May 25, 2007
The 7 Levels of Revenue for your Blog
- Level 1: Bottom Level = Google AdSense. Yes, even though I strongly dislike AdSense, it can be used to soak up and remnant ad inventory that you have on your site. Google, the biggest pimp in the ad industry world, will take any traffic they can get which includes the international traffic that most ad networks avoid. Average CPM = $1
Level 2: Affiliate programs: Either directly from the supplier or through a network like Commission Junction affiliate programs are still one of the lowest forms of revenue you can generate from your blog. For example if you have a video game blog and you link to Buy.com to purchase a PlayStation it might get you the odd sale, but the best way to do it, is to do a blog post on a very relevant product to your site, with an affiliate link to the offer. (Use full discloser that the embedded link is an affiliate link as well)
- Level 3: Ad Networks. ContextWeb, ValueClick, AdOn and hundreds of others. There are loads of Ad networks out there that will re-sell your banner inventory for you and everyone you speak to will ‘guarantee’ the highest CPM’s in the industry, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the ads they display on your site will be low quality and the fill rates may be only 25% - 50%. Another thing about ad networks is most of them only want US traffic so they will push back any international traffic you get. Average CPM’s $1-$2
- Level 4: Automated Text link Ads. Yes, text link ads not only outperform AdSense, they blow away ad networks when it comes to eCPM’s as most text links are bought on a monthly fixed rate and not on a CPC basis. The pure industry leader in this game is http://www.textlinkads.com One thing is you should do is manually approve the links bought on your site to ensure that they are at least somewhat relevant. The best part about TLA is the pure automation of it, set it and forget it. And another wonderful thing is it will even continue to make money long after your audience moves on. ( A distant second in this field is TextLinkBrokers.com) Average price $25 per link x 6-8 links
- Level 5: Fixed Text link Ads: These are the direct buys you get from someone contacting you about buying a fixed link on your site. Don’t let Matt Cutts find out your doing this J Average price $50 per link.
- Level 6: Graphical Banner Ads: Getting advertisers to buy ads on a CPM basis on your site that you yourself set. Put together your own rate card and have it on your ‘Advertise with Us’ page. Anywhere from $5CPM to $20CPM.
- Level 7: Fixed Monthly Sponsors - Graphical or integrated: The top of the food chain and the top of the money chain. Getting a sponsor to pay a fixed flat monthly rate to have a graphical ad or an integrated ad on your site is the single highest paying and best option for your Blog. Even one sponsor of your site, can potentially beat out all your other forms of revenue generations combined. This one takes pounding the pavement and contacting relevant companies, but the payoff is sweet. This is the Holy Grail…Good Luck.
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:09 pm
fixed link ads are great, I think everyone should be in control of their own advertising. and matt cutts wanting to report people WELL I SAY THIS *insert fist shaking rapidly in air*
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Great post Chad but I do need to disagree with you regards to Adsense being level 1. My opinion is that Ad Networks are the worst. Why Adsense is better than Ad Networks.
1) Fill rates & relevance. Google will always have close to if not 100% fill rates, perfect for those who have international traffic as Chad mentioned. But you always get the relevant ads as well. Now with Ad Networks I think you can technically get close to maybe 70% fill rates, Networks such as Tribal Fusion has a system where they allow you to redirect to another Network of your choice. Here’s my main beef with them, they are not relevant ads. Imagine this, a blinking smiley banner to greet your valued readers!
2) Average CPM. Chad would know the facts and he probably is correct but from my personal experience is that Adsense can provide CPM of $3-$4 depending on the correct placements and type of blogs. Believe it or not Google Adsense has a team of specialist who can optimize your site for you, you just need to get invited. As where Ad Networks and again Chad mentioned this, they promise you with HIGH CPM but reality is they give you $1-$2.
So there you have it, Adsense can provide higher fill rates, relevance and higher CPM than Ad Networks. Did I mention it is also easier to get accepted by Google Adsense than Ad Networks.
P.S Chad is still the MAN, join B5 Media and let him sell ads and secure sponsors for you.
May 4th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Yes, but above all a blog / website should be worth its CONTENT. Else its a waste of ‘Advertising Space’.
May 4th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Hi Chad… very good entry. I think you have the right idea and the whole point about buying text links being better performing that AdSense, is the very reason why Mr. Cutt’s and Google do not like it.
Anyhow, TLA is definitely a great source…but I would have to disagree with your distant 2nd. ;-) Check out http://www.linkworth.com and you’ll find the close competitor to TLA. Text link brokers really suck and they’re still stuck on selling pagerank. I make all of my money on Link worth and TLA. If AdSense was smart, they would buy out the tla and link worths of the world to build their network back up.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Nice article. I haven’t checked out the contextweb before, but will be sure to now. I can’t seem to qualify for text link ads even though I have my site up to PageRank 2 now. I notice you don’t have any mention of the paid postings in here. It is really bottom of the barrel but can do the trick (reviewme, payperpost, and payu2blog).
May 4th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
If your Adsense CPM is below $5, I’d say you probably haven’t optimized it very well. A $1 CPM is extremely weak.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
[…] The most popular way for bloggers to generate income is Google AdSense. Depending on the topic of your blog and how much traffic you get, this may be lucrative or you may make enough just to buy a cup of coffee at the end of the month. But with each passing day, there seems to be more and more options for bloggers to include ads and get paid from their blogs. Chad from AdvertiseSpace writes about the 7 levels of revenue and he includes TextLinkAds which is one of my favorites. […]
May 4th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
[…] A coworker of mine here at b5 and advertising guru Chad Randall has listed a countup of the seven levels of revenue for your blog. Here’s a barebone version of the list: […]
May 4th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I’d like to understand how fixed price text link ads can possibly be better than Adsense. $25 x 8 = $200 per month.
You’d have to have a really small site to make less than that per month using Adsense. (which means you couldn’t sell text link ads at $25 per either).
May 4th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
I’ve got to agree with Steve on this one - AdSense should be giving you a better CPM than $1. Optimize your site and your ads.
May 5th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Adsense will give you a higher CPM if you blend it inside your content like Steve do. The problem is unless you have the ultimate quality content on your niche (like he does) people will get annoyed by those intrusive ads.
You need to compare the CPM of adsense units placed where you would place the banners from direct advertisers.
May 5th, 2007 at 8:10 am
WEll thats if people click your ads.
I’d have to say with text link ads once they sell I’d have a 400% increase in profit.
May 5th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Based on my experience, I find that AdSense is the slowest (and ugliest) approach to earning ad dollars, followed by TLA, and direct sales (to date my biggest ad buy, and no middle man!).
May 5th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
If you want to buy and sell blog posts for sale there are options.
May 5th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
I’m trying to go into my next project without Adsense. Though it has always treated me well, I’d prefer to use affiliate programs, earn comissions, and sell links when ever possible
May 6th, 2007 at 12:24 am
I could not agree more with Adsense, it is long time ago since I remove it from all my blogs, and now working hard to get to Level 7 directly! :-)
May 6th, 2007 at 1:00 am
[…] Chad from AdvertiseSpace recently wrote a post he calls the “The 7 Levels of Revenue From Your Blog”. Chad is the Director of Sales for b5media Inc. and in my opinion, his post is fairly biased..and well, just wrong in some respects. I’m not saying Chad doesn’t know his stuff, but I do think that he is wrong or at the least, not thorough about the 7 levels of revenue he’s outlined. […]
May 6th, 2007 at 5:13 am
7 Levels Of Revenue For Your Blog
Chad Randall has written a post called the 7 Levels of Revenue For Your Blog, which ranks the various ways bloggers can make money, with level 1 being the lowest and Level 7 the highest.
Chad has placed Adsense at Level 1, which isn’t surprising …
May 6th, 2007 at 5:23 am
In my limited experience, most ad buys are seasonal. It is best to plan for the long term and establish your own network where you can sell/place ads. I still use Google AdSense for some of my sites and blogs while I’ve signed up the ones with high PR to my own small network. Combining AdSense with other programs still works well for me.
May 6th, 2007 at 6:18 am
Nice post. Could you just tell some numbers. How many visitors/day or month you probably need to every levels? First level is easy you don’t need visitors at all, but what about later levels?
May 6th, 2007 at 7:35 am
In my case the number one monetization method is affiliate income followed closely by direct ad sales (text links and banners).
It’s important to qualify what type of affiliate program because different industries have access to different programs.
In my opinion the best source of blog income is recursive affiliate income. You can stop blogging altogether and keep earning with this method and if you pick the right programs they are quite lucrative.
One continuity affiliate product I promote pays me $195 PER MONTH on just one sale. That money keeps coming as long as the person I refer remains a customer. It’s hard to beat that.
May 6th, 2007 at 11:29 am
[…] The 7 Levels of Revenue: according to the article bloggers should not focus too much on Adsense as a monetization strategy. Do you agree? […]
May 6th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Very informative post. Not sure I agree about Adsense though. While I don’t believe in putting all of one’s eggs in one’s basket, I do believe it to be a major revenue source for certain blogs.
I maintain several blogs and one of them earns an impressive income from Adsense, but didn’t fare too well with some of the other programs.
I think it depends on the blog and the niche. Research the different types of ads, play around with positioning and see which ones work best for you.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
[…] In response to Chad Randall’s post detailing his 7 Levels of Revenue for your Blog I’ve compiled my own ranking list of what I consider the best methods to make money from a blog. […]
May 6th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
[…] Advertise Space: The 7 levels of revenue for your blog. Learn what are your 7 options to make money out from your blog and what you can expect from them. […]
May 6th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Chad, I’m glad to see folks like Steve Pavlina (who makes orders of magnitude more than I do) confirm my opinion. It is obvious you have had some bad expereince with AdSense. Fair enough with me, I have my likes and dslikes too. But to blandly tell people that the average CPM for AdSense is $1? This indicates to me that you do not know some very simple steps in using AdSense. It’s easy, even on a low-traffic blog to attain CPM’s many times higher than that … and I am talking all “white hat”, totally “Google Legal” (in fact Google recommended) techniques.
May 7th, 2007 at 8:56 am
LOL. Thats what happens when you do a post, say anything bad about AdSense, and then go offline for a weekend :)
It was my sisters wedding, so I missed all the bashing over here.
If I do a post, 10 ways to make more money for your blog, everyone focuses on the one negative comment about Google, I think if I did a post 1001 ways to make money off your blog, everyone would still single me out for one damn comment about AdSense. WAKE UP everyone!! They make billions off YOUR content. They produce no content. They make money off everyone elses hard work.
OK, yes you can make an average $5CPM off AdSense with relatively low levels of traffic, very niche specific content and jamming the text boxes into your post. But can you sustain that level if you are doing millions of impressions per month?? No you cannot. I said average for a reason. Could Facebook sustain a $5 CPM with AdSense? If they could that would be about 7.5 million dollars a day in revenue. What is the average CPM for a site like that? $0.10 maybe.
May 7th, 2007 at 9:59 am
[…] Update: Chad Randall, director of sales with b5media, has a post looking at the seven different levels of blog advertising. His take is Google AdSense ranks at the bottom of the food chain. […]
May 7th, 2007 at 10:13 am
[…] 17. If your blog is focused on writing about your industry rather than just about your products, then you can monetize your traffic by accepting banners from businesses that are complementary to yours. That’s giving value to your clients . 18. Don’t put AdSene, Kontera or Affiliate programs in your business blog. In fact, avoid any form of advertisement under 3rd level as stated by Chad Randall in Advertise Space. 19. If your blog is focused on your products instead of your industry, then avoid ads like the plague. Your blog is about you, nobody else. 20. Learn what keywords are, choose yours wisely and use them obsessively. […]
May 7th, 2007 at 10:57 am
[…] Chad wrote a decent post titled “The 7 Levels of Revenue for Your Blog“. […]
May 7th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
“OK, yes you can make an average $5CPM off AdSense with relatively low levels of traffic, very niche specific content and jamming the text boxes into your post. But can you sustain that level if you are doing millions of impressions per month??”
Yes, definitely. And $5 is still on the low side. It mainly comes down to tuning your site properly, testing different ad styles and layouts over a period of months. That’s where you learn that putting a sidebar on the left yields much better performance than having a sidebar on the right, for example. Make a handful of suboptimal layout choices, and you’ll easily reduce your potential Adsense income by 80% or more.
A $5+ Adsense CPM is also maintainable even with tons of other ad programs running simultaneously on the same pages.
I do agree though that there are better ways of monetizing a site than using Adsense.
May 7th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Your flow makes sense, but I do not agree with info on adsense. You get back what you put into it. It may not work for some blogs, but it is definitely working for others. Any revenue suggestions are just that, suggestions.
May 7th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
[…] In one of my recent posts, titled, “The 7 Levels of Blog Revenue..Or Not!” I responded to a post by Chad from b5Media. […]
May 10th, 2007 at 12:44 am
[…] Chad, Director of Sales for b5media network and who blogs at Advertise Space, set out his preferred sources of direct income, in his March post on The 7 Levels of Revenue for Your Blog. He listed them in descending order of preference, i.e. with the least favoured by him at No 1 and then in order to the one he favours most. He explains each, and the reasons for the ranking he gives them: Level 1: Google AdSense Level 2: Affiliate programs Level 3: Ad Networks Level 4: Automated text link ads Level 5: Fixed text link ads Level 6: Graphical banner ads Level 7: Fixed monthly sponsors […]
May 10th, 2007 at 1:37 am
[…] Although this number will very wildly by what industry your blog is in, a consensus answer seems to be that you can make $5 EPM. The average blogger seems to make this amount, and my own experience seems to back that up. In fact, over at online advertising they posted an article stating that Adsense Only Makes $1 EPM, and they got quite a few response, of varying emotions, stating that If you were only making $1 EPM with Adsense, you are doing something wrong. […]
May 10th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Sorry new to this “money making stuff” … can someone please explain “integrated ads?”
May 11th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
[…] The 7 Levels of Revenue for your Blog […]
May 14th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Hi Bassett,
Integrated ads are ones that don’t conform to the standard ‘banner ad’ sizes like 468×60, 728×90 etc. and the owner of the site actually hard code and builds the ad unit right into the site. They are also not run through a normal ad server. It could be something as simple as a small logo that is placed somewhere strategic on the site.
May 14th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
[…] The 7 levels of Revenue for your Blog… […]
May 15th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
[…] I personally think that Adsense is not implemented correctly on many popular websites (Yaro’s for one, John Chow is also making not enough money with Adsense considering his traffic levels) and therefor underrated in their lists. Another example would be Chad Randall’s article The Seven Levels of Revenue of your Blog which lists Adsense on level 1 (the lowest level) while CPM Banners make level 6 and fixed sponsors level 7. […]
May 16th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Ah, thanks very much Chad! Jeez, I have been trying to do integrated ads all along … who knew!! :D
May 26th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
CONTENT should be the wheels drivin that ol’ Blog Train, n’cest pas? Ad Revenue is a fine thing, but too often on too many blogs it comes at the expense of good content. Chef JP
May 28th, 2007 at 9:05 am
[…] 5) Look At Alternative Monetization Schemes - Although this post is supposed to be about optimizing AdSense, what you really care about is making the most money possible with your site. AdSense can be one part of that, but it shouldn’t be your only method of making money. What if AdSense decides to cut you off? Can you recover? […]
June 8th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Interesting idea to click on your own Google ads. Not.
June 26th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
How To Advertise on Your Blog Without (Completely) Selling Out
I was saddened to read this blurb from danah boyd’s outstanding “MyFriends, MySpace” presentation at Harvard: My activist self wanted to believe that the users are aware of [ads], but sadly, that’s not the case. To them, seeing ads…
June 29th, 2007 at 5:49 am
“people will get annoyed by those intrusive ads”
If this is intended to mean that you will lose viewers, it doesn’t appear to be the case. I’d advise people to check their logs (the new Google Analyics is best for these comparisons).
If it means that you will lose page views, yes, you will drop (maybe 20 percent) because some people will leave your site by the ads. But you will make money on those people.
There may be a vocal minority that is annoyed by the ads, but in the end you don’t end up losing viewers and you get a good income to support the blog.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:56 am
[…] Analysis of different advertising methods […]
September 23rd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I have seen some sites that try to buy you some program that has a huge database filled with keywords that help you to get the highest paying keywords and the most naturally clicked. Personally, I think that it’s just a trick to make you buy whatever. There is no way to get such kind of data and Google would have to deal with them. Add this to those who tell you about a book to buy and get rich at the light speed with AdSense including those AdSense ads who tell you to come and get 4000 Euros/Month (Maybe its some kind of Money Engine XD)
January 21st, 2008 at 2:02 am
[…] Some older articles: Advertising space on monetizing strategies; Matt Haughey on how advertising really works. […]