There may be affiliate links in this article on the best ad networks for bloggers, read the full disclaimer here.
So I heard an awesome podcast the other day with a really cool study.
It was so good in fact that I’ve linked to it right here:
How do Bloggers Make Money – The Blogging Millionaire
The biggest takeaway was that bloggers who earn $2,000-$7,500 per month make up their income with 35% of their income from Ads on average.
That is massive!! Over a third of their income comes from adverts… on average!
Once bloggers start earning more than $7,500 per month they are not so reliant on ads and spend more time focusing on affiliate marketing and creating courses.
But this made me realize… I’m almost 6 months in and I don’t have any ads!
And if you want to make more than $2,000 per month from your blog… you’re gonna need them!
Check this out…
With that, shall we?
How do Websites Make Money Using Adverts?
That is the right question amigo!
You generally get paid in one of 2 ways:
- Revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) i.e. $4 for every 1,000 views
- Pay per click (PPC)
Different networks will pay your website in different ways so it’s important to work out how much you will get paid i.e. Adsense will pay roughly $2 RPM. This means if you have 10,000 page views a month you will receive $20.
This begs the question…
Should You Even Bother With Adverts?
Now, I can almost hear your mind saying…
“But adverts will make my website look tacky, is it really worth it for a few dollars?!”
You may have a point but here are 4 BIG reasons why you should use adverts ASAP:
- Your readers will become used to seeing ads on your website… so it won’t be a big shock when you add them!
- You could miss out on a post going viral.
- Something is better than nothing, it can offset other costs such as automatically pinning on Pinterest with Tailwind
- People are used to seeing ads everywhere, so it won’t look as strange as you may think (Youtube, TV, Podcasts, Newspaper etc.)
You can also help to connect people with a great product! As long as the ads you have are related to what you write about and useful.
The main thing to remember is that if you are providing quality content consistently your readers generally won’t mind having some ads on the page. In fact, a lot of them will be happy that you are getting paid if it means you can spend more time giving them quality content!
Related Articles:
- Why Make Time Online? Financial Independence Retire Early Blog
- Save Hours of Time with these Resources
- The Secret to Earn Passive Income
- Why do People Create Blogs? These 28 Bloggers Explain Their Story
Advertising Networks
We will look at the pros and cons of using different advertising networks in this article.
And since the majority of income from ads comes from 4 networks we will look at ONLY these 4 (note there are others):
- Google AdSense
- Media.net
- Monumetric
- MediaVine
- AdThrive
Adsense
Requirements
Content must comply with Adsense policies ideally a blog over 6 months old
Earnings range
$1-$4 RPM
Pros
- Most bloggers will be able to get approved on Adsense and
- The best option for bloggers that get less than 10,000 monthly page views.
Cons
- They do not allow ads in a sticky sidebar
- Don’t allow ads on mobile devices.
- Low earnings
Media.net
Requirements
No offensive or negative content
Earnings range
Not much!
Pros
- If you can’t get approved on Adsense then it’s worth giving this a shot.
- You can place ads on the sticky sidebar (increases the impressions aka views).
Cons
- Low earnings
Monumetric
Requirements
10,000 page views per month
Earnings range
$2-$5 RPM
Pros
- 10,000 page views per month is not as much as some other networks
- Monumetric will generally pay you more than Adsense.
Cons
- They require at least 6 ad slots per page, which is a lot if you don’t have posts over 2,000 words!
- Still quite a low RPM.
MediaVine
Requirements
25,000 page views per month
Earnings range
$6.67-$13.58 RPM
Pros
- They accept bloggers across all the major blogging niches.
- Can double or triple your income for ads compared to Adsense
Cons
- The reason they tend to pay more than Adsense is because their ads “stick” to the sidebar. This means when users scroll down the ad still stays on screen (could be seen as a pro depending on how you look at it)
AdThrive
Requirements
100,000 page views per month
Must have U.S. based majority
Earnings range
$8.77-$19.89 RPM
Pros
- The highest RPM ad network
- They are willing to pay a higher premium as their ads ONLY show up on high quality and specific websites.
Cons
- But it’s the most “picky”.
- It is estimated that 75% of applications are rejected, as they prefer specific niches:
1. Food
2. Parenting
3. Home-related
So What Does This Mean?
There’s a couple of charts that pretty much sums this all up…
As you can see, over 1 in 5 bloggers making over $2k+ per month use Adsense. But only 2% of the overall income from adverts is paid from Adsense.
The point is…
When you qualify to apply to other networks, do it!!
You will just be leaving money on the table otherwise and you can easily see a 2-3 times increase in your advertising income! Plus you will provide better quality adverts that may actually help your audience.
Best Ad Networks for Bloggers Summary
Are you beginning to see how important it is to monetise your website with adverts?
The 5 best ad networks for bloggers are:
- Google AdSense
- Media.net
- Monumetric
- MediaVine
- AdThrive
Bloggers starting out should use Adsense ASAP.
Once you hit the requirements of MediaVine you should change to this network as soon as possible.
If you are in the “food” or “mummy” niche you should focus on getting over 100,000 page views per month to really benefit from using AdThrive.
And do you begin to notice that content is ALWAYS king?
If you write posts that help your readers it will increase your page views per month and they will not mind putting up with a couple of ads at the side.
Keep changing for the better
Mike
P.S. If you are interested in making money online to free up your time, have a look at my #1 recommended program here, which I am currently using.
P.P.S. If you have any questions or thoughts please feel free to drop a comment below… or send me a message on WA here
Pin this if you think this should be shared!
Thanks so much for the great review and for giving me options to choose from. I am sure that many other readers that come across your post will find this information to be so helpful and enlighting. Thanks again.
Hi Norman,
Thanks for your kind words, I hope it helped.
Mike
Hi,
This is a really cool advice. I am a rookie blogger as well and from experience, I would say ads are really important part of the business especially when you are just starting.
Making money with ads is fairly easy. All I need to do is to drive traffic to my site. and I can do that using social media.
Thank you for giving list of ad network. I am only familiar with Google Adsense and I am thrilled to see that there are many other ad networks out there.
Just one question. Can you run multiple ad network at the same time?
Regards,
JG
Hi John,
Yeah, you’re right but you do need to get quite a lot of traffic to make it worthwhile. It’s a good way to make a bit of money each month anyway.
Yes, it is possible to use different networks at the same time. Some people have strong opinions about whether you should or not but generally, it will make your website pretty overcrowded (again probably not really worth it unless you are getting hundreds of thousands of views each month).
Thanks for stopping by,
Mike
This is great information, but it all seem so hard and complicated, how can I learn to make money without going throw so many step? Where can you direct me to go to make this process more easier?
Great question Claudia!
It’s certainly not easy but little steps make a huge difference if you keep it up! I would highly recommend checking this post out https://maketimeonline.com/discover-perfect-part-time-job-online as well as my #1 recommendation on the menu at the top.
Thanks for stopping by, do give me a shout if you have ANY questions I will respond to every email
mike@maketimeonline.com