Advertising 101 took you through how and why to set up your site to display ads from any ad provider

Advertising 202 took you through which ad providers to use and why.

Advertising 303 is going to take you through how to make money. Whoo! However, I’ve already touched on a lot of this in my previous articles, so I’m going to start out by repeating myself.

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The first way to increase revenue generated from displaying ads is to give the ads priority in your site design, whether those ads are served from ADSDAQ or Project Wonderful. I realize this goes against everything a webcomic site is supposed to be about (ie, you and your comic), and I don’t care, because I want to make money too.  By “priority” I mean placing ads before your site’s content, in this case, your comic. So, a leaderboard ABOVE your comic, a tower to the LEFT of your comic, and other ad sizes where available (example, a 300×250 box directly beneath your comic, not beneath your news area).  Ad providers generally offer two types of ads: above the fold, and below the fold. You get paid MORE for displaying above the fold ads, obviously.

Please keep in mind that even if these ads are given priority over your comic, people keep coming back FOR your comic, and no, ads will not make people stop coming back unless you completely overboard.  Mike, a commenter here, mentioned something called “ad blindness” a bit back, where internet viewers no longer even see ads.  It holds true. They see your content, and ignore the ads for the most part, which is EXACTLY the reason to get paid more, you need to put the ads before the content, so they [the ads] perform better.

What you DON’T want to do is place ads where people much scroll, either horizontally or vertically, to see them, unless they are specifically “below the fold” ads.  Sometimes this means you have to change your layout (DESIGN FOR THE ADS) or change your content (ex, no more wide-screen content).  What you also don’t want to do is allow “takeover” ads on your site, pop-ups, pop-unders, or ads that are expandable without hovering. These ads are a deterrent, and if you’ve got an archive of 50 or more pages, with these ads displayed on every page, NO ONE is going to read your comic.  Moderation is key, as well as taking care of your audience.  These types of ads can be turned off in your admin areas on Burst Media and ADSDAQ, and are obviously not allowed through Project Wonderful.

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The second way to make more money is specifically for context-based advertisers like ADSDAQ.  These companies read the text on your page and then serve you ads that have something to do with that text. If you have little text on your page, you don’t get many ads (if you have no text, your application will not even be accepted).  These companies are NOT INTERESTED in serving ads that have nothing to do with your audience’s interests, and why should they be? It’s lose-lose for them and the people advertising if performance is horrible! Which is why having readable text on your page is extremely important.

But the question then becomes “well, what text should I have on my pages?”

• Text about specific current events, politics, technologies, culture, or media RELEVANT to your audience.
• Text about specific places you visited, how you got there, what you bought, where you went, with what transportation service, etc.
• Text about specific companies, items, things you want to buy, gifts, holidays.

The key is being specific enough to get ads.  For example, let’s say I’m blogging about myself beneath my comic:

Hey guys! Yesterday I drove an hour to visit my friend and hang out with her. We checked out a bunch of things at the mall, but I didn’t buy anything.  We thought about seeing a movie, but decided instead to go out to eat. All in all, it was a fun day.

That is so vague that the only keywords I can find are “mall” and “movie.” This is not going to increase my fill rates much. Now, what if I transformed that into this?

Hey comic readers! Yesterday I drove to Rochester to visit my friend and have some fun at the local shopping mall called “the Medley Center.” We shopped for half the day, checking out stores like The Gap, Bon Ton and Dick’s Sporting Goods. I didn’t buy anything, but I found this fabulous athletic outfit that is just so cute! It’s Nike too (which was probably why it was so expensive! D:) We thought about seeing a movie at the theatre, perhaps the new James Bond flick Quantum of Solace, or maybe a comedy like Four Christmases, but decided to go eat at Outback Steakhouse instead. It was a great day, but wow, post-Thanksgiving at the mall is tough! I can’t even imagine what Christmas shopping will be like! It was still a lot of fun though!

This time, I highlighted the keywords for you (I went a little overboard, but I wanted to you get the general idea).  Mentioning CURRENT events/holidays gets you in on current ad campaigns that will shoot up your fill rates. This is why it is so important to write or update your text OFTEN. If you don’t, you get in on the new campaigns.  I mention specific places to get in on the “Travel” ads.  I mention specific stores to get ads related to merchandise sold there. Specific movies because when movies first come out, there are a LOT of ads going around. Etc, etc.

If you’re still confused, here is a screenshot of possible ad categories displayed on my site.  My next goal is to work on increasing specific ones.

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The third way to increase ad revenue is to join multiple ad networks and set up an ad chain (as discussed in Advertising 202). You can see in the above image of ad categories that I have a lot of default views because my fill rates are not 100%. My fill rate at ADSDAQ is on average 15%, which leaves 85% to send elsewhere.  I send it to Burst Media, where my fill rate is also 15%. I send the rest of the views to defaults of my choice, in this case, free advertising for comics I enjoy.  If I joined more networks, I would get paid for more pageviews, which is my goal!  I next would like to join Tribal Fusion, but my audience is not yet large enough.  Tribal wants 2k uniques a day. I’m about half-way there. :D

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The fourth and final way (that I use) to increase ad revenue is something again mentioned in a comment. I advertise through Project Wonderful to increase my total pageviews, and I make more money from the higher CPM of ads my site displays than I lose paying for the advertising itself. Make sense? PW prices are so awesomely low that just about every webcomicker out there can afford it, with average CPM being under 20 cents (in my personal experience.) In contrast, normal market CPM is 2-4 dollars, or higher.  Most of us don’t even think about our ads on PW being in CPM, we think in CPC and click-thru rates.  A good ad with PW will have a CPC (cost per click) of 0-3 cents.   If it costs more than that, as a webcomicker, you’re being ripped off!

I’m going to quote that aforementioned commenter, JGray, here, as he beat me to it:

“…people should consider at least one Project Wonderful ad on their site. If everyone uses PW and no one publishes PW there won’t be a PW to use. Plus, a good way to pay for PW is to use the funds they give you for publishing.”

This means more ads on your site, but it’s nice because it funds your OWN advertising through PW if you have a PW slot on your site.

This is the end of Advertising 303!  Next up: Advertising 404: The in-depth tutorial on setting up ad chains and default campaigns. When I can get to it, as it will require quite a view screen shots and coding quotes.