Pros and cons of using advertising revenue
When you decide to take on an advertising campaign – it’s important to make sure that you don’t ignore some important effects of these services. Advertisements can generate revenue but they can also decrease popularity of a web page. Make sure that the ads are placed on your site where they don’t obscure users from the real purpose of your web page. They should never be the highlight of the page. Remember that while advertisers pay more for ads that are more invasive – you don’t want to lose your user base by over utilizing them. As a rule – try to stay away from pop-up ads. They are very annoying and many people will not visit sites with them. If your site is a very professional site – you may want to limit yourself to Google adwords. This is text only and can fit into your site seamlessly. If done properly – you can easily earn revenue that will cover the hosting costs of your site. This means that your website can basically be running for free. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Different Types of Advertising Options
Pop unders
Pop-unders are advertisements that appear underneath a page. When a user closes your website – they will then see the new pop-under on their screens. The problem with these is that many browsers now block these types of ads. They can be used for CPM campaigns.

Banner Ads
These are ads that are displayed on the page. They can be at the top, on the sides or at the bottom of a web page. These are possibly the most popular forms. They can be used for

Flash animated Ads
These are often used as banner ads. They can also be used for Pop-up ads. They are very effective because their animated nature drives the user to view them.

Text Ads
These are definitely becoming more popular. For users who don’t want to change the appearance of their site with graphic images – text ads offer a clean option for displaying ads. They are generally used with CPC ad campaigns.

Programs that help you earn revenue on your website
Now that you know all about the different jargon related to earning revenue on your website – perhaps you are interested in what programs to go with. There are thousands of advertising programs out there so we will just mention a few that are good for small businesses.

Google Ad Words – These offer text based ads for your website in a variety of sizes and color schemes. These are the least invasive forms of advertising. Google places ads on your web page that are related to your page’s content. You only have to place the code on your page – and Adwords does the rest. There is no setup or maintenance fee – so it’s definitely worth it for small businesses. Google pays out monthly.
Fastclick – This service offers graphic and rich-media ads for your website. They have many options which include popups, interstitial ads (Ads that appear to lead you to the target of the link you clicked on), banner ads and more. They also have no setup fee and pay out monthly. These ads are considerably more invasive than Google adwords but they are effective.

Earning Revenue Terminology
Before you jump into the world of advertising revenue on your website – you will need to know what many of the jargon terms mean:

Ad / Advertisement
This is any type of ad, banner, image, or text link placed on a site for the purpose of earning revenue. Revenue may be earned from viewing it or clicking on it.

Advertisement Rotation
This is used when a site has only one spot to display but multiple ads. Different ads will appear at different places on the page.

Ad space
This is the section of a web page that is reserved for advertisements.

Affiliate marketing
Affiliate programs are programs that allow you to send sales or users to another site. You can either be paid for the person following the link or if the person makes a sale after following your link. It is a good way to turn your site traffic into revenue.

Banner
A banner is a (normally) horizontal ad that runs on your page. The standard format is 468 X 60 pixels although they may be bigger or smaller.

Click through / click thru / click thru rate/ CTR
A click through is when someone clicks on a link in your site to an intended target. When the person’s click is logged by the target site – it is called a click through. This is what is used to determine your revenue.

Click rate
This is the % of page loads that result in someone clicking a link. For example – you may have a 6% click thru ratio. This means that 6 % of your page loads actually result in someone clicking on a link.

Cookie
A cookie is a file used by a website to track data about the user.

Cost-per-action / CPA
This is what an advertiser pays for a specific action on their site. It might be the amount they pay for someone signing up for a newsletter or signing up for a service or making a purchase.

Cost-per-lead : CPL
This is a cost per action where the advertiser is paying for a sales lead being sent to them.

Cost-per-sale : CPS
This is a cost per action where the advertiser is paying for actually sales by people sent to the site.

Cost-per-click : CPC
This is a cost per action where the advertiser is paying for every time someone clicks on a link that sends them to their site.

CPM
Confusingly – this means cost per 1000 ad impressions. That’s how much a publisher would earn per 1000 page loads.

CPTM
Confusingly – this means cost per 1000 targeted ad impressions. That’s how much a publisher would earn per 1000 page loads. This is targeted traffic meaning the page will be relevant to whatever specifications were set by the advertiser.

Creative
This is the actual ad that will be provided by the advertiser. It may be an image or a flash animation

Demographics
Data related to the size and characteristics of a population or audience

Fold / above the fold
The fold is the top section of a web page that is viewable before someone needs to scroll down. Many ad campaigns that pay by impression require that ads be above the fold.

Hit
A hit is a single request to a web server for a single file. A page may generate dozens of hits at once. Every image, audio file, flash file etc generates a hit. Generally it is not used to determine the number of visitors to a website.

Impression
An impression is a single loading of a web page / advertisement.

Media broker
These are companies that are middle men between advertisers and publishers. They save advertisers from having to approve every site that wants to display their media.

Opt-in e-mail
Opt-in e-mail is e-mail containing content that sers explicitly request to receive.

Pay-per-click
This is when an advertiser pays a publisher for clickthrus.

Pay-per-lead
This is when an advertiser pays a publisher for sales leads

Pay-per-sale
This is when an advertiser pays a publisher for sales generated from the publisher.

Pay-per-view
This is when an advertiser pays a publisher for impressions of an Ad

Rich media
Many ads are just jpeg or gif images to display an advertisement. However you ay also see ads that move around the page, have animations contained within, or even play music. This is rich media.

Unique visitor
A unique visitor is considered a visitor to a website that is counted only once every 24 hours.

We hope that this list will be useful in helping you get your website to generate its own income.