I’m sure many or my readers currently have a website or a blog and have opted against having ads displayed. I agree that a corporate site showcasing product is not a place to put ads as it makes it look cheap and out of place. However, ads do have their perks and more often than not, if strategically placed on a personal website , a blog or a forum these ads can bring revenue or what I like to call webinterest.

When was the last time a random person on the street walked up to you and said “For every 10000km you walk, I will pay you $100.00 with no strings attached”. This kind of scenario does not happen, now if they do, please share. Nonetheless, it does exist on the internet, many companies offer different pay out programs based on the visitors you get on your website. For the time being, I personally use Google Adsense, for one, Google Adsense is owned and managed by a reputable company making payouts more or less reality as they have a reputation to maintain. (I’m still waiting for my first cheque, I’ll let you know when I receive it).

Generally most small blogs and websites don’t get an immediate pay out, it takes about a year or two to “cash in”. But realistically speaking, no Bank will give you money unless you give them a large sum of money to invest and they will not guaranty any gain, so why would you refuse money for something you enjoy doing especially when it costs nothing to join?

Most news or entertainment websites earn the bulk of their money through advertising. But you don’t need a sales staff to attract advertisers to your site. Ad networks can handle the sale and display of ads on your site. All you need do is drop a few lines of code into your Web pages where you want the ads to appear.

The most popular ad network for independent publishers is the Google’s AdSense program. AdSense is a “pay per click” program, where you can earn money each time one of your readers clicks on a Google-served ad. Since you earn money on clicks, rather than completed sales, pay per click ad networks can provide a more reliable source of income for sites whose readers are not looking to make a purchase right away. Other notable pay per click ad networks include the Yahoo! Publisher Network and Ad Voyager.

Google’s “Smart Pricing” program will adjust the amount paid to you for each click based on your readers’ track record of making a purchase, or viewing a certain number of pages, on that particular advertiser’s website. So if your site attracts motivated buyers, you remain in the best position to earn money.

Whatever you do, do not even think about clicking the ads on your site, or encouraging your readers to do the same. All pay per click ad networks prohibit click fraud. Even well-intentioned discussion board participants can get a publisher booted from the program by encouraging other readers to click the ads to support the site. Google, for example, has suggested publishers concerned about their readers’ conduct add this disclaimer to their site: “Your postings to this site may not include incentives of any kind for other users to click on ads which are displayed on the site. This includes encouraging other readers to click on the ads or to visit the advertisers’ sites, as well as drawing any undue attention to the ads. This activity is strictly prohibited in order to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs.”

For the system to work well for you, the pay per click network’s spiders must be able to determine a topic for each of your webpages and then must match keywords or phrases that advertisers have bid upon. That means the advantage goes to websites where each page covers a distinct and easily identifiable subject. So if you have a blog that covers a mishmash of topics on a single URL, you won’t elicit the targeted ads that lead to high-paying clicks. How much traffic do you need? With advertising, the more readers you have and page views you serve, the more money you can make.

But how much traffic do you need to make a living from your website? To make $36,500 a year, you’d need to earn $100 a day on your site. Let’s assume your site is attractive to advertisers and earns $10 in ad revenue for every thousand page views. That would mean you’d need to serve 10,000 page views a day to meet this target. Reader-contributed content can also help you meet your page view goals. Well-managed, thoughtfully organized discussion boards and wikis can add dozens of new content pages a day to your site, with much less effort on your part than writing that many original articles.

That being said, if you want to get rich from your blog or personal website using advertisement, you better think twice. But if you’re like me and don’t mind the extra income no matter how pathetic it may seem, it’s free money so let’s all benefit.

Eric