stable level of traffic, try and reach out to some of your favorite companies and see whether they’d like to purchase a sponsored review or display advertisements on your website. It’s really that simple. You can earn as little or as much as you like, so as long as both parties get some value out of it.

Important: When offering sponsored reviews on your website, it’s highly recommended to clearly mark these posts as sponsored. Otherwise you might risk your reputation because your audience may think that you’re not honest to them and that your content is biased. In addition you should add the nofollow-tag to outgoing sponsored links to not risk a Google penalty which will negatively affect your rankings / traffic.

Earning money online through ads on your WordPress website

Making money online is a lot easier than you might think, it comes down to how many people are reading your content and how many of them are clicking on ads. Apart from what we’ve mentioned already, there are more ways of earning money online as well. You could for example offer paid content on your website, publish video tutorials, sell ebooks or newsletter subscriptions with high-quality content or even offer online services that help people solve their problems.

However, whatever you do, it’s not wise to make use of intrusive or annoying advertisements or even force people to click ads for you. If you really want to put yourself out there with quality content – people will want to reward you either way. Now it’s your turn! What have you done so far to monetize your website? Do you have any tips for website monetization which we’ve missed in this article? Feel free to share your thoughts and experience in the comments.

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