No matter what type of website you have, be it a personal blog, a news site or a company page, you can monetize your website through various channels.
Not all monetization channels are ideal for each type of website, so you have to see what works best for each individual website.
Learning What Works
A great way to test what works and what does not work for your website is to do A/B testing with a site like Optimizely or heat mapping with CrazyEgg.
A/B testing means putting content and ads on your website with various layouts to see which layout will best optimize your monetization strategies through customer engagement rates.
You can select how often each different version of your site will be shown each time the page is re-loaded, then you will get a report back indicating which version has the highest engagement rate.
Using Heat Mapping
With heat mapping, you will see a screenshot of your site with an overlay of red to blue spots for where people are clicking, or engaging, the most or least.
Sometimes this information will be surprising and counter-intuitive to where you thought people were engaging.
Using the highest engagement rate to place monetization channels on your website is very important. Whether it is ad placements, an email mailing list sign up form or affiliate marketing links, you can get the best optimization with proper placement.
Monetizing Through Advertising
The first thing most people think of when they go to monetize their website is to get digital display advertisements on their site as soon as possible.
Digital display ads work through advertisements being uploaded to your site through using slot tokens and keywords to get contextual ads displaying on your site.
They are usually contextual because they will be targeted at the user based on their demographics and search history, or the ads will show something related to the site the user is looking at.
PPC Advertisement Programs
Digital ads work through pay-per-clicks (PPC) and click through rates (CTR).
On these programs, advertisers pay for each click on the ad that is placed on your website and the higher the CTR (the number of clicks based on the number of views).
This way, the better the ad is doing and the more money you will make from the ad impressions.
Using Google Adsense
Adsense is a popular way to promote adverser in a website, since it is very easy to install. However, it also has its down sides.
If you website is fairly new, under six months, then you should refrain from using Google AdSense to monetize your website because they will penalize you and possibly block you out from using AdSense.
There are many terms and conditions to using AdSense and it can be difficult to use and get the clicks you are hoping for.