Many webmasters, especially beginners, ask themselves, what should they do to monetize their sites. It’s not an easy decision and often you never really know what works for you unless you try, because some networks are more productive for one site, and never perform as good on another website or even page. Here, I decided to write a small overview of what I use and have personal positive experience with, but remember it does not mean you will get similar results, your site can do worse or better, but since all the links below will lead to networks that do pay and are respectable, I hope this will at least be of use and help you to avoid fraud.
- 1. Google Adsense.
I run this network on most of my websites, and the results vary, depending on niche, ads placement, ads’ color and traffic. You can generate revenue easily from even a tiny site, however the disadvantage is that ads take up a lot of space and many believe (myself included) that it spoils the clean look and feel of the layout. From some sites I generate 150+ USD, from others 1 dollar, but this is by far the best contextual ads network and highly recommended to implement. Payment Form: EST (direct bank transfer) or Check sent by standard, or secure delivery (secure delivery cost you 29$). Minimum Payout: 100$.
- 2. Text Link Ads.
When you sign up with TLA (Text Link Ads), have two options of generating revenue; first - if your site has been approved, by selling text links, and the second - by referring other members to Text Links Ads network. Advocating someone to sign up for free and make money is not hard, I never promoted TLA aggressively (like many others), but still managed to gather 4 referrals.
Selling text links ads is a lil` tricky, but can go easily if you work out a good strategy of sales. After a few months of been listed in their database I managed to sell links on all the sites I offered and the good part is, the links are added automatically yet are fully customizable, which means they do not look like adverts at all and take up minimum space. Besides, you get paid even if the links has never been clicked.
As you can see from the screenshot above, this blog is grossly undervalued at TLA marketplace but I look at it philosophically - overall it’s at least extra 100$ a month, and I am sure I can find some good use for them. Payment Form: PayPal or Check sent by airmail (extra cost, deducted from your payment). Minimum Payout: For PayPal - none, for checks - 25$.
- 3. Pay Per Post.
This network is for bloggers only and it compensate writers for blogging about particular products and sites. Ideally, if you have several blogs (like myself) you can occasionally take opportunities without having to fill (or rather overfill) one blog with irrelevant sponsored posts. Mine are spread across 3 blogs and therefore I managed to collect over 400$ in about 35 days, out of which only 2-3 reviews with sponsored links fell is this blog and hopefully did not irritate the readers too much…
You choose what to blog about and you are never obliged to accept one task or another, which means it’s very flexible and convenient. Payment Form: PayPal. Minimum Payout: No minimum, you get paid 30 days after completing each task separately.
Of course these are not the only networks who pay fairly (and fairly well), however, I tried these ones myself and I recommend them based *solemnly* on personal experience. I do use other sources that help me to monetize my websites, but I find these 3 sources to be the most easy-to-use and suitable. While Adsense and TLA are a very ‘passive’ sources of revenue, which require minimum maintenance (if at all), Pay Per Post gives you full freedom to earn as much as possible at your spare time (of course, higher rank blogs earn significantly more).
I hope this pours some light on Text link ads, Adsense and Pay Per Post as I know many webmasters hesitate to sign up thinking it could be fraud. I myself wasted a lot of precious time not giving anything beside Adsense a try, out of fear this is yet another scam program but one day I realized it’s far easier to multiply revenue sources, rather than Adsense clicks.