The easiest way to pay for your websites hosting costs is to sign up for an ad program.  There are a lot of them out there though.  So to get the most bang for your click what program should you go with?  Well the three big players are Google, Yahoo, and MSN with their contextual ad networks.  MSN has a pretty big sized ad network that pays pretty well, but both it and Yahoo are in their infancy when compared to the big G.  Google consistently outperforms Yahoo and MSN in terms of the ads being relevant to your site (meaning they have a large number of ads to display) and the payment per click.  In fact, Yahoo recently inked a deal with Google to share their ad networks with each other so that Yahoo can get in on some of Google’s action.  If you can’t beat them, and Yahoo certainly can’t beat Google (neither can MSN), join them.

Now that you have the major player picked the question revolves around your desire to dabble with some of the other players in the market.  In order to do so you’d have to make sure it’s not agains the Terms of Service for either provider to use another ad network on your website.  You will also need to realize that using another smaller ad provider will cost you a few clicks from your primary provider.  The main advantage to the secondary provider is that it allows you more ads per page (Google only allows 3 ads per page).  It also gives you a back up should you do something that your main provider deem agains their TOS and ban your account.

There are a number of smaller ad providers out there but the biggest one out there is called adbrite.  Using adbrite you can place ads on your page just like you can with Google.  An advantage with adbrite is that you can set the prices you want to be paid for the ads instead of just accepting whatever Google/Yahoo/MSN pay your for each of your clicks.

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So you’ve managed to make a website and gather a decent amount of traffic on the web.  Now you want to put some ads on the site, but the question is do you go with image ads or text ads?  The easy answer is text only ads.  Text only ads typically do better than image ads on a given website.  Though this performance is scewed because most people that use text only ads blend the ads into the content as well as possible to make the ads look like part of the content.  This is effectively tricking the reader into clicking the ads since they look like content.  So I like to think that the value on text ads is a bit skewed.

If the ad won’t be masquarading around as content on your site the answer is a bit more difficult.  I prefer to use a mix of text and image ads on my site in places that don’t interfere with the content.  The text ads give the reader more options to click on and these typically have higher pay per click.
The reason for using image ads is that they give an allure to your site.  Chances are you don’t have a site that’s ranked in alexa’s top 100,000 sites in terms of traffic.  Most sites that are highly trafficed will have an agreement set up with some third party ad placement agency that puts image ads on your site.  If you don’t have the traffic to attract such an agreement the image ads can give your users the illusion that you have more traffic than you do.  Perception is everything on the web.

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A lot of people with websites make the website for the explicit reason of making money online through ads.  This is done by a number of people successfully right now and you could be one too.  Don’t expect to make enough to quit your day job, but you could get lucky.

One of the mistakes people make when using pay per click advertisers is that they pepper their page with ads in an attempt to get as many clicks as possible.  These webmasters don’t realize that the amount they get paid per click will drastically decrease because of this.  Ad programs are happy to have you place multiple ad blocks on your page for users to click.  But they also like to place the highest paying ads at the top of the site.

That means if you have a banner ad at the top that doesn’t get clicked very often and you have another ad placed somewhere in the content the banner ad will always pay more money per click.  You should set up your ads in different channels to see which channels are clicked the most often.  That will give you an idea of what ad placement works best.  Then you should eliminate the ad placements that don’t get clicked very often, especially if they’re higher than the ads that do get clicked often.

Overall you might see a reduction in the number of clicks you get, but you should see an increase in the cost per click (cpc).  Hopefully the increase in cpc will make up for the lost clicks.  Of course the added bonus is to the readers, they get to see a website that isn’t peppered with ads and are more likely to return or encourage others to go to your site.

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There a lot of people out there that will tell you to blend your adsense ads with the content of the page so that they look like a natural part of the site.  There are times to blend ads and times to not blend them.  It also depends on how you want to go about getting people to click on the ads.  Some people have had success by blending their ads into the content so that it looks like a natural part of the page.   While successful most of the time it can also be considered deceptive since you’re essentially tricking people into clicking the ads.

Others have been successful making their ads stand out against the page that they’re on so that people notice them right away.  I’ve had the most success with this method.  To find out what works best for your ctr you should do both.  Put each ad on a page that’s similar to each other and put each ad in a different channel in your adsense manager.  Over the course of 8-10 thousand impressions you’ll be able to determine what method works best.

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Most people would tell you that having a click through rate of between 1 and 5 percent is average for adsense publishers.  One way to make a decent amount of cash from adsense is to drive a ton of traffic to it.  The rest is how well your ads perform.  Your ad performance depends on a lot of different factors, one of which is placement.  Since google has a vested interest in people clicking as many ads as possible, they have done some research into the area.

The research shows that people generally scan web pages in an F pattern.  If they don’t like what they see they’ll spend less than a few seconds on the page before either clicking a link on it or hitting the back button on their browser.  The idea here would be that you hope they click on one of the ads placed on your page to exit it.

This makes optimal ad placement down the left column of the page, as well as right at the top.  Many sites have forgone a large banner up at the top in favor of a small one coupled with an ad.  The next area to look at would be right above the fold but below some content.

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Traffic traffic traffic!  You need traffic.  If you want your site to be profitable you need traffic.  But did you know that all traffic is not created equal.  There are returning visitor, there are visitors finding your site through a link, and there are visitors finding your site through search engines.

All three are important.  You want returning visitors since they’re more likely to post a comment on your site thus adding to the content.  These visitors however, are going to be the least profitable for you.  Returning visitors become blind to ads very quickly and will not click on them.  In fact I suggest you disable ads for users that are logged in.  You know they’re a frequent visitor if they’re logged in, and they’re ad blindness will cause your click through percentages to go down.

Users that click onto your site through a link are the most likely to convert to regular users.  Presumably they found your site because they found a link to it on another site with a similar topic to yours.  Since they’re already interested in what your site has to offer they’ll be less likely to click on ads, but more likely than if they had visited before.

People that find your site through search engines are the most likely to click on ads.  They typed in a search and often the search wasn’t specific enough or it was too specific.  Your site came up and it is pretty close but not quite what they’re looking for.  People scan web pages in a matter of a few seconds and if they don’t think they’ll find what they want on your site they’ll leave.  Either through the back button or a link on your
site.

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