Understand your audience
You should already know what type of people you are targeting even before you launch your website. Once your community is live and running, you should then be taking the opportunity to get to know your members by interacting with them. If you fail to do this, the chances are your community will fail.
Over time, you will soon learn to understand your members. You will learn and understand the general atmosphere and personality of your community. You may even be able to predict their future demands and cater to these before they are asked for. Once you reach this point, you have no excuse for being unable to generate revenue from your community.
Advertising choices affect your site’s credibility
A lot of people setup a website in order to make money. A good way of monetizing your website is through advertising - but be careful when implementing advertisements as they can affect the credibility of your site.Always remember that your website is a brand. You work hard at building this brand, so do not make the mistake of ruining your credibility through bad choices when it comes to advertising.
How can advertising affect your brand?
Let’s say your website is looking to position itself as an authority on share trading. You have worked hard building a serious, business-like design and have packed your site full of authoritative articles. You decide to add advertising to your website, and now your visitors are greeted with banners asking you to ‘Rate Paris Hilton’ or ‘Download Speaking Smileys’. I am sure you can imagine that this does your credibility no good at all.
Warning: Advertising can cost you visitors
If your site contains a number of ads (or ‘exit-points’) you are making it easier for visitors to leave your site, never to return again.
You want to be minimizing the number of exit points on your site when you are getting started - are those few coins you are earning each month worth it when you consider just how much easier you are making it for your visitors to leave?
Ensure advertising complements your website
You are looking to make money by placing advertising on your website, right? Advertising works best when the ads served are relevant and appropriate to your audience. A website offering advice for recovering alcoholics should not really advertise online alcohol venders! Similarly, a website aimed at children should not contain advertising for online gambling. Keep adverts relevant to your website - they should always complement your content.
Choose your ad formats carefully
I am sure we can all think of ads we have come across that are so intrusive you end up leaving the website they are on. You don’t want this to happen to your site. By all means place your ads in prominent positions but ensure they do not distract your visitors from your website’s content - that is after all, what your visitors came to your site to see.
Avoid pop-ups at all costs, and consider avoiding those banners that flash and flicker so fast they can trigger epileptic seizures. Also, avoid the automatic ads feature by Google if you're going for AdSense.
Google AdSense
One popular way to start earning revenue is through Google AdSense. It's easy to apply and can be implemented without a lot of hassle. The approval might take a while though -- typically it can take up to two weeks to get approved for Google AdSense. Plus, the contextual advertising makes sure that the ads are relevant to your content, which means visitors are more likely to click on them.But AdSense isn't for everyone. Some people have reported that the contextual advertising doesn't work correctly, and sometimes it can be downright inappropriate.
In some cases, you might be able to make more money by using affiliate programs, private advertising, or other ad networks. Don't forget that Google doesn't have a monopoly on online advertising. It's always a good idea to diversify your revenue streams, even if AdSense is working great for you. After all, you never know what the future might hold.
Always diversify your revenue streams
Even if AdSense is working fantastically for you, it doesn’t mean you should put all your eggs in Google’s basket. What happens if that revenue suddenly drops overnight? It could easily happen - you may be earning good money right now as a few advertisers are all vying for the top few positions. When that bidding war ends, your revenue may well slump as a result.
Run other advertising in addition to AdSense - don’t just rely on Google to earn you money. Believe it or not, there are loads of other avenues for you to explore when it comes to monetizing your site. Do your research, do some testing and decide for yourself what works for you, and what works for your visitors.
Consider private advertising
Private advertising can be hugely effective - you cut out the middleman and keep all the ad revenue yourself. The downside? You need to find the advertisers yourself, and then you need to decide how much to charge. There are many ways of determining the value of specific ads on your site - my favorite way is to run a few different advertising campaigns in the spots I want to sell privately through networks such as AdSense for a few weeks. When I see what I can earn with the ad networks, I am then in a better position to figure out the value of those spots and can work out a monetary value for them.
With private advertising you are no longer at the mercy or whims of advertising networks. Should they change their terms or decide your site is no longer suitable you still have your private advertisers to keep your revenue flowing whilst you find alternatives.
Private advertising doesn’t work for everyone - you may find that you can’t earn the same amount of revenue compared to what you get from the advertising agencies or affiliate networks. It is often only the biggest advertisers that can pay the biggest money for advertising, and these tend to be with the agencies and networks. This isn’t always the case though. Remember - you don’t know until you try.
Develop relationships
Regardless of how you earn your advertising revenue, you should always strive to develop relationships. By doing this, you are no longer a simple statistic in the eyes of your advertisers. Just as it can be easy for us to forget that behind every user name is a real human being, it can be just as easy for advertisers to see all their publishers as numbers and statistics.
If you develop a relationship with your advertisers, you are far more likely to be given preferential rates - but only if you actually ask for more money! If you develop relationships, you are investing in the long term. In a fiscal squeeze, an advertiser may need to reduce the number of sites they advertise on. It is far easier to remove a site when all you see is a number. If an advertiser knows you by name and has developed a relationship with you, you are far more likely to be one of the sites spared from the cull.
Not many site owners take the time to really develop relationships with their advertisers. Even if you are stuck with a big network, contact your account manager on a regular basis - they are able to offer you advice on how to maximize your revenue, can give you new programs to try and can even put in a good word about your site with your advertisers.
It is hard to say ‘no’ to somebody you have developed a relationship with. Use this fact to your advantage and get developing those relationships now.
Always keep a record of your advertisers
Sure, you may be making a nice bit of money through your ad network now, but what would happen if this network became inaccessible to you?
It is hard to get any site that has a strong emphasis on user generated content into the larger ad networks, so if your current network abandons you what will you do? It is precisely because of this uncertainty that you should always spend the good times preparing for the bad. If you use Google AdSense, you may find that there are no end of advertisers apparently willing to shell out to display their ads on your site.
How your competitors can make you more money
You should be scanning your competitors websites on a regular basis. You should check out the sites that are smaller than yours, as well as the sites that are significantly larger. The larger sites are likely to be making more money, but this may not always be the case. Smaller sites tend to be more innovative in order to differentiate themselves so make time to check out the small fry, too!
When you visit the sites of your competitors, consider the following:
1. How are they making money?
Are they using banner ads? What size? Where are they positioned? How many banners are there on each page? Are they using text ads or affiliate links? Where, when and in what context?
2. What companies are they working with?
Your competitors may be promoting products that you have never considered pushing on your website. They may be working with companies you haven’t tried working with yourself. If your competitors feel these companies and products are good enough for them, why not give those companies and products a try yourself? It never hurts to experiment, and the potential gains can be enormous.
Warning: Big advertisers hate forums
As soon as your forum is generating huge amounts of content and traffic every single day, advertising networks will be desperate for your business, right? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way - many advertisers hate your website, regardless of how good it really is.Advertising networks frown upon user generated content
It doesn’t really matter how popular your website is - if it relies on user-generated content (UGC), the chances are that none of the large ad companies will accept you as a publisher.
This matters - the larger advertising companies have relationships with the largest and most prestigious advertisers. If you want to move away from running ads offering animated smileys and quizzes about Paris Hilton, you need to get connected with the larger advertisers.
Don’t blame the advertising networks
Advertising networks are not to blame for your UGC website being denied from participating in their ad campaigns - the fault lies with the advertisers who insist their ads do not run on sites that rely on user-generated content.
Many advertisers specify to the networks that they do not want their site to appear on ANY UGC websites. This makes things easier for them - they simply tarnish all UGC sites with the same brush, and run their ads elsewhere. By doing this, they are making a big mistake.
To some extent, I can understand why some advertisers decide they do not want to run their ads on sites that rely on UGC. Many are deserted wastelands, others may be controversial and consequently an advertiser doesn’t want their brand to be associated with extremist or controversial comments. Forums are also renowned for huge page impressions, but low click-through rates. This is why Pay-Per-Click advertising is recommended. I'll get into that in a later article.
Conclusion
It's possible for online communities to earn money through advertising, but it's important to take a strategic approach. To maintain credibility and keep visitors coming back, to know your audience and make sure that any ads you display are relevant and complement your website.
While Google AdSense is a popular choice for many, it's wise to consider diversifying your income streams. Explore private advertising options and other ad networks. To successfully generate revenue from your community, you'll need to carefully weigh your audience's preferences and the various advertising opportunities available to you.
