1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is what got me into niche sites in the first place. My brick and mortar business got me blogging for more clients; when I read about the affiliate marketing concept, I figured that could be very lucrative. I liked the results-oriented monetization model immediately.
Affiliate marketing is an easy concept. You become an affiliate for a merchant, they give you a custom link that tracks the traffic you send them which in turns tracks any sales your referral track generates.
As the affiliate, you get a percentage or flat rate sum of money for the sale.
These days affiliate marketing is a standard marketing channel for brands and companies. It’s a standard monetization method for publishers.
Tens of thousands of merchants have affiliate programs. In fact, it’s rare that big brands don’t have an affiliate option.
Brands either operate what’s called an in-house affiliate program or they are part of an affiliate network.
Software typically offers in-house affiliate programs. Physical products are typically part of an affiliate network.
There are 2 main types of affiliate offers. They are:
Commission-based offers
Commission-based offers provide a commission when you generate a sale.
You can find the affiliate information usually in the footer of a company’s website or Google “XYZ company affiliate program”.
The main affiliate networks these days are:
- ShareASale
- CJ.com
- Amazon Associates
- Impact Radius
- Awin
I’m part of all those platforms, but favor ShareASale and Amazon above all others from a user-friendliness perspective. CJ.com is good as well but a bit more clunky to use. I don’t use Impact Radius or Awin much because I find it confusing to find offers.
CPA
CPA stands for cost per action. While these technically include commission-based offers, colloquially they refer to earning a fee when your referrals fill out a form or provide an email.
The advantage to these offers is your referrals don’t need to spend money in order for you to get paid. For some merchants, the commissions can still be high.
This is really a form of lead generation for brands and companies.
I’m not too big into CPA offers, but it’s big business still.
CPA networks include:
- Peerfly
- Panthera
There are many others, but since I don’t do much of this, I’m not familiar with the main networks.
Local affiliate marketing
I did local affiliate marketing for law firms for years. It takes a while to set up, but once set up, it can be a great model.
What I did is approach law firms and negotiate a fee for leads or sales. The fees were substantial for a sale (i.e. the referral retained the law firm). I would earn $250 to $750 per referral.
The legwork also included setting up tracking, which I did with a call center that fielded calls as well as contact forms that generated added all inquiry data into a spreadsheet.
Each quarter I would send the law firms the spreadsheets (call center data and contact form inquiry data). The firms would figure out how many referrals hired them. I received a cheque shortly after that.
I no longer do this for two reasons:
I had the most success in the personal injury practice area which is not viable in my jurisdiction any more due new legislation that decimated the personal injury industry in British Columbia.
It was getting harder to get traffic because of the emphasis Google puts on the Google My Business pages. Because my referral sites were not attached to a physical law firm address, I did not have a Google My Business page attached. These days, a significant part of local SEO revolves around ranking the Google My Business pages.
2. Display Ads
CPC and CPM ads
There are two main types of ads and within those two types, many ad styles.
The types are based on how you earn revenue.
CPC ads pay you per click.
CPM ads pay you per impression (usually measured per 1,000 impressions).
Both types offer a huge variety of ad styles.
I’ve tried almost every ad style available. Here’s the list and my experience.
Banner ads
I call them banner ads for lack of a better term. These are your typical ads that have been around for years. I’m talking the 728×90, 300×300, 300×600, 320×50 (mobile), etc. These are probably still the most common ads on most ad-supported sites. I use them extensively. They earn well.
Sticky ads
Sticky ads simply makes regular banner ads float or stick to the screen so that they are displayed to visitors longer. The two most common sticky placements are the bottom sidebar and bottom of content.
I love these ads because they pay very well. You can’t make AdSense ads sticky via AdSense. You must use an ad network to this for you. I use this website which offers both sticky sidebar and sticky mid-content ad units.
You can also use sticky ads on mobile. AdSense offers them. They’re called anchor ads.
Link ads
I love link ads because they earn well. By their very nature, they insulate against accidental clicks.
Link ads are ads that look like menus. AdSense and Media.net offer them. I use the AdSense link ads.
I say they insulate against accidental clicks because a visitor must first click the link ad and then click an ad on the landing page for you to earn revenue. It’s a two-click ad.
Widget ads
On some of my sites I put polls and surveys which includes a display ad. I like these widget features because they help engagement plus earn my sites a few bucks. I use this service for creating polls and surveys.
Gutter ads
I don’t use gutter ads. These are ads that display on the sides outside of your website.This outfit offers gutter ads. I tried them and they didn’t earn much so I stopped displaying them.
Background ad
A background ad is one that takes up the entire background of the site. Visitors only see the sections on the sides. It’s like two large gutter ads, but they take up the entire screen. I’ve never tried such an ad, but I see them occassionally.
Native ads
Native ads are ads that promote content or seem to promote content instead of going for the hard sell. Taboola and Outbrain are two of the most popular native ad providers.
AdSense also has a native ad unit that it calls Matched Content Ad Units. It’s a large grid that provides links to other articles on your site, but 3 out of 8 of the spots in the grid are ads that pay you when clicked.
I’ve tried both Outbrain and Taboola on my sites. They never earned much so I dropped them.
AdSense’s Matched units, on the other hand, pay surprisingly well given only 3 of the 8 spots are ads. I put two Matched Units on every page; one partway down my content and one at the bottom.
Text link ads
There aren’t many text link ad providers.Infolinks is the best-known. I don’t use these but did test them. They didn’t earn all that much so I stopped using them.
What these ads do is underline various words and phrases. When someone clicks the link, you earn money.
Pop-up ads
Some ads pop up. When and how they popup varies. Here are some of the options:
- Prestitial: Before visitors access your site, they get smacked in the face with a pop-up ad. Media.net offers prestitial ads.
- Interstitial: When visitors click to another page on your site, an ad pops up. Google adsense offers interstitial ads on mobile.
- Exit intent: When visitors move their cursor close to the browser bar, an exit intent ad pops up. Spoutable offers exit intent ads.
Currently, I do not use any pop-up ads on desktop. I use an AdSense Vignette ad on mobile, which is an interstitial.
In-image ads
I used to run in-image ads through GumGum. They paid quite well, but once I added the video ad and mid-content sticky ad I thought the in-image ads were a bit much.
In-image ads are those that display a banner ad on top of images. They’re effective and can pay well.
Video ads
Video ads are video players placed on your site that runs content and/or ads. I use this outfit for my video ad (minimum 500K monthly visitors) but you can also get a good video ad unit from here
No comments:
Post a Comment