Face it if you put a lot of work into your websites the only way that can continue is if you make money.  As it always has been the best way to make money is advertising. Even your local newspaper or national magazines understand that advertising is their bread and butter and subscription costs are secondary.

For this reason and others we won’t consider publishing private or membership content in this HowTo and we won’t go into straight commerce sites that primarily function as an ordering system for brick and mortar stores or online electronic sales.

So, What does that leave you?

There are a variety of different Advertising methods that you can deploy on your websites to build income. Some of these methods overlap a bit but it is necessary that you understand the differences so you can market your content correctly.

When considering which advertising product you should use you must take into account your ability to manage the content. Self Hosting where you buy a hosting account and manage the software that displays your site gives you the most freedom. Even if you are allowed to display advertising on a free content host like WordPress.com, Blogger or even if you are insane enough to think you can publish on Facebook or another social network for primary content you will never be able to install or build your own scripts to manage your advertising. This means you start the process with one foot in the hole.

However if you are starting out and do not have the money for a full site of your own you can use what methods you can until you earn enough money to transfer your content to self hosting. There is nothing wrong with testing the waters but you should always keep backups of your images, files and export your posts regularly so you can make the move with the most ease.

Advertising that Earns You Money

Now that you understand your options for hosting lets get back to the types of Advertising that can earn you money.

1) Pay Per View – This is where you get paid every time an ad is shown on your pages. I personally like this type of advertising although other methods may result in higher payouts for your site.

2)Pay Per Click – This is just about as good as pay per view ads and payment is when your visitor clicks on the banner.

3) Pay Per Sale – This is when a visitor to your site visits the merchant’s website after clicking a banner and makes a purchase. This type of advertising can be your best or worst performer depending on whether the ads attract visitors that want to make purchases.

4) Pay Per Acquisition – Similar to Pay Per Sale this type of advertising requires your visitor to sign up for a service. This could be for a service like Web Hosting or simply a business that wants to collect a User List that they can market to.

5) Video Advertising – This is a unique service where you produce videos for sites like YouTube and then get a cut on the advertising shown before a video plays. If your site has a large number of videos then you should implement this type of advertising.

6) Text Link Ads – Link Ads are shown within your text content. Through the use of Javascript keywords are replaced and turned into links to merchant sites. This is similar to pay per click because your visitor must click for you to get paid but it can be intrusive to your content or blocked by browser addons that limit javascript. This is different then banner space from Google that shows Text instead of Images or Flash.

7) Pay Per Post – This is when the advertiser contributes content to your site that includes advertising or is simply endorsement of a product. I would say stay away from this type of content because it is likely to cause you problems with other advertisers and possibly legal problems now that new FTC laws on Endorsements have been passed.

8) Sponsorship – This is when a business sponsors your website. I have seen a few ways that this can happen. Sometimes a hosting company can simply give you a free account and in other situations you may need to endorse their products either through content or banners. Either way this is slightly different then the Pay Per view click or sale options because you know that the payment or free service will be available at all times without need for your visitors to take action.

9) Donations – This is when your visitors contribute to your site because they enjoy your content. This is difficult to get good results with unless your site provides Charitable Services or Content. On the other hand you may provide a free service that your visitors enjoy and instead of asking for membership a donation can be required or requested.

10) The final way to make income includes all of the forms of income that we have not mentioned above. Honestly the number of different ways that you can make money is limited only to your imagination and the ability to convince someone to back your venture. Some businesses want to invest in your company for a cut of your profits later and others will find almost mind numbing ways to try to push their advertising through your website. It will be up to you to decide what you are willing to live with and what will make you money while still allowing you to continue.

Final Note

If you are looking at building income from your sites there is no real way to take short cuts. No matter what method you deploy you will need to generate content that your visitors want to read. The content should also be original so that your site does not get lost in the maze of search results and pushes of content generated by large industry.

Yes a single individual can make money but remember you will be going up against large corporations that hire staffs of hundreds or thousands to generate content and they have connections to cross market for free.

I suggest that everyone start off with a basic banner pay per view or click campaign that is run by an affiliate network like Google, Burst, LinkShare or any of the dozens of other networks out there..

Finding a network is as simple as viewing content on some major websites then looking at their ad code to see where that advertisement came from. In few cases it will be in house and private but in many cases on even huge network sites you can find programs that you can join just like the big guys do.