Created by LizaThe first thing you should know is that there are no miracle guides to making money in the internet. If someone says there is, he's usually lying. And if you currently don't have a website or you do, but a website with no visitors, no need to read on. If you need traffic, just read the article about how to promote your website for free. The current article is meant to help you make money with your already existing traffic. If you're just starting out and have no idea how to turn your website visitors into cash, below is a simple guide about different types of ad-networks and my subjective bests from each of them.
Banner networksBanner networks show your visitors image-banners and usually they pay the website owner, you, a certain amount per 1000 banner impressions. The amounts depend on the network, your niche, the amount of impressions you are capable of sending them, and the quality (and/or "targetedness") of your traffic. You might earn as little as $0.1 from CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) all the way up to $25 CPM or even more. What matters here are the criterias I just mentioned. There are 3 networks I would suggest you to check out. Firstly, BurstMedia (http://www.burstmedia.com) - while not with the highest numbers, they tend to be quite okay. Adbrite (http://www.adbrite.com) has always left me an impression of not so quality network, but still something worth checking out. And then there's Tribal Fusion (http://tribalfusion.com). Tribal fusion is one of the few quality networks out there and in order to submit your application to join them, you need to have high traffic, at least 500 000 visitors a month. And your website must be highly targeted. If you do get approved, you can probably hope for high CPM in the range of $5-$15. Even though it might not always be the case.
In-text networksWhen you go to a website and you see couple of words underlined inside an article and clicking or mouseovering it shows you some ad which you can click, that's an in-text ad. This type of networks pay per click and while they don't usually give too much revenue compared to other networks, they definitely are a good add-on to the other ads on your site. And they aren't too distracting to the visitors either. My personal favorite in this category is Kontera (http://www.kontera.com).
Click networksWell, that might be just my own name for Google Adsense (http://www.google.com/adsense) and alike. We have all seen them on most pages we visit. And while many different ad networks offer this type of ads, let's be honest, Google Adsense is the best. Just one other worth checking out is Yahoo Publisher Network (http://publisher.yahoo.com).
Sponsored reviewsIf you have a content website - a blog, online magazine or anything related, you can sell paid posts on your website. Basically this means that a company contacts you, tells you that they want an article or blog post written about them with certain keywords inside the article linked to their website and you get it done and publish it on your website. The best network for sponsored reviews is Sponsored reviews (http://www.sponsoredreviews.com). Couple of others that *might* be worth mentioning are Reviewme (http://www.reviewme.com) and Payperpost (https://payperpost.com).
Survey NetworksOr maybe you don't want to have ads on all of your pages. Maybe instead you'd like to earn just a bit differently. Survey networks offer you this option. How does it work? When a person goes to your site, the content will be locked for him or her. In order to unlock the page, he or she needs to fill in a simple survey for which you will get money from the network. Survey networks are rather distracting, let's be honest, and most people after seeing the locked page will just leave. But if your content has value, they will fill in the survey and you might get paid more than you would by using other networks. Mostly these surveys are being used on Tv, ebook and music sites. One of the best networks in this category is Cpalead (http://www.cpalead.com).
Affiliate networksIf your website is in some specific niche but maybe without very high number of traffic, you might consider joining affiliate networks. Affiliate networks want you to actually sell a product to your visitor and you'll get paid a percentage. For more information, learn about Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com) and Clickbank (http://www.clickbank.com).
SEO networks and link salesWhenever you go to a website and see sort of unrelated link to some other website (usually in a not very prominent location), there's a chance the link has been paid for. Website owners buy such links on other websites with high Google PR (Google Page Rank) in order to get a better position in search engines. The theory is that the more other websites with high rankings link to your website, the better position you will get in search engines. Whatever the exact truth is today (considering Google is doing major changes all the time), this type of links are bought and you can often just place them in the very bottom of your website (since no clicks are required). The best network here is Linkworth (http://www.linkworth.com). When you make a search about these networks yourself, you might find something like backlinks.com as well, but from my experience, using them your own website rankings may be hurt.
Direct salesAnd of course, as a last thing, you can always try to sell your advertising inventory on your website yourself, without any middleman. However, this case you'll also need to find yourself a good ad serving software (often the good ones are not free) and you'll also need to work on promoting your site to potential advertisers yourself. But then again, you do get to keep the fee the ad-networks are charging - usually 30-50% of the total amount.
Note that while in every category I brought out specific names, they often mix. For example, Linkworth is not just selling links, they actually offer pretty much everything, from banners to sponsored posts, but in my mind, they are still best in link sales. And actually there are hundreds if not thousands of different networks out there and with the ones brought out above I have either had firsthand experience or I know someone who has.
