For a website to make money, it needs to sell something, right? Well, yes and no. Your website can sell a product or service, but it can also sell the opportunity for another business to connect with the visitors who browse it.
Just like a billboard on a busy road, your website is in a prime position to reach passers-by – in this case, a top spot for online advertisers to display targeted ads which engage with your site’s visitors.
Think about how news sites make money; the more traffic they have, the more advertisers pay to reach them, and the more money they make. It’s not just news companies or major brands which can take advantage of this online business model. Many small business owners and hobbyists are capitalising on the opportunity which the audience on their websites presents to interested advertisers, as a way to generate extra income.
Google’s Adsense
Anyone with a website can start making money by signing up online advertising products like Google’s AdSense, which places text or image ads on the site and then pays the site’s owner each time someone clicks on one of those ads. These Ads are matched to each site’s content, so advertisers reach web browsers who are already interested in topics related to their product or service.
Everyday Nigerian who’ve started a website to pursue a hobby or share their passion with others are now finding they have an unexpected new career path through Publishing advertising programs like AdSense. I recently heard of a lady who started her website as a way to share news and ideas about craft projects. In a short amount of time she found that her passion was shared by many others, who were jumping on in droves to read her ‘how to guides’ to try their own craft projects at home.
Her husband suggested she consider signing up for Google’s Adsense as a way to make money from her site’s loyal audience. While she never intended to generate revenue from her site, she now makes $500 per week from Ads – which supports her family income.
Every time someone clicks on one of the ads on her website, she makes money. The more people who visit the site, the higher the rate of people clicking on the ads and the more money she makes.
Other business-savvy entrepreneurs have built their entire businesses on this model. Peter Fiasco, a 30 year old Melbourne entrepreneur who quit his day job to try his luck at running his own business, launched a global employment classified site called jobsearchusa.org from his lounge room – with his only revenue stream coming from online advertising.
Traffic to Peter’s website boomed in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis and now jobsearchusa.org attracts some 10,000 unique visitors each day. One year after first opening his site to Ads, Peter is securing annual turnover in the realm of $1 million.
Have a good website
As a website owner, this means you don’t have to worry about visitors being shown irrelevant ads. If your website is all about pet-care then Adsense or any other online advertising service you choose will place an ad for pet accommodation services.
Likewise, if your website focuses on healthy eating recipes, then an ad for personal training would be appropriate to show someone who is searching your site for helpful tips to lose weight. The ad is targeted to the content which the user is already reading, so it is unobtrusive, informative and relevant.
Website owners still have control over the type of ads which appear. This is particularly useful to make sure that Ads work with your site’s aesthetics. The types of restrictions you can place on Ads include being able to choose text ads or image ads or both, the colours of the ads, the design template and even the position of the ads on your website. In addition to ensuring the ads suit your site design, experimenting with changes in the colours and placement of ads can drastically impact the revenue which the ads generate.
The beauty is that the better your website is, the more money you’re likely to make. Advertisers tend to pay more to advertise on sites with lots of ‘eyeballs’ and to capture the attention of a niche audience which is highly-engaged in a particular topic.
Think about your own browsing behaviour
If you don’t bookmark your favourite sites, you’ll most certainly visit the same ones regularly; whether it’s your local TV guide or a weather forecasting service. This kind of loyalty and engagement with a particular area of interest means that website owners with highly-focused content also have a strong proposition for advertisers.
So whether you’re a serious business person or a hobbyist who wouldn’t mind making some extra money on the side, online advertising services are a clever way of connecting your website’s audience with interested advertisers.
