An Introduction to Monetizing Traffic

Last Updated on Sat, 15 Oct 2022 | Search Engines

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This book provides you with a comprehensive strategy for driving organic traffic through effective search-engine optimization, or SEO. With improved search-engine rankings, you can maximize the revenue you generate from your Web site. If you are running your Web site as a business, monetizing your traffic is likely one of your main interests in improving your SEO efforts. Monetizing your Web site includes implementing one or more revenue-generating activities, such as paid banner placement or affiliate marketing, in order to generate money based on the incoming traffic to your Web site.

If you are running your Web site only as a hobby and simply want to receive more traffic, monetizing your traffic might not be your main priority. However, regardless of your intentions, you should at least possess a fundamental understanding of how Web site traffic is commonly monetized. This chapter provides you with a road map of options to consider and test when you monetize your Web site. From contextual advertising on networks like Google AdSense to affiliate marketing and paid blogging on networks like Pepperjam and ReviewMe, you can find numerous opportunities to monetize your Web site traffic.

Place Google AdSense Ads on Your Web Site

One of the easiest and most common forms of monetizing traffic is through contextual advertising, which requires you to place basic JavaScript code on your Web site. The undisputed leader in this space is Google's contextual ad program, Google AdSense. With the Google AdSense program, you can publish content on virtually any topic and automatically display highly relevant ads that come from the Google AdWords platform. Each time a visitor clicks one of these contextual ads, you receive a percentage of the funds paid to Google for that click. When you have the traffic to deliver thousands of clicks a day, this form of monetization can be incredibly lucrative.

Earn Money with Commission Junction

Unlike contextual advertising with Google AdSense or the YPN, monetizing your traffic with affiliate marketing programs from Commission Junction requires that a sale be made by a customer that you refer. Where Google AdSense and YPN pay on a per-click basis, Commission Junction pays a percentage of the total sale made at the merchant Web site. Commission Junction is recognized as one of the leaders in affiliate marketing and offers publishers access to promote some of the top brands in the country.

An alternative to Commission Junction is another industry leader, LinkShare. LinkShare offers a variety of affiliate programs, from large brands like the NFL Shop, to small, niche-specific merchants such as igourmet.com. LinkShare offers advanced reporting features that allow you to carefully track affiliate payments by merchant and analyze the success of your traffic-generation strategies. LinkShare also includes many private, invitation-only affiliate programs such as Saks Fifth Avenue and J.Crew that can provide significant value to your Web site if you gain admittance to their programs.

Earn Money with AuctionAds

A newcomer to the affiliate marketing arena, AuctionAds allows publishers easy access to the popular eBay affiliate program. AuctionAds acts as one superaffiliate, ensuring top payouts for AuctionAds members. eBay pays publishers on a sliding commission scale, which allows top publishers like AuctionAds to generate top commissions. The more revenue you generate, the higher the percentage you receive. By joining AuctionAds, you lump all your sales in with the rest of the network, thus boosting everyone into the higher pay brackets.

Sell Links with Text-Link-Ads.com

Perhaps more heated than the debate on paid blogging is the debate on the ethics of selling text links. The debate is based upon the belief that advertisers buy links in an effort to manipulate Google's search-engine algorithm that analyzes backlinks to rank Web sites. Despite countless hours of debate, many Web site owners find that selling links is an efficient way to monetize their Web site traffic. Sites like Text-Link-Ads serve as a connection between link buyers or publishers and link sellers or advertisers. Once you become a publisher on Text-Link-Ads, advertisers can purchase a text link on your site; you receive 50 percent of the amount paid by the advertiser on a monthly basis. Text-Link-Ads payouts range from $2.50 to as much as several hundred dollars per link, per month. The more popular your Web site is, the more money you can charge for a text link.

Advertise Cost-per-Action Offers with Hydra Network

Similar to AzoogleAds, Hydra Network provides CPA offers to Web publishers looking to monetize Web site traffic. Hydra Network has a very diverse range of offers from many different industries, including e-commerce, education, insurance, telecommunications, credit cards, media, and electronics. One of the easiest ways to monetize Web site traffic with Hydra Network is by promoting free gift cards. You receive a flat fee ranging from 75 cents to $1.50 for every visitor you send to an offer page that completes the required action to receive a free gift card.

Advertise Cost-per-Action Offers with AzoogleAds

Affiliate marketing networks such as LinkShare or Commission Junction pay affiliates on a variable percentage-of-sale basis; newer affiliate marketing networks such as AzoogleAds that pay affiliates on a flat cost-per-action, or CPA, basis are an increasingly popular alternative. CPA networks pay as little as a few cents to as much as several hundred dollars when a visitor to your Web site is referred to another Web site such as Blockbuster or Match.com and performs an action, such as inputting an e-mail address, signing-up for a free product trial, completing an e-commerce sale, or applying for a credit card. CPA offers are popular because of the fixed payout structure and potentially lucrative compensation model. Moreover, CPA networks tend to take a more hands-on approach to managing top affiliates than traditional affiliate networks, which make the CPA model extremely attractive to some of the highest producing affiliates on the Internet.

The topic of paid blogging is a hot debate in today's Webmaster community. The debate centers on whether it is a conflict of interest for bloggers to accept payment for writing reviews about Web sites they know little about. However, many bloggers agree that ReviewMe is a dependable source of income and does not conflict with the integrity of their writing. Once you enter your blog into the ReviewMe system, advertisers can contact you and make an offer for you to blog about their service. If you accept the offer, you write the post and get paid the agreed-upon amount. ReviewMe is owned by MediaWhiz Holdings LLC, which is a large and reputable online company that also owns AuctionAds, Text-Link-Ads, and several other online media properties. ReviewMe has become an important service for advertisers looking to generate buzz and build links, and is a proven system for bloggers to generate income from Web site traffic.

Sell Links through TextLinkBrokers.com

An alternative to Text-Link-Ads is the popular link broker network TextLinkBrokers. TextLinkBrokers offers a link-selling feature that is similar to Text-Link-Ads and other networks. One of the factors that recently set TextLinkBrokers apart from the pack is the addition of hosted marketing pages. This is a step up from just buying a link; you actually rent a page on someone else's Web site. For the purposes of buying links, many search-engine marketing experts suggest that the Hosted Marketing Pages program is incredibly effective. Additionally, hosted marketing pages allow you to monetize your Web site traffic with little effort other than initial placement of code on your Web site.