How to know if your site is ready for advertising

If you have a small to midsize business, or even just a large web following, you might be ready to start using your website as a source of income. To help out those who are thinking about monetizing their websites, our friends at sovrn Holdings, Inc. shared their expertise on how to know when your website is ready for advertising. 

Knowing when your site is ready for advertising is tricky. Should you roll out advertising when you launch or wait until your site is getting thousands of page views per day?

In reality there’s no magic number that determines when you’re ready for display advertising, but it’s always a good idea to start early on. At sovrn we recommend publishers start monetizing as soon as they’ve fully set up their sites and are regularly posting content.

Display advertising is great for bloggers because it’s easy to install and generates passive income. So if you’re interested in making money with display advertising, consider these four points before you get started.

1. There’s no minimum number of page views you need to begin

It’s never too early to start using display advertising. At sovrn we work with publishers whose sites receive anything from a few hundred page views per day to a few hundred thousand. While some ad networks require a minimum amount of traffic to join, other networks do not. Here are five tips on turning a profit with display advertising.

2. Not all traffic is created equal

Advertisers do not value all traffic equally, and certain categories of sites earn more money than others. For example, shopping, finance, or automotive sites garner much higher CPMs than entertainment or hobbies and interest sites.

Your readers’ location factors in highly as well. Sites with audiences in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., or Western Europe typically earn higher CPMs than in other countries.

3. You’ll make the most money with around five ad zones

Some publishers try to maximize advertising revenue by putting up an excessive amount of ads, such as ten or more on one page.

Ideally, you should have no more than five ads on a page. Advertisers only want to target users a certain number of times, so the more ad zones on the page, the less money each ad zone will make. Click here to learn which ad sizes make the most money.

In addition to the publisher making less money, displaying too many ads will slow down your site and detracts from the reader experience. Five ad zones allows for maximum revenue while not diminishing the reader experience. To read more about optimizing your site for monetization and user experience, click here.

4. Don’t worry if you don’t make a lot of money from the start

I think most bloggers would agree that the key to monetizing your blog is to diversify your income. So even if you’re only making enough to pay for your web hosting, display advertising is just one piece of the blog monetization puzzle. Other pieces include native advertising, guest blogging, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, etc. Click here to learn about how other bloggers and midsize publishers are monetizing.

And there’s always the possibility of earning much more down the line—some of our publishers who started out only making enough each month to buy a latte now make a living off of advertising.

When do you think a site is ready for advertising? When did you feel you had enough traffic to get started? Share your thoughts on Twitter by tagging @sovrnholdings.

By Ashley Fleckenstein, Blogger, ashleyabroad.com and Publisher Advocate, sovrn Holdings, Inc.