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So, you’ve got ads running on your website, but you’re ready to take things to the next level. Here are five ways to kick your revenue up a notch.
“Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.” – Jake the Dog, Adventure Time
Most things we do can be separated into categories: beginners and experts. This divide reflects the varying skill levels, familiarity, and understanding within any given pursuit. Every skier you see shredding down a black diamond slope in Colorado started off, years earlier, with their knees shaking as they tried out the bunny slopes for the first time. For every college student overcooking instant ramen, there’s a practiced chef sliding a perfect Beef Wellington out of the oven.
This is also true for publishers looking to monetize their website. Getting started with web ads has a pretty low barrier to entry. Getting set up is relatively plug-and-play, and experimenting with things like ad sizes and Google ads is easy to try.
But once you’ve moved past the beginner phases, enhancing your revenue streams requires a little bit more expertise, a little bit more access, and a lot more know-how to pull off effectively.
In this blog post, we explore advanced monetization strategies and dig deeper into integrating these approaches into your publishing strategy. Read on:
Case Study: find out how OKO was able to boost Loop Media’s revenue by 500% — on the first day.
1) Design
Before we move into some of the other models of monetization, let’s focus on cleaning up the one you’ve already got. Placing ads on a website is easy for beginners, but optimizing ad revenue involves more than just slapping ads on your pages — it requires strategy, data, and sometimes, a partner who can give you a leg up.
Some of these considerations are design-based — for example, strategic ad placement. Consider placing ads “above the fold,” or even in-content to maximize visibility. Design compatibility with mobile devices of varying types are also key — if your ads aren’t displaying properly on phones, for example, then you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Another design aspect to consider are the ones that affect your “Core Web Vitals.” Many CWV factors, like design stability, load times, and pop-ins negatively impact your positioning in Google search results (shrinking the potential audience for your ads) and also sour the user experience for visitors to your page (meaning they might not stick around long enough to click on anything).
Fixing these various things will improve time on-site for your page, fix your bounce rate, and improve your user experience — and it will have the added effect of boosting your revenue.
2) Optimization
If you do what you’ve always done, the saying goes, you’ll get what you’ve always got. One of the keys to boosting your ad revenue is gathering performance data, and making decisions and course-correcting based on what that data tells you. This allows you to expand on what’s working, and jettison what’s not working. Over time, this strategy of honing and concentrating can pay big dividends. It’s like a garden: you’ve got to fertilize and water what you want to keep, and make sure to pull the weeds.
Monitoring and optimizing ad performance is an ongoing process. By analyzing key metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), and revenue per thousand impressions (RPM), publishers can refine their ad placements and formats to maximize earnings.
It’s essential to strike a balance between ad density and user experience—too many ads can overwhelm users. You can also try ad refresh, which swaps out the ads in their slots at intervals, so you can get more ad views without increasing the number of visible ads on your page.
Of course, one of the most-important things you can do is make sure you’re collecting and employing first, second, and third-party data to optimize your audience targeting. The more accurate information you have on your audience behavior, demographics, and location, the more-desirable that audience will become to specific advertisers — and the more they’ll be willing to pay for space in front of that audience.
3) Partnership
Socrates, one of the smartest people to ever live, was quoted as saying “I know that I know nothing,” and there is wisdom to know when there are things you don’t know. When the stakes are low, like learning to play an instrument or painting a kitchen wall, there’s no harm in noodling around to see what you can teach yourself. But when it comes to things like rewiring electronics, or the revenue pipeline for your business, there’s no harm in calling for an assist.
Bringing on a monetization partner, whether it’s for a one-time consult or an ongoing full-ad-management system, is a great way to make sure your ad revenue is getting the kind of constant attention and support that you need — and the kind of insights you’ll need to do better. And, of course, it’s a labor-saving hack as well, as tending to your ad revenue is a time-consuming activity that can detract from your real job, providing content that’s of interest to your audience.
But there are benefits beyond expert assistance and free time. Teaming up with a Google MCM partner or Google Certified Publisher Partner (GCPP) can mean greater access. Companies with a GCPP rating, for example, have invite-only access to Google’s AdX platform. Individual partners, like OKO Digital, can also grant access to other exclusive ad exchanges and marketplaces around the Web.
The more ad exchanges you’re a part of, the more programmatic bidding on your ad inventory, and the higher CPMs you can command for that inventory. Teamwork makes the dream work — assuming your dream is making more money.
4) Subscription Models
If you’ve got exclusive content and a dedicated audience, subscription-based models might be right for you. The benefits of a subscription-based model for users is clear for anybody who has utilized a streaming service lately: paying a monthly subscription fee can drastically cut down on the ads cluttering up the experience.
Additionally, subscriber-based income models can be more stable and less subject to month-to-month fluctuations, and allow you a deeper level of engagement with your audience and what they want. You can focus on content quality and building a relationship with your subscribers.
The midway option for this kind of approach is the “freemium” model, where regular users can still gain access to some or most of your content in an ad-supported capacity but can pay a subscription fee for access to an ad-free tier, more content, bonuses, and more.
There are downsides, of course. Mental anchoring means users may be reluctant to start paying money for content they previously got for free. And if your content is the sort of content you want to be shared widely — like an important issue you’re advocating for, or a political cause — going viral in a paywalled model is virtually impossible. Additionally, you may find that users will demand greater quality and more frequent updates once they’re paying subscription fees.
Whether or not this is a monetization option that works for you will depend a great deal on the sort of content you’re putting out, and the amount of revenue you’re generating through a traditional, ad-supported method.
5) Affiliate Marketing
If you’re not interested in taking your site behind a paywall, another method of monetization that can supplement your revenue streams is affiliate marketing.
Online, affiliate marketing is a performance-based strategy where your site can earn commissions by promoting another company’s products or services. You can create content on your site, and drive traffic to your affiliate partner utilizing a unique affiliate link. That way, they can trace any conversion actions (purchase, sign-ups, etc.) back to your efforts. The company gets to expand their product visibility to your audience, and you earn a commission off of those conversions.
Basically, this allows you to leverage the audience you’ve been building for greater revenue, on top of your existing ad efforts. It’s a diversified portfolio that allows you to add without subtraction, and it hinges on your understanding of your site and your audience.
The key trick, of course, is selecting an affiliate program that aligns well with your site and audience. For one thing, your sales strategy will be more effective if your affiliate program is a seamless fit with the content you’re already putting out. It will feel more natural, and less like “selling out.”
So if you’ve got a site devoted to DIY and home-improvement, dropping affiliate links throughout product reviews and how-to articles will be an effective and natural approach. You have to make sure to mention when promotional considerations were provided to your site, though — both to respect your audience (who can usually spot this sort of thing) and also to satisfy various laws and regulations that may be in place in your jurisdiction.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, there are a lot of ways to boost your revenue streams — and the most important trick of all is to avoid leaving all your eggs in one basket. A diversified approach to generating revenue will help stabilize your income, and allow you to shift focus seamlessly from one to another along with the whims of the marketplace.
If you’re a publisher looking to get more revenue out of your site, OKO Digital has been a leader in monetization since 1996. You can get started today by reaching out to our team. With decades of experience under our belt and an expert team at your disposal, OKO Digital is a trusted name in adtech for a reason.
