Things to consider with Monetisation and affiliate programs

In the last few blogs you should have got a basic understanding on affiliate schemes and how they work as well as enabling Ads on your website through Google AdSense and YouTube partnership.

Monetising your blog

There are some general rules to stick by though when monetising your blog:

DO’s

• Enable ads matching the colour scheme of your website
• Experiment with Ad sizes and types of Ads (YouTube etc)
• Use Analytics data to try and determine effectiveness
• Use your affiliate ID in links you will be sending
• Try out widgets or modules if you use a CMS
• Listen to user feedback and take on board any suggestions relating to Ads
• Test out website at different resolutions to test visibility
• Use AdSense to monitor earnings and effectiveness
• Experiment with page specific Ads

DON’Ts

• Don’t spam links to affiliate enabled URLs – Only post as you would without an affiliate partnership
• Don’t sacrifice the websites content or integrity.
• Don’t overdo the Ads – Subtlety is key
• Don’t change your content to ‘make room’ for Ads or Affiliate links.
• Don’t encourage clicks – Google can spot this a mile off and penalise you.

The above may seem obvious to some, but those of you new to monetisation will need to keep these suggestions in mind. You should continue to use your blog as you normally would without any monetisation or affiliate partnerships. It can be really easy to lose the trust of your readers or viewers.

Make sure competitor Ads aren’t showing on your site

If you are selling a product or service, you may want to check that your competitor’s Ads aren’t being pulled into the Ad slots on your website.

Google goes into detail on how this can be done but it just takes some small changes to be applied to blocked advertisers in the ‘allow and block Ads’ tab within AdSense.

Once you have followed the tips above, you should be off to a great start. It will take a few iterations of Ads in terms of size, colour and frequency to find what works best for you and your site, but don’t lose hope if things aren’t working well for you initially. It takes time to build your content so the first few months are generally slow with any earnings at all through Ads.

YouTube Ads

Here are some general rules and tips to start with your monetised YouTube videos.

DO’s

• Start with overlay Ads to get familiar with monetisation
• Experiment with TrueView in-stream ads on longer content
• Embed Ad enabled videos onto your website

DON’Ts

• Don’t place too many Ads within your video timeline
• Don’t upload videos just to enable Ads
• Don’t ask users to click your Ads – Google will know.

These are just some basic tips to get you started with monetisation of content on your website and on your YouTube video content. There are other ways that you can monetise content, but these are definitely good places to start if you are new monetisation.

Image Credit – *_Abhi_*

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