The most common approaches for monetizing blogs are displaying banner ads, showing native content ads, selling sponsored content placements, and joining affiliate programs. The way you address each of these approaches can vary. For example, you could sign up with an ad network like Google’s AdSense or sell your ad spots directly to advertisers; each method has pros and cons.
Another way to monetize your website is by selling your own products, such as e-books, courses, and merchandise, just as I have done with this e-book.
Affiliate programs
Many companies offer affiliate programs and are prepared to pay well for referred clients. As an affiliate, you can add banners and calls to action on your website to direct your visitors to register with a financial services provider or any other company that would interest your readers.
Perhaps the best characteristic of affiliate programs is they are performance-based, meaning advertisers have zero risk, while you have unrestricted potential profits. Most companies will onboard you regardless of how old your site is or how many visitors you have.
When choosing to join an affiliate program, you should consider the geographical coverage of the program. For example, a US-based gold bullion dealer may not ship to Europe, or an Australian forex broker might not accept US residents.
The finance industry and, more specifically, the forex and CFD trading niche is among the highest paying industries for affiliates. Some forex brokers will pay over a thousand dollars for referring a European client.
Affiliate programs typically have two compensation models; revenue sharing or cost per acquisition (CPA). Revenue sharing models mean you will earn a percentage of the lifetime revenue generated by the introduced customer. CPA models mean you will earn a one-time payment for each qualifying customer.
To participate in an affiliate program, you can reach out to companies you know and would feel comfortable recommending on your blog, or you can join an affiliate network. Robinhood, Coinbase, Betterment, M1, Forex.com, Wise, Chime, Experian, Allianz Care, LendingTree and many more.
Alternatively, you can start working with a finance-focused affiliate network which will inform you of available offers from leading brands. Fintel Connect and financeAds are two of the best-known finance affiliate networks and work with leading banks, insurance companies and investment firms in North America and Europe.
Display ad networks
Display ads are simply visual ads displayed on your site. Ad networks connect advertisers with publishers, i.e., you. When you start cooperating with an ad network, you will need to add a widget on your site, which is essentially a space for the ad network to insert banners from different advertisers.
The ad network will manage the relationship with advertisers and simply pay you for the ads shown on your site. The network will use a complex algorithm to decide which ads to show on which sites and how much to charge the advertiser.
The advantage of cooperating with an ad network is that you will essentially have an unlimited supply of advertisers without the fuss of dealing with customers. However, the ad network sets the prices and decides what they pay you. Therefore, your revenue depends on many factors and is hard to predict.
Most ad networks pay based on the number of impressions, known as a CPM model, or per click, known as a CPC model. CPM is the best model to aim for as its directly correlated with your site’s performance rather than user actions, which are beyond your control.
The largest ad network is Google’s AdSense. However, to qualify for an AdSense publisher account, you need at least 50,000 monthly pageviews, which took me two years to reach.
Example of Google AdSense on investing.com (I visited Marks and Spencer earlier):
Online advertising is a huge industry, and many ad networks cooperate with smaller sites, but you will need at least a few thousand pageviews monthly to have a chance of making any meaningful money.
| Here are a handful of reputable display ad networks without minimum traffic requirements and support bi-weekly payouts via PayPal and cryptocurrency with reasonable minimum withdrawals of $100: Adsterra BuySellAds Media.net Adapex Galaksion |
https://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?u=2840783&m=46483&b=2382508
Native content ad networks
Native content ads are designed to look like other articles on your website, but they link to articles on the advertisers’ website.
You’ve probably seen native ads before without even noticing. In many cases, the native content ads are blended with your articles, which looks neat and tidy, but may surprise users when they are unexpectedly redirected to another website.
