This is a hugely exciting time to be an online publisher. It used to be the case that if you wanted to earn from ads on your website, there was only one thing to do.
You signed up to AdSense, pasted in the code, optimized the units and brought in traffic while following your stats.
You still have to do that.
But these days that\’s just the beginning.
You always have to mix in Kontera and Chitika, WidgetBucks and ShoppingAds. You have to make room for affiliate links and referral units. And you have to understand the value of video units and gadget ads too.
And that\’s just the beginning.
If you think that sounds horribly complicated, then I\’ve got some bad news for you.
It\’s going to get tougher.
People are making money with online publishing. The market is huge and the potential is even bigger. Companies understand this and they\’re falling over themselves to offer new ways of putting ads on your pages — and paying you for them too.
So you can expect to see improved ways of earning from video content. You can expect to see even better targeting to help raise your clickthrough rates. And I think you can expect to see even more creative and imaginative forms of ads to go along with your text links and standard ad units.
I think we\’re still at the beginning of the online publishing revolution and there are going to be a lot more exciting changes ahead.
But one thing is still going to remain true.
It doesn\’t matter how glitzy your ads, how well you combine different systems or how successfully you optimize them, the success of your site will ultimately depend on the quality of your content.
Produce good content and you\’ll find it much easier to get large volumes of traffic, and earn more advertising revenue.
That\’s never going to change.