A lot of people think making money with ads involves nothing more than tossing up an ad wherever it fits on the site. This does work to some extent, but you certainly won’t make much of an income from it. Placement, ad type, colors, and targeting all play a role in amount of revenues you’ll reap.
Ad Placement
You’re likely tempted to plaster the top half and footer of your site with various ads and banners. Save yourself the time, and resist the urge. Resist it!
Not only does it overload and confuse readers, but it can greatly reduce the perception of quality visitors have about your site. Also, ads should never interfere with the content or use of the site, but they should stand out and be convenient enough to get clicks.
That being said, many publishers have found including a few ads in the content works quite well. In fact, many of today’s biggest websites are using it to make good money. The important thing to remember that every user and target audience is different, so instead of doing what everyone else is doing, use those as a starting point andtest various spots and configurations.
Lastly, be sure to consider the content that will surround your ads. Failure to do so can have tragic (albeit often hilarious) consequences.
Ad Type
A study back in 2001 by the usability pros at Jakob Nielsen found banner blindness still has a major impact on banner ads. In the study, Nielsen discovered text ads had a much better chance of being noticed, read, and clicked in the search results. On websites, however, this isn’t necessarily the case.
Banner ads can easily get lost in graphic-heavy sites, while text ads can quickly blend into text laden designs. The trick is to choose the style that gets the point across to your readers and is easily seen. Again, you’ll find this varies from site to site and is something to test.
Alternatively, you might decide to do away with traditional advertising all together and opt for affiliate marketing instead. You can do this with banner ads, but there are many other creative, fun, and interesting ways to do it. Review products, interview the people behind the products you’re marketing, or you could try something completely new and different, like adding the links into fiction stories, videos, and games.
Colors
A banner’s design, and even the color of the text you choose can have a huge impact on the success of your ads. Just like call to action buttons on a successful landing page, ads should stand out and clearly tell the reader what they’ll find on the other side.
For some more tips, tricks, and how-tos on designing and creating banner ads, try some of these:
Targeting
Perhaps the most important hint, trick, or tip with ads of any kind is targeting your audience correctly. In fact, many sites have found advertising can actually add to the user’s experience. To do this, however, you need to know exactly who visits and interacts with your site the most, what their needs and mindsets are, and what they respond to best.
I’d love to give you an instant, effortless answer to do this, but the truth is it requires good old fashioned research and hard work. Once you know all of that, however, you can worry about creatively introducing the ads,setting up the targeting, and using the right metrics.
Once you start your ads, do yourself a huge favor, and remember to use the click-through data you’re automatically collecting with the ads you feature. This information is priceless when it comes to refining and tweaking the ads you display and create for your advertising.
What sort of hints, tricks, and tips have you come across that have really helped improve your ad income?
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