Ok you have created a new website or blog and you are looking to make some money. If you think that monetizing your site goes against your ethics then this post may not be for you. But most blogger or site creators look forward to atleast recover the domain and hosting cost. I dont think that is asking for too much. As a beginner what do you look at? At first make sure you have atleast 100 unique visitor every day. Then beginning with ad networks is probably the best way.
An advertising network or ad network is a company that connects web sites that want to host advertisements with advertisers who want to run advertisements. Increasingly Ad networks are companies that pay software developers as well as web sites money for allowing their ads to be shown when people use their software or visit their sites.
Ad networks serve advertising on your website and share advertiser revenue for qualified clicks each time your site’s visitors click on ads. An advertising network (also called an online advertising network or ad network) is a collection of (often unrelated) online advertising inventory. When it is clear that the environment involved is the Internet, companies who run or administrate such networks are also called Advertising Agents or simply Agents.
Source: Wikipedia
You do not need too experiment much. Experimenting with too many ads in the beginning could become a hindrance in your user experience. You can close your eyes and choose Google Adsense. At any given time Adsense will win among all ad networks hands down. Adsense serve ads on your site matching its content. Adsense pays based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click). In beginning since your traffic may not be huge, you will be getting paid mostly when your visitors will click the ads on your site. In order to receive payment you need to reach the threshold amount of $100. It can take time depending on where you are located. Have patience and you will come up. Do not click on your ads or encourage your users or anyone to click on your ads as this goes against Google Adsense’s Terms and Conditions. Dont get greedy. In order to make a few quick dollars you may get banned from the Cash Cow program. Adsense works good in any region of the world, so you can try this without any hesitation.
To earn more you need to optimize the position of the ads as some position and size of ads get more clicks. Also, blending the color of the text with your site is a good thing. For blogs, you may try the adsense heatmap.
Now do you implement Adsense ads on your site?
Simply create an Adsense account and choose the size, color of the ads etc through the wizard. Lastly copy/paste the codes on any location on your site you deem fit. Within 10 minutes your ads will start displaying. If you are using wordpress, then you can use a adsense plugin. Which requires you to just upload the plugin in the wp-content/plugin folder of your wordpress installation and activative it by going to the plugins tab. For wordpress 2.5 under “Settings” you will find Adsense tab, click on that and enter your Adsene publisher ID. Also, configure the size, color etc and you are done.
Here is list of Adsense plugins for wordpress:
1. Adsense Delux at: http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/07/26/adsense-deluxe-wordpress-plugin
2. Adsense Injection
If you are using Blogger then you you can implement Adsense from inside Blogger, as Blogger is also owned by Google.
Kontera ads is an Inline text ad company is offereing a bumper scheme this July. Publishers just to need up this month and they will share 100% revenue that you will earn via the ads that will feature on your website or blog. However, this comes with a rider. The scheme is valid only for the month of July. Sad but if they run this scheme for long, they will not be able to survive for long. Because their revenue comes from the share they from what the advertiser pay.