How to Earn Income with Ads

The most common way that websites make money is through ads. The idea is simple:

• Companies want to advertise their product or service online.
• If your website receives enough traffic, these companies will be interested in placing ads on your site.
• By placing ads on your site, you can earn money each time a reader sees and/or clicks on an ad.

For example, on both Statology and Four Pillar Freedom I have ads on almost every page in three different places:

• Within the articles.
• On the sidebar.
• Along the footer.

Each month I earn income from these ads in a completely passive manner.

Best of all, I don’t have to go out and find companies that might be interested in placing ads on my site and I don’t even have to figure out where to place the ads on my site because I have an ad management company that does it all for me.

An ad management company does exactly what you’d think they do: They manage your ads. They find companies that are interested in buying ads and they automatically place ads in various places on your website, which means you literally have to do zero work each month to earn income from ads.

Each ad management company requires that your website earns a minimum amount of traffic per month before you can actually apply. Some require as little as 10,000 visits per month while others require as many as 100,000 visits per month. The ones that require less visits per month tend to pay lower RPMs than the ones with more strict requirements.

RPM = revenue per thousand visits

 

Some ad management companies pay RPMs around $5-10 while others pay closer to $20-25.

 

This means a site that brings in 10k visitors per month will earn

There are tons of ad management companies out there, but the more reputable ones include:

Ezoic: Minimum traffic: 10k sessions/month  |  RPMs: $3-10

Monumetric: Minimum traffic: 10k sessions/month  |  RPMs: $5-10

Mediavine: Minimum traffic: 25k sessions/month  |  RPMs: $15-25

AdThrive: Minimum traffic: 100k sessions/month  |  RPMs: $15-25

I use Mediavine for all of my sites currently, but I did use Ezoic when I first started with Statology and I had a good experience with them.

What It’s Like to Use an Ad Management Platform

Once you’ve been accepted to an ad management platform, you will be given access to a user dashboard where you can track your total traffic and earnings.

Each ad management platform is roughly the same, but I’ll show a behind-the-scenes look at the Mediavine dashboard since that’s who I currently use.

The first page of the dashboard shows a snapshot at my most recent earnings:

It also shows a snapshot of my daily earnings and traffic based on a customizable date range:

On a separate tab on the dashboard I have the ability to change my ad frequencies for both mobile and desktop:

Lastly, I have the ability to turn off certain types of ads as well if I’m opposed to them ethically or morally:

This is the beauty of using an ad management platform: you tell them exactly how many ads to display and which ad categories to prevent from being shown, and they do all of the work for you.

Getting Paid

An ad management platform typically offers four different payment methods:

• Direct Deposit
• Wire Transfer
• PayPal
• Check

I personally prefer to get paid via direct deposit. This means that on the first day of each month I receive a deposit in my bank account from Mediavine.

Most ad management platforms work on net 60 payment terms, which means you get paid 60 days after you actually earn the income. For example, the money I earn in January will get paid out on April 1st. 

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