Daikos.Net

Monetize your website - my experience

I just received my paypal transfer from Text-Link-Ads for October and that makes me want to comment on some of my experience with monetizing solutions for small scale publishers like myself.

My basic goal is to cover my expences to various hosts (I do use several) and for some of the bandwith at home.

Google Adsense

Google is still the big player in this market. But for small scale publishers with limited traffic the problem is that it pays relatively poor. You can on rely on a click through rate of about 1% with some cents on your account per click. My sites generate about $1,42 per 1000 impressions. That means that I need about 70 000 impressions to earn my first $100 check.

You have to take that into account when choosing ad-systems. If you have a high volume site, that might be done in a day or so, but for most of us it takes months to get to 70 000 impressions.

The advantage is that the ads are always shown and including Google Adsense doesn’t halt your site.

Bidvertiser

Bidvertiser is a new comer on the scene. It promisses more money per click. Still I find the ads to be less relevant than Google’s with the result that the click through rate drops. On top of that it is less reliable and actually has halted my site from loading on several occasions. So I’ve removed my Bidvertiser ads for now on my sites.

Text-Link-Ads

Text-Link-Ads is my favourite among these. I’ve used it for some months now and the income is small but steady, and they actually pay every month. The system is producing actual html-links that the ad-buyers seem to love and it gives you a as a small scale publisher the confident that it pays of to run even a small specialized site. The price they pay is dependent on the traffic to your site and the category your site belongs to, and the ad-engine is very reliable.

Any other experiences out there? Feel free to ad to the discussion.