Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
API monetization is a great way to recoup your investment in your API programs. Without direct monetization, you’re dependent on other sources of capital to grow the program, such as other profit centers or venture capital.
If you’re not directly monetizing your APIs, you could be leaving money on the table. This can be especially true if you don’t have any limits in place and lean on the honor system.
There are numerous benefits of having a unified advertising mechanism for the business of an organisation. Today, most of the advertising that is done across various media is disparate and not having a unified mechanism for generation, distribution, maintenance, reporting, or collection. To bridge this gap, I conceptualized and coined the term Meld Advertising (Referred to as 'It'). Meld Advertising brings out all of these in the form of providing tools to automate most of these processes and to directly connect with all unique advertising channels. The tools help in the creation, beta, subscription, payments, real-time reporting, cost-effectiveness, and overall maintenance of the advertisements.
It helps all types of users including the end contractors who work on actually putting up advertising for diverse media. These include all tools which facilitate the entire workflow of advertising. It also recognizes that usage of effective tools, which are simple to use and create advertisements online, will lead to a faster execution of marketing campaigns. Also, ready-made templates, tie-ups with other advertising tools, and online expert help will allow for a more efficient generation of advertisements.
I still think Coil is cool. I have it installed on CSS-Tricks as a publisher and money trickles in. I have a paid account and I trickle out money to other sites that use it. I wrote about all that last year.
This’ll explode to something huge if we actually get the Web Monetization API stuff. No more browser extensions would be needed, and a real ecosystem could be built around it.
Anselm Hook writes about using Coil (for now) to monetize games on the web, which is a good reminder that this isn’t just for publications — it’s for anything-web. Coil even works for things off your own domain, like your YouTube channel.
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Google AdSense is one of the most popular ways to monetize your website.
It allows you to automatically sell your website’s ad space to advertisers and get paid. AdSense is one of the easiest way to start making money online with your website.
In this article, we will show you how to add Google AdSense in WordPress along with some best practices and tips to increase your earnings.
Google AdSense is an advertising network run by Google that allows bloggers and website owners an opportunity to earn money by showing text, image, video, and other interactive advertisement on their websites. These ads are targeted by site content and audience, so they’re highly relevant.
Google AdSense is hassle-free because you don’t have to deal with advertisers or worry about collecting money. Google administers and maintains relationships with advertisers. They collect the payment, take their management fee, and send the rest of the money to you.
AdSense offers cost-per-click ads (CPC) which means that you earn money every time a user clicks on the ad on your website. The amount received per click varies based on a variety of factors.
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
First thing you need to do is sign up for a Google AdSense account. If you have a Gmail account, then you can use your existing account to sign up.
Once you’ve submitted your application, you will need to wait for the Google AdSense team to review it. This may take a few hours to a few weeks for some publishers.
Once it is approved, then you can log in to your AdSense account and get your ad code. This is the code that you need to place on your website to display ads.
Recently, Google AdSense announced auto ads, which means you paste just one piece of code and Google automatically decides when, where, and how many ads to show on each page.
However, most publishers are still using the manual method to individually place ads on their website.
We’ll show you both methods. We recommend starting with the manual ad placement first. Once you have started earning, then you can experiment with auto-ads to compare them yourself.
You’ll start by clicking on the Ads menu in the left column and then switching to the ‘By ad unit’ tab. From here you need to click on ‘Create New Ad’.
You will be asked to choose an ad type. You can select from ‘Display ads’, ‘In-feed ads’, and ‘In-article ads’.
If you are unsure, then start with the display ads.
Next, you need to provide a name for this ad unit and select the ad size and type.
The name of the Ad is only used for internal purposes, so you can name it anything like “SiteName Sidebar”.
The next option is choosing the Ad Size. While Google offers a wide variety of ad sizes, there are certain sizes that are listed under recommended because those are the most popular among advertisers.
You can also choose whether you want your ad to be responsive or fixed. We recommend choosing responsive ads as they work well on all devices and screen sizes.
Next, click on the Create button to continue.
AdSense will now generate the ad code for you. It contains the unique ad unit ID and your publisher ID.
If your website has a Google AMP version, then you can also copy the code for your AMP pages.
Simply copy your ad code and paste it in a plain text editor like Notepad or TextEdit. You will need it in the next step.
You need to determine where you want to show the ad on your website. Ads are most commonly displayed in the sidebar. You can add Google Adsense in your sidebar by using WordPress widgets.
Simply go to Appearance » Widgets page in your WordPress admin area. Next, drag & drop the ‘Custom HTML’ widget to the appropriate widget area and paste your Google AdSense code in there.
For better placement control and tracking, we recommend that you check out AdSanity WordPress plugin. (See: Best Ad Management WordPress solutions)
Adding individual ads to different areas of your website takes a lot of time. Most beginners struggle to find the best locations to display ads on their sites.
To solve this, Google has introduced auto-ads. This allows you to simply add one code snippet to your site and let Google AdSense figure out the highest paying location, ad-size, and type.
The disadvantage of this method is that you have less control over ad placement on your website.
If you want to add use auto-ads feature, then this is how you’ll add Google AdSense to your website.
First login to your Google AdSense account and click on the Ads tab. Next, you need to click on the Get Code button to generate the auto-ads code.
AdSense will now generate a code snippet with your publisher ID and show it on the screen. You can now copy and paste this code in a text editor.
The auto-ads code uses the single code snippet to generate ads everywhere on your WordPress website. This means you need to add the code to all the pages where you want to display the ad.
One way to do this is by adding the code in your WordPress theme’s header.php file. However, the disadvantage of this method is that your ad code will disappear if you update or change your theme.
The best way to add any site-wide code to your website is by using a plugin like Insert Headers and Footers.
First, you need to install and activate the Insert Headers and Footers plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to the Settings » Insert Headers and Footers page. From here, you need to paste your Google AdSense code in the header section.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your changes.
The plugin will now add the ad code on all pages of your website. It may take Google AdSense sometime to start showing ads.
Over the years, we’ve answered several AdSense related questions. Having used AdSense on several of our sites in the past, we’ve learned a whole lot about optimizing. Below are some AdSense best practices and frequently asked questions.
What’s the best AdSense Ad Size?
Although ad placement is key, we’ve found that the best sizes are 336×280 and 300×250. These ads tend to fit on most screen sizes and have the best pay rate as well.
What’s the Best AdSense Placement?
This entirely depends on your layout. The goal is to get more clicks, so you want to place your ads in a more prominent spot. We have found that ads within post content towards the top of the screen tends to get the most clicks.
Several users have asked us about adding AdSense in a floating widget because it will be very prominent. We strongly recommend against that because it is not allowed by Google Terms of Service. If you violate their TOS, then you can get banned from the program.
Can I click on my own Google AdSense Ads?
Often beginners are tempted to click on their own ads or ask their family members to click on their ads. Please don’t do that. Google’s algorithm is very smart and knows when you’re clicking on your own ad. This can get you banned from the program.
What is Page RPM in Google AdSense?
RPM stands for Revenue per Mille meaning revenue per 1000 impressions. This is determined by multiplying the total number of clicks and cost per click and then dividing that by the total number of pageviews.
Can I use my Blogger or YouTube AdSense account with WordPress?
Yes, you can. If you started using AdSense on one of Google’s hosted platforms like Blogger or YouTube, then you can change your AdSense account type and use it with WordPress. You’ll need to provide Google AdSense with the URL of the site you want to monetize by filling out an application form.
Simply login to your AdSense account and then under ‘My Ads’ click on ‘Other Products’ option. Next, you need to click ‘Upgrade now’ and complete the application form.
What is CTR in Google AdSense?
CTR or click-through-rates differ vastly for different kind of websites. Your ad clicks depend on a lot of factors like your website’s topics, your audience type, ad placement on your site, and more. The ideal CTR for Google AdSense is really hard to define because you don’t have access to the click rates of other websites like your own.
However, Google AdSense has built-in tools that will start showing you messages if your site is not getting a good CTR. You can follow the optimization guides shown inside Google AdSense dashboard to improve your ad revenue.
When and how does Google AdSense pay publishers?
Each month, Google AdSense calculates your previous month’s earnings and shows them on your ‘Transactions’ page. If your earnings match the required threshold, then your payment is processed and released by the 21st of that month.
There are multiple payment methods available including direct electronic transfer, wire transfer, check, Western Union, and more.
Why Google AdSense rejected my application?
Google Adsense may reject your application if your website doesn’t meet the AdSense program policies or their terms and conditions.
What are the requirements to get Google AdSense application approved?
Here are the minimum requirements to get your Google AdSense account application approved.
Note: Even if your application meets all the requirements, Google AdSense still reserves the right to decline your application.
Can I add Google AdSense in my WordPress.com blog?
WordPress.com does not allow you to add Google AdSense to your website unless you upgrade to the Business plan. For more on this topic, please see our guide on the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
What is the difference between Google AdSense vs Google AdWords?
Google AdWords allows you to advertise on other websites including those participating in the Google AdSense program.
Google AdSense allows you to make money from your website by showing ads on your website.
We hope this article helped you add Google AdSense in your WordPress site. You may also want to check out our guide on how to increase your blog traffic, and the best email marketing services to grow your subscribers.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Properly Add Google AdSense to Your WordPress Site appeared first on WPBeginner.
The rise of social media was once seen as the end of blogging. After all, sharing content on social media is not only simpler, but also more effective in some situations. However, the long lifespan of a blogpost and the extra flexibility offered by CMS platforms like WordPress are still invaluable. You only need to […]
The post Crafting Stories: Turning Your Hobby into a Monetizable Blog appeared first on WPArena.
Google AdSense is ‘THE’ advertising tool for monetizing your WordPress blog. But what if your account gets suspended, banned, or you can’t access it? Even worse, what if you’re not a fan of the Googs?
There has to be an alternative to Google AdSense – and lucky for you, we’ve found 13 of them.
But First…
When did the Google AdSense platform start, and why/how did it get so popular?
Because let’s face it, before you can choose a solid alternative to AdSense, you need to study the originator first.
AdSense is an online advertising program launched by Google back in 2003.
Initially there were some doubts about the platform, and in 2004 poor results and complaints forced Google to allow advertisers to opt out of the AdSense network.
But that’s where the trouble ended.
And in the years since, it has become the go-to advertising platform for bloggers and website owners looking to monetize their websites.
Here’s the simplified version:
You start by creating a Google AdSense account, selecting the type of ads you want to show on your site, and then pasting the HTML code where you’d like the ads to be shown.
Google does the rest, and automatically shows ads that are deemed relevant to the content of your website or blog.
From this point on, visitors to your website will see ads, and every time someone takes action (click, conversion, etc) you get a cut of the advertising revenue.
I don’t think we could explain it any better than this:
*For more information on inserting ads into WordPress do check out our article: “11 Quick Ways to Insert Ads into WordPress… and Increase Your Income This Year.”
Phew!
Now all the (bori..) informative stuff’s out of the way, I think we’re ready to get into some AdSense Alternatives.
First on our list is one of Adsense’s biggest direct competitors.
Media.net lets you to ride the wave of the Yahoo! Bing Network – one of the largest marketplaces for keyword targeted advertisers.
The company boasts one of the most advanced portfolios of advertising technology. Offering users a number of on-site ad solutions including search, display, native, video, and more.
Implementation is easy. All you have to do is drop a short snippet of code on your website or blog. Activating and running contextual, video, and native ads can also be done without extra code or integration work.
Because Media.net is a contextual ad network, the advertisements displayed on your website or blog are always relevant to your content.
So if your blog is all about cats… yep, your visitors are getting slapped with more cat ads than they can handle.
Without it feeling spammy of course.
Their customer support is also top notch. For example, once your website or blog has been approved, you’re immediately given a customer representative to help optimize your site’s ads.
Infolinks is the third largest publisher marketplace in the world, generating income for over 100,000 website and blog publishers across 128 countries.
The company also works with several big name brands including: Nike, Virgin Airlines, Target, and Netflix.
Infolinks lets you monetize your site without having to overhaul its look and style. Their ads blend in perfectly with your content and can be customized to increase engagement.
The ad types you can choose from include: InFold, InText, InArticle, and more. These ads and who they’re shown to are also supported by an intelligent algorithm. This helps the ads displayed on your website to be as relevant as possible.
Integrating Infolinks ads into your website is simple. Once your application has been approved you’ll receive a unique script you can add to your sites HTML. Paste the code anywhere on your website and you’re ready to start earning dollars.
Also, if you use Google Analytics or other JavaScript tools, the Infolinks JavaScript can be inserted right before their code.
Who wouldn’t want to leverage the behemoth that is Amazon?
After all, more than 197 million people from all around the world visit the eCommerce store.
To put this into perspective, that’s more than the entire population of Russia!
Amazon’s native shopping ads give your users direct access to the eCommerce giant’s millions of products.
Even better, they can be made to fit seamlessly with your content and all the products shown are highly relevant and appropriate.
The ad units Amazon offers fall into three different types:
1.Recommendation ads – These ads show recommended Amazon products at the bottom of your content. Of course, the products will be relevant and based on the pages content and it’s visitors. All of these units are also mobile responsive and will adapt based on the container.
2.Search ads – This ad unit allows your visitors to view search results from Amazon directly on your website. This includes recommended Amazon products based on search phrases and keywords.
3.Custom ads – Hand pick specific Amazon products you’d like to promote to your visitors. These units are highly flexible and can be personalised to feel more natural. E.g. “My favorite headphones to use in 2019.”
More than 150,000 publishers use PropellerAds and the company has over eight years of market expertise and experience.
If you’re worried about your site showing annoying or spammy ads… the good news is, all their ads are moderated 24/7.
This ensures no viruses or inappropriate content gets through, and you’re showing clean and relevant ads only.
The ad units can also bypass ad blocking software. Even though this might seem a tad sneaky, getting passed ad blockers has been shown to increase ad revenue by 20%.
I mean, it’s sneaky of the visitor to be blocking ads in the first place, right?
To set up Propeller ads, simply register for an account, and then wait to hear your website has been checked and approved.
Once this is done, all you have to do is paste the shortcode of Propeller’s ad units on any page of your website.
The types of ad units you can display on your website include: push notifications, on-click ads, widgets, interstitials, and smart links.
The platform also offers decent payment terms. Giving users weekly payouts every Thursday, and a minimum withdrawal amount of $5.
(AdSense has a threshold of $100 for reference).
You can add a “plug n play” payment integration to your account to help you keep track of your earnings.
Propeller Ads also play well with other ad networks, so you can diversify and add more income streams if you wish.
Revcontent specializes in “native” editorial content, which means the ads shown on your website will be relevant articles and blogs – as opposed to product or service ads.
As the name suggests, the idea behind these kinds of ads is they blend in with your content and are made to feel more natural.
In most cases, this means higher engagement rates as native ads tend not to interrupt the UX as much (as pop ups for example).
Another thing that sets Revcontent apart is their specialized ad system – which uses highly responsive widgets, gallery implementations, infinite scroll, and unlimited API customizations.
You also have a nice range of ad types to choose from including media, technology, and entertainment widgets.
However, one thing to be aware of is Revcontent has a minimum traffic requirement of 50,000 visits per month. Therefore it may not be suited to smaller blogs and websites.
When it comes to payment, Revcontent pays on Net 30 terms (the full amount is payable within 30 days). Their minimum payout threshold is $50 and can be paid via PayPal, wire, or ACH transfer.
Evadav is an advertising network that offers you a number of different ad units – including video sliders, banners, native content, and more.
However, their speciality is push notifications.
Yep, we’ve all seen them… the automatic notifications that appear as small pop-up windows on your device screen – whether it’s your PC, tablet, or mobile phone.
Netflix for example, often uses push notifications to let users about newly released shows or films they might be interested in.
Visitors who agree to receive push notifications from your website will continually make you money every time they interact with an Evadav ad.
Another great thing about Evadav is it connects you with a global advertising exchange. Which means you can reach visitors all around the world.
The advertisements that appear on your site are also all verified and come from the Evadav’s own domain.
In terms of payments, they pay weekly, with a $25 minimum payout. You can also choose between CPM, CPA, and RevShare models.
Set up easy and you’re provided with a handy tutorial video to help you get started.
Adsterra is a fast-growing advertising network for publishers that specializes in “popunder” ads.
After all, why be “okay” at everything when you can be awesome at one thing?
However, if you really need they do offer: video ads, direct links, push notifications, banners, pre-roll videos, and more. Ads can be run over both mobile and desktop devices.
You also don’t have to worry about showing your visitors spammy ads that send site visitors packing. Adsterra offer protection against malware and inappropriate ads through a third-party fraud detection system.
If you need assistance the team has your back ASAP. They have a ticket system and you’ll usually hear back from them within a day. If it’s urgent you can also get in touch with someone instantly through Skype.
In terms of how and when you’re paid…
You get a pay out every two weeks (NET15), but they do require a $100 minimum to be eligible. The payment integration options include: Bitcoin, PayPal, ePayments, and more.
As expected, the set up process is also super easy: Register – get approval – place code on site – start monetizing.
With a name like PopAds it wouldn’t be a wild guess to say the ad types they specialize in probably include the word “pop” in them.
And if you guessed this you’d be right!
PopAds are an advertising network that specialise in “popunder” ads for publishers and advertisers.
As well as their love for popunders, they also offer popups, tab ups, tab unders, and more (yep, all the under and ups).
Something unique about PopAds (that you often don’t get from other platforms), is they can pay you daily providing you earn more than $5 each day. This means you don’t need a ton of traffic to meet their minimum payout limit.
Your ads can reach an audience spanning more than 50 countries using the PopAds network, and you can adjust their frequency if you want to give your visitors a break.
You can contact the support team anytime via email or instant messenger. If you’re not a fan of NET30, NET60 payment terms, you’ll also enjoy the fact you can request to withdraw your PopAds earnings at anytime.
ylliX advertising network serves up a hassle-free registration process and ultra-low payment thresholds for publishers looking to monetize their blogs or websites.
But first the all important ad unit selections… we’re talking: popunder ads, layer ads, full page ads, and more.
And yes, they also run across both desktop and mobile devices.
If patience isn’t your strong point, you’ll be pleased to know that your account will be activated immediately after you register. No waiting days for your website to be approved.
Once you’re signed up and ready to go, ylliX gives you direct access to a self-serve platform you have 100% control over when running your campaigns.
Another great thing about this platform is they offer daily payments along with a super small $1 minimum payout threshold (remember AdSense’s is $100).
They also operate using a RevShare (revenue share) model. So the more you earn, the more they earn (everybody wins!).
If you’re planning on spending a couple of hours a week monetizing your website or blog, BuySellAds probably isn’t the platform for you.
They focus exclusively on English-language ads for high-volume sites with 100,000+ engaged audiences.
(Yep, they ain’t messing around).
However, if you’re comfortably hitting that number, you may have found your AdSense alternative.
Also, since the (view) cost of entry is higher, you’ll also receive bigger payouts. Expect around 75 cents per every dollar earned by the ads on your site.
When it comes to actual product, BuySellAds offers everything you’d want from this type of platform – non-intrusive, relevant, and brand-safe ad placements. The ad units you can choose from include: display, native, emails, and sponsored content.
They also specialise in niche developer, designer, and tech audiences. So you’re in luck if your blog targets any of those niches.
Their native ads in particular are optimized for user experience and come in many different forms including: “Image + text,” “fancy bar,” “flex bar,” and “sticky box.”
PopCash offers popunder advertising with a helpful UX twist.
The setup isn’t anything new… but it sure happens fast! Websites can be approved in just one hour on business days, and up to 12 hours on weekends.
Once your domain is approved, individual visitors are then shown a popunder ad once every 24 hours.
You might think limiting ad time limits revenue opportunities, but on the flipside it provides a better user experience, and ensures visitors don’t always have ads in their face.
If you want, you can use PopCash alongside other advertising platforms to diversify and bring in added income.
The platform also comes with a low minimum withdrawal limit ($10), and you can request to be paid through PayPal, Paxum, wire transfer, and more.
Transfers usually take around 24 to 48 hours. You also get to keep 80% of the revenue you earn from advertisers.
If you’re in need of assistance, staff are always on hand to offer fast support via email or Skype.
Bidvertiser offers website and blog owners an easy set up process, along with a unique payment model.
However, it does present users with a slight dilemma…
When you register for this platform you’ll be approved instantly so long as your website doesn’t breach any basic website standards (explicit, misleading, and spammy content etc.).
There is some bad news sadly, another reason it’s so easy to get approved is because the ads shown on your website won’t necessarily be related to your content.
Buuut, hold on, all is not lost.
Although the ads shown might not be relevant, they will be some of the top performing ads the platform has access to. So it’ll be largely up to you to decide whether it’s worth showing high performing ads that aren’t related to your website.
If you do choose to stick with Bidvertiser… something unique about the platform is the fact they mix CPM and CPA payments, along with the traditional CPC model.
This basically means you have the opportunity to earn, not only for per click, but per conversion as well.
The ad units you have access to include banners, popups, sliders, and more.
You can also easily integrate with payment providers like PayPal and Bitcoin, and the platform’s withdraw limit is a low $10.
The ads are also scanned 24/7 by a compliance team, as well as internal and third party tools. So you know your website is safe from Malware and inappropriate content.
OIO Publisher offers a PHP ad management script and a WordPress plugin to monetize your blog through ads.
Although, there are a couple of details you should be aware of when it comes to this plugin:
First, it does come with a small set up cost and isn’t free like the other AdSense alternatives on this list.
Second, to get the most out of OIO, you’ll need to be proactive in finding the best advertisers and deals yourself.
But aside from that, once everything is in motion this plugin is one of the most cost-effective AdSense alternatives.
Why?
Because with this plugin there are no middle people involved, and you keep 100% of the revenue.
As well as this, you’ll get paid up front and you won’t have to wait for payouts. You also don’t risk being banned or losing your earnings.
Once you’ve installed the plugin (you’ll find plenty of documentation on how to do this), you can search the OIO marketplace and begin reaching out to advertisers.
If you’ve been thinking about monetizing your blog or website, the best thing you can do is survey all of the options available to you.
Although AdSense is the top player in this department… any one of the platforms mentioned in this article would make a great alternative.
You could even argue that some may be better than AdSense depending on what you’re trying to achieve.
While the platform has been sitting at the top hill for some years, others have been quietly carving out their own niches and catering to specific customer needs.
For example, if you want to specifically run push notifications you might use a specialist platform like Evadav. Or if you want to only show native editorial content you might go with Revcontent.
What you choose will largely come down to the type of blog you’re trying to monetize and the content you’re publishing.
I've tried a handful of websites based on "tip with micropayments" in the past. They come and go. That's fine. From a publisher perspective, it's low-commitment. I've never earned a ton, but it was typically enough to be worth it.
Now Bruce has me trying Coil. It's compelling to me for a couple reasons:
After signing up with Coil and having a Stronghold account, all you really need to do is put a <meta> tag in the <head> of your site. Here's mine:
<meta name="monetization" content="$pay.stronghold.co/1a1b91b23306ab547228c43af27ac0f2411">Readers who have an active Coil subscription and are using the Coil browser extension will start sending micropayments to you, the publisher. Pretty cool.
I've already made a dollar!
The big hope is that this becomes a decent source of revenue once this coerces a web standard and lots of users choose to do it. My guess is it'll take years to get there if it does indeed become a winning player.
It's interesting thinking about the global economy as well. A dollar to me isn't the same as a dollar to everyone around the world. Less money goes a lot further in some parts of the world. This has the potential to unlock an income stream that perhaps things like advertising aren't as good at accounting for. I hear people who work in advertising talking about "bad geos" which literally means geographic places where advertisers avoid sending ad dollars.
Like I mentioned, this is completely anonymous. You can't exactly email people a free eBook or whatever for leaving a donation. But the browser itself can know if the current user is paying you or not.
It's essentially like... user isn't paying you:
document.monetization === undefinedUser might be paying you, oh wait, hold on a second:
document.monetization && document.monetization.state === 'pending'User is paying you:
document.monetization && document.monetization.state === 'started'You can do whatever you want with that. Perhaps you can generate a secure download link on the fly if you really wanted to do something like give away an eBook or do some "subscriber only" content or whatever.
Ads are generally powered by JavaScript anyway. In the global JavaScript for this site, I literally already have a function called csstricks.getAds(); which kicks off the process. That allows me to wrap that function call in some logic in case there are situations I don't even wanna bother kicking off the ad process, just like this.
if (showAdsLogic) {
csstricks.getAds();
}It's slightly tricky though, as document.monetization.state === 'started' doesn't just happen instantaneously. Fortunately, an event fires when that value changes:
if (document.monetization) {
document.monetization.addEventListener("monetizationstart", event => {
if (!document.monetization.state === "started") {
getAds();
}
});
} else {
getAds();
}And it can get a lot fancier: validating sessions, doing different things based on payment amounts, etc. Here's a setup from their explainer:
if (document.monetization) {
document.monetization.addEventListener("monetizationstart", event => {
// User has an open payment stream
// Connect to backend to validate the session using the request id
const { paymentPointer, requestId } = event.detail;
if (!isValidSession(paymentPointer, requestId)) {
console.error("Invalid requestId for monetization");
showAdvertising();
}
});
document.monetization.addEventListener("monetizationprogress", event => {
// A payment has been received
// Connect to backend to validate the payment
const {
paymentPointer,
requestId,
amount,
assetCode,
assetScale
} = event.detail;
if (
isValidPayment(paymentPointer, requestId, amount, assetCode, assetScale)
) {
// Hide ads for a period based on amount received
suspendAdvertising(amount, assetCode, assetScale);
}
});
// Wait 30 seconds and then show ads if advertising is no longer suspended
setTimeout(maybeShowAdvertising, 30000);
} else {
showAdvertising();
}I'm finding the monetizationstart event takes a couple of seconds to fire, so it does take a while to figure out if a user is actively monetizing. A couple of seconds is quite a while to wait before starting to fetch ads, so I'm not entirely sure the best approach there. You might want to kick off the ad requests right away, then choose to inject them or not (or hide them or not) based on the results. Depending on how those ads are tracked, that might present false impressions or harm your click-through rate. Your mileage may vary.
Here's the proposal. I can't pretend to understand it all, but I would think the gist of it is that you wouldn't need a browser extension at all, because the concept is baked into the browser. And you don't need Coil either; it would be just one option among others.
1 I'm told more "wallets" are coming soon and that Stronghold won't be the only option forever. ↩
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Are you looking for the top ways to make money online that are NOT scams? WordPress is the largest publishing platform on the planet, and it powers over 30% of all websites.
You can use WordPress and blogging to earn money online by doing what you love. You can work from home, at your own time, and there is no limit on how much money you can make.
In this article, we will share top “proven” ways to make money online blogging with WordPress.
First, a word of warning: these aren’t ‘Get rich quick’ schemes. If you are looking for a way to get rich quick by making money online, then you’re in the wrong place.
Don’t be fooled by the pictures of expensive cars, mansions, or working from the beach. Every single one of them is a scam, and you will waste your time and money paying for any courses or training that you buy from those guys.
Unlike other “make money online” articles, this is a comprehensive guide on how to make money at home legitimately, using blogging and WordPress.
Many of these methods require some investment of time and/or money to get started. As long as you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll reap the reward.
Before you can start using any of these methods, you’ll need to have your own self-hosted WordPress blog. We have a step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog for beginners.
The process is really easy to follow whether you are 20 years or 60 years old. However, if you need help, our expert team can help you set up your blog for free. → Click Here to Get Your Free WordPress Blog Setup! ←
Once you have set up your blog, then you are ready to follow this guide.
Since this is a lengthy article, we created a table of contents below for easy navigation.
Monetize Your Blog Content
Create a Paid Membership Website
Create a Directory Website With WordPress
Sell Digital Products With WordPress
Sell Services Online Using WordPress
Sell Physical Products Online Using WordPress
Offer Platform as a Service
Become a WordPress Designer or Developer
Donations
When you think of how to make money blogging, advertising is often the first thing that comes to mind.
Yes, it is possible to make money with ads on WordPress, but there are also other ways you can monetize your blog content. Here are a few methods that work:
1. Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is when you recommend a product or service to your audience using special tracking links, and then get a referral commission for every time someone buys after clicking your link.
A real-life example of affiliate marketing would be when you help a friend open a bank account at your bank branch. Usually, they give you a gift card or a bonus of some sort.
Similar to that many products and services online have affiliate programs that you can join. There are affiliate programs available for every industry (niche).
If you’re interested in getting started with affiliate marketing, you can start by thinking about the products you already use that your readers may be interested in as well. Then you can see if they have an affiliate program that you can sign up for.
You can find a huge list of products to promote from:
Once you have selected the products to promote, then you can use a WordPress plugin like PrettyLinks to manage your affiliate links.
It allows you to quickly insert links into posts, create branded links, auto-replace keywords into links, and even see how each link is performing on your site.
Affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money because you can promote a wide-variety of products. Just about every popular store like Walmart, BestBuy, Amazon, and others have an affiliate program.
To learn more, see our beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing and also check out these affiliate marketing tools and plugins which will help you increase your earnings.
2. Display Google AdSense on WordPress
Google Adsense is an easy way to make money from your blog. All you need to do is add a script from Google to your website and start displaying ads.
You will get paid for every time a user clicks on the ad. These are called CPC ads.
What is CPC? CPC stands for “cost per click.” By displaying CPC ads with Google Adsense, you receive a set fee every time a visitor clicks on an ad.
The cost per click is set by the advertiser. (This is in contrast to CPM ads, where you’re paid for ad views instead of clicks. CPM means “cost per thousand impressions,” where M is the roman numeral for 1,000.)
Google Adsense is a good way to start earning money online when you are first starting out.
You can see our guide on how to monetize a WordPress blog with Google AdSense to get started, and this tutorial on how to optimize your AdSense revenue for more tips.
Looking for a Google AdSense alternative? Try Media.net. They also have a large pool of advertisers, and their payouts are good.
3. Use a WordPress Advertising Plugin to Sell Ads Directly
Google AdSense is easy to set up, but the amount of money you can earn is limited. Each ad click earning will vary.
Directly selling banner ad space on your website can be more lucrative. Instead of having to rely on an intermediary who takes a cut of the money, you negotiate the price and terms on your own.
Above we mentioned the difference between CPC and CPM ads, where you are paid per click or per thousand views. While you could use one of those models for selling banner ads, most bloggers charge a flat rate instead. Charging a flat rate is easier than keeping track of views or clicks.
Still, directly selling ads takes more work to manage than using Google AdSense. Instead of just adding a bit of code to your website, you’ll have to negotiate the pricing, come up with an agreement and terms, and take care of administrative work like invoicing.
However, using a WordPress ad management plugin can make the process easier. We recommend using AdSanity, it allows you to manage Google AdSense as well as your own ads.
To learn more, see our guide on how to sell ads on your WordPress blog.
4. Sell Sponsored Blog Posts
Some bloggers aren’t interested in displaying ads to their audience and wonder how to monetize a blog without ads.
With ad networks, you lose some control over the content displayed on your site. Some readers will get annoyed or offended by ads, and more and more people are using ad blockers which affects your earning potential.
An alternative way to monetize a blog is through sponsorships.
A sponsorship works just like it does in sports, TV shows, or other industries. Basically, a company pays you to represent their product, talk about it, and promote it to your readers.
To get started, it’s a good idea to put together a one-page media kit that details your traffic stats, social media following, audience demographics, and any other data that will make your site more appealing to advertisers. Then, you can approach companies to negotiate a sponsorship deal.
When publishing sponsored posts, it’s crucial to know about the laws in your area about disclosure.
For example, in the United States, a blogger who publishes a sponsored post must comply with the FTC’s Endorsement Guides. This includes disclosing whenever a post is sponsored. You can do that by adding a sponsored post prefix to your post title in WordPress.
5. Get Paid to Write Reviews
Similar to sponsored posts, you can also make money by writing paid reviews on your site.
This is a slightly different monetization method than a review site with affiliate links, as mentioned above.
Instead, you get to try out products related to your niche for free, and even get paid for writing a review.
The process for doing this can be similar to getting sponsored posts. You’ll want to review products that are relevant to your niche, that your audience would be interested in.
You can approach companies on your own to ask about doing paid reviews. There are also websites like PayPerPost that can help to connect you with businesses who may be interested.
6. Earn Money Online by Flipping Websites
If you know how to build a WordPress website, then you’re way ahead of most people. Sometimes entrepreneurs like to buy already established websites that they can use for their own businesses.
If you can build a WordPress blog and start getting traffic to it, then you can sell it and make money for your efforts.
This requires knowing the type of websites in demand, and how to price and sell them. There are websites like Flippa that serve as auction sites and brokers for selling websites.
7. Get Public Speaking Gigs as an Influencer
If you are promoting your own brand along with your blog, then over time you will get a decent following establishing you as an influencer in your space.
You can utilize this recognition to get some public speaking jobs. Many bloggers make a lot of money by speaking at conferences.
Speaking at events whether you are paid or not helps you promote your blog and your personal brand. If you are good at networking and public speaking, then you would be able to find lots of new opportunities on the way.
Here are some general tips you need to keep in mind if you want to make money as a paid public speaker.
If you’re not interested in selling ads or sponsored posts, there are plenty of other ways you can earn money online from your blog. A popular method is by having your audience pay to access certain content or areas of your site. Here are a couple of ways to do that.
8. Create Restricted Members Only Content
Your most loyal readers are huge fans and may be willing to pay to read more of your work. You can create a members-only area for them to share more in-depth blog posts, downloads, videos, audio content, and more.
Membership sites can be a big time investment since you must continually create premium content for your paying members. But they can be very lucrative because they are recurring revenue (subscriptions).
You can easily create a membership site using a WordPress membership plugin. We recommend using MemberPress, it is the most beginner friendly and robust membership plugin for WordPress.
We have a complete guide on making a WordPress membership website with step by step instructions to help you get started.
9. Create a Private Forum
Another option for creating a paid membership site is to create private forums that users must pay to get access to. Forums are a great way for your audience to get one-on-one advice from you. Other members of the community can also interact and help each other out.
While moderating a forum can be a lot of work, a paid forum is a great way to earn recurring revenue from your WordPress site.
To get started, you’ll need to set up a forum on your site. Here are our recommended top 5 best forum plugins for WordPress.
10. Create a questions and answers community
Question and answers communities like Stack Exchange and Quora are huge. They help you build an online community that is driven, motivated, and highly engaged.
Just like forums, you will have to spend some time building a sizable community. After that, you will be able to monetize user-generated content on your website using advertisements, affiliate ads, and other methods.
Popular question and answer websites are able to get direct advertisement and sponsorship deals from advertisers in their industry. This helps them negotiate a much higher rate and extra perks.
See our guide on how to start a Questions and Answers website using WordPress.
Another option for making money online with WordPress is to create a directory or listing website. You can then charge visitors to advertise their listings on your site.
Here are a few different directory ideas to get you started.
11. Create a Paid Business Directory
Web directories may make you think of the early days of the web before bots started indexing everything automatically, but they’re not completely obsolete.
Generic web directories are no longer necessary, but local or niche directories can be extremely useful.
Directories might gather reviews of local businesses, share the best podcasts on a given topic, or list the best products in a certain niche.
You can easily create a web directory in WordPress following our tutorial. There are also plenty of directory plugins for WordPress you can choose from, many of which allow you to accept payments with submissions.
12. Create a WordPress Job Board With Paid Submissions
Another option is to create a paid job board. Companies who want to advertise an open position to your audience can pay you to submit a listing.
It’s easier to create a successful job board if you narrow down to a specific niche. That way you can become the go-to site for anyone looking for a job in that industry, with minimal competition.
This works great for established blogs in a narrow niche. For example, ProBlogger is now famous for their job board for professional bloggers.
With WordPress, creating a paid job board is easy. See our tutorial on how to create a job board in WordPress with WP Job Manager for a step-by-step walkthrough. You can use the WooCommerce Paid Listings addon to charge for job post submissions.
13. Create a WordPress Event Calendar With Paid Submissions
Instead of a job board, you could create an event calendar where you charge people to advertise their events. This also works well if you already have an established audience, because businesses will be willing to pay to reach your audience.
A paid event calendar is a good monetization method for local or industry-specific websites. You might choose to advertise events in your local city, conferences in a certain industry, or even webinars or live streaming events.
To set this up on your site, see our guide on the best WordPress event calendar plugins.
If you’re looking for a more low-maintenance way to make money online blogging with WordPress, then selling your own digital products may be a good choice. While you do have to invest the time to create the product up front, after it’s created your work is very minimal.
Here are a few digital products you can create and sell on your website.
14. Sell Ebooks on WordPress
Ebooks are an obvious choice for creating digital products. They are relatively simple to write and produce. If you’ve been blogging for a while, then you can collect some of your old blog posts and turn them into chapters of a book.
Once your book is written, you can design a cover using a tool like Canva and create a PDF of your ebook.
Selling digital products on WordPress is easy with a plugin. To get started, you can see our guide on the best WordPress eCommerce plugins compared.
For digital downloads, we recommend Easy Digital Downloads. It’s relatively easy to use and includes all the features you need to create your online store.
15. Sell Online Courses
Selling an online course is another great way to make money online.
Courses usually sell for a much higher price point than ebooks. You can charge a premium for your expertise.
You’ll need to create the lessons for your course, plus any supporting materials that you want to include such as downloads, slides, checklists, templates, etc.
You will also need to decide whether you want to offer personalized support for your course. Some sites offer two tiers of each course: a basic version without support, and a premium version with email support.
Once your course is ready, you can use a learning management system (LMS) plugin to deliver the course to your audience.
We recommend using LearnDash with MemberPress.
For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to sell online courses using LearnDash.
16. Host a Paid Webinar
Webinars are a great way to build your audience, share your experience, and grow your business. But did you know they’re also a smart way to make money online?
Webinars are similar to online courses, but a webinar is live and often includes a question and answer section.
WordPress makes it easy to host a paid webinar. Whether you’re using your site to actually host the webinar, or just to advertise your webinar and register participants, it’s crucial for your webinar success.
For more details on how you can host a paid webinar, see our list of the 9 best webinar software for WordPress users.
If you’re looking for easy ways to make money online, selling services is the fastest way to get started. There’s no up front investment of creating a product or investing in inventory.
Instead, you can just create a “hire me” page on your website and start looking for your first client.
Here are a few ideas to get you started.
17. Offer Freelance Services
As a blogger, you’re already an expert on your niche. You can start earning an income by offering your skills and expertise as a freelancer.
Freelancing is a popular way to make money online because it doesn’t necessarily require any upfront investment of time or money. You can just start offering your services to your current audience.
Once you start freelancing, you’ll need a way to invoice and collect payments from your clients. We recommend using FreshBooks, but there are also other invoicing plugins for WordPress.
If you’re interested in freelancing to make some serious money online, then see our list of the top tools for WordPress freelancers, designers, and developers for help getting started.
18. Start Your Own Consulting Business
Consulting is another way to make money online from your blog and share your expertise.
Instead of offering your services, a consultant offers advice and strategy so that their clients can become more effective.
As with freelancing, there is no startup investment. You can start offering consulting services on your existing blog. All you need is to create a page with a form so users can request more information.
To easily create a professional, mobile-friendly form, we recommend WPForms. You can see this tutorial on how to create a request a quote form in WordPress to get started.
19. Become a Coach
If “consultant” doesn’t feel like the right title for you, you can consider becoming a coach instead.
A life coach offers advice, guidance, and accountability for setting goals and improving one’s life. There are also other kinds of coaches, such as blog coaches, writing coaches, and more.
Whatever your area of expertise is, you can provide one-on-one help to your audience with coaching sessions.
To save time and make things convenient for your clients, you can set up a booking form so readers can schedule coaching sessions right from your WordPress blog.
See our list of the 5 best WordPress appointment and booking plugins to get started.
While selling digital products or services can be an easy way to start making money online, there’s nothing quite like selling real, physical products. Here are a few ways you can get started selling products with WordPress.
20. Start an Ecommerce Business With WooCommerce
Have an idea for your own product? Why not start your own online store?
WordPress makes it easy to create a shop or even add a shop to your existing blog using the free WooCommerce plugin.
Starting an online store can be a lot of work, since you need to create or buy the products and then ship them out yourself.
But selling physical products can be a rewarding experience, and sometimes a physical product is exactly what your audience wants.
To get started, see our tutorial on how to start an online store with WooCommerce.
You can also use Shopify or BigCommerce as WooCommerce alternative.
21. Create an Online T-shirt Store With WordPress
Creating your own t-shirt shop is easy with WordPress. Almost everyone wears t-shirts, so opening up a t-shirt shop is a great way to monetize any kind of blog. Designing t-shirts allows you to be creative and offer something unique to your audience.
It’s easy because there are services out there that allow you to upload your own designs, and they print / ship it for you. You get a profit share.
You can easily create your own t-shirt shop on your WordPress site using WP-Spreadplugin by Spreadshirt.
If you want a faster solution, then you can use a Shopify store which connects with dozens of t-shirt printing companies.
22. Create a WooCommerce Dropshipping Store
Dropshipping is another way you can create an ecommerce store on your WordPress website without having to handle inventory or ship items yourself.
With dropshipping, you create the store, manage the website, and customer service. But a dropshipping service will take your orders and ship them out to your customers. They’re an invisible third party that your customers don’t even know about.
You can use the WooCommerce plugin to create a dropshipping store. There’s also a WooCommerce Dropshipping addon plugin that allows you to automate the process.
23. Create an Amazon Affiliate WordPress Shop
One downside of dropshipping is that you have to find a good supplier, which can be a challenge, and sometimes you have to place a large order up front. This can make it difficult to get started without investing a lot of money.
If you want an easier way to set up an ecommerce site without having to ship products yourself, then you may want to try an Amazon Affiliate shop.
As with many of the items on this list, this works best if you specialize in a niche. If you offer everything, it’s impossible to compete with a big shop like Amazon. But in a small niche, you can differentiate yourself and really stand out.
For complete instructions, see our tutorial on how to create an Amazon affiliate store using WordPress.
WordPress comes with some incredibly powerful plugins that are actually full-fledged platforms in their own right.
You can add such a platform to your blog or e-commerce store and offer it as a paid service. You get a cut from each sell, which allows you to earn passive income from user activity on your website.
24.Create an Online Marketplace Website
An online marketplace is like an eCommerce store where users cannot just buy but also sell their own products. Normally, WooCommerce assumes that you run a single vendor website.
You will need a plugin like WC Vendors to turn WooCommerce into a multi-vendor capable platform. After that, vendors will be able to register on your site and start selling.
You can make money by charging commission on each sell, or you can allow vendors to buy membership packages for their listings.
For more details, see our guide on how to make an online marketplace using WordPress.
25. Make an Auctions Website
An auctions website allows users to bid on products to purchase them. This allows the sellers to maximize their profits and customers to find unique deals.
Ebay is probably the best example of an online auctions marketplace.
You can run auctions on your WordPress website and even allow third-party vendors to list their products as well. You can make money by charging for the listing or by getting a cut on each sell.
To build an auctions marketplace with WordPress, you will need the following add-ons.
For step by step instructions, see our guide on how to build an eBay like auctions website using WordPress.
26. Create a Job Marketplace website
Unlike a regular job listings website, a job marketplace allows you to make money on each job listing. Fiverr and UpWork are probably the best examples of online job marketplace websites.
You can promote your job marketplace as a micro-job platform for people working in the same niche as your blog. To make your platform more competitive you can select a very specific niche.
This will help you easily find customers and professionals who are unable to use large platforms because of too much irrelevant competition.
You can charge a small fee for job listings or when a job is completed. More successful completion of jobs will bring you more customers and freelancers in the future.
For details, see our step by step tutorial on how to make a Fiverr like Micro-Job website using WordPress.
If you’re more technically inclined, then you can become a WordPress developer or designer in order to make money online. This will take more technical skills, but it’s not too hard to get started.
27. Develop WordPress Plugins
Plugins are what make WordPress so flexible and powerful. Plugins work like apps, allowing you to extend and modify any feature of your WordPress website.
Plugins come in all varieties, from very simple code modifications to complex software applications. If you have a basic grasp of how WordPress works and some simple PHP knowledge, you can create your own WordPress plugin.
As a plugin developer, there are many ways you can distribute your plugins. Anyone can submit a free plugin to the WordPress.org plugin directory, as long as they follow the WordPress plugin guidelines. This is a great way to gain experience and build a reputation for yourself as a WordPress plugin developer.
Once you’re ready to start selling premium plugins, you could choose to sell them on a site like MOJO Marketplace, or on your own WordPress site.
If you’re using your existing WordPress blog to sell plugins, you’ll want to make sure that the plugin you create directly fulfills a need of your audience. You can survey them to see what problems they need to solve on their WordPress site, and then create a plugin that solves that problem.
You can then sell the plugin on your site using Easy Digital Downloads.
28. Sell WordPress Themes
If you enjoy web design and development, you could start creating your own WordPress themes to sell.
This requires both design and technical skills. You have to know how to create a good-looking design, and also how to code it for WordPress.
Using a WordPress theme framework such as Genesis can give you a head start. Then you’ll need to design and code a beautiful child theme.
29. Sell Graphics on Your WordPress Site
If you like design more than coding, another option is to design and sell graphics on your WordPress site.
You can create graphics such as stock images or logos and sell them on your site using an ecommerce plugin. You can also join online marketplaces to sell your graphics as well.
Last but not least, one way you can make money from your WordPress blog is simply to ask for it.
You can begin accepting donations in a few different ways. You could add a Paypal donate button or a Stripe donate button to your website. Or for a more professional look and advanced features like email marketing integration, you could use WPForms to create a donation form on your WordPress site.
Donations are last on the list because of their limited effectiveness, since you have to rely on the generosity of your readers. It’s usually more lucrative to offer them something in return.
At WPBeginner, we have helped thousands of beginners start their blogging journey. We have heard almost every question you can think of. Here are the top questions beginners ask us about making money online by blogging.
1. Which one of these proven ways is right for me?
Depends on what you are passionate about and which method would work best with your blog’s topics.
For example, if you run a blog about photography, then affiliate marketing, advertisements, and paid memberships may all work well for your blog.
Focus on offering useful, quality content, that users will find helpful and money will follow. Or as the saying goes, do what you love and the money will follow.
2. How much money can I make from blogging?
It really depends on how much effort you put in and the time you are willing to invest. To be honest, many beginner bloggers lose interest and give up quickly.
You will be making money based on how much traffic you get, the monetization methods you use, and the work you put in. Many successful bloggers make six and even seven figure incomes.
3. How long would it take before I start making some serious money from blogging?
Making money online is not a ‘get-rich-quick’ scam. Anyone telling you otherwise is probably trying to scam you. If you want to make money by starting a blog, then you will have to work hard and invest a lot of your time into it.
There is no easy way to tell you how soon you would start making money. Some bloggers start making small amounts soon after starting their blogs. Others struggle to get their blogs to take off.
However, those who continuously work and stick to a planned strategy are the ones most likely to see encouraging results very early on.
4. How do I get started?
Getting started with your own WordPress blog is easy. However, make sure that you are using the right platform.
Basically, there are two types of WordPress available. WordPress.com which is a hosted solution, and WordPress.org, also known as self-hosted WordPress.
We recommend using WordPress.org because it will allow you to start making money without any limitations. For more details, see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
You will need a domain name and a web hosting account to start blogging with WordPress.org. Normally, a domain costs $14.99 per year and web hosting $7.99 per month usually paid for a full year.
This is a lot of money if you are just starting a new blog.
Luckily, we were able to get an exclusive discount from Bluehost. They are offering 60% off and a free domain name to WPBeginner users.
→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←
Basically, you will be able to get started for just $2.75 per month. Bluehost is an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider and one of the largest hosting companies in the world.
After purchasing hosting, you will be ready to install WordPress. Follow the instructions in our step by step guide on how to start a blog which will help you get started in less than 30 minutes.
We hope this article helped to give you plenty of ideas on how to make money online using WordPress! With hard work and perseverance, anyone can earn money from their WordPress site.
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