Step by Step guide on how to monetize your blog

Important note before starting up:

If you don't have at the very least about a hundred 'Unique Visitors' a day, going through this isn't really worth it. So, before you go further this, keep that in mind first. As some (like Google Adsense) have minimum payouts of $100 per month, so if you'll end up earning for about $0.50 only everyday, its gonna take a while before you receive payment, which to me, isn't worth it for now & I will just wait to build more traffic before I try with monetizing my website. Most people overlook and this and end up with locked revenue, and just wasted their time. Otherwise, if you just wish to know more about the subject, proceed.
Now, back on to the subject... you might be in a situation where I was about a couple of months back. Seeing people monetizing their sites, hearing success stories & here and there on how they quit their day jobs to work full time as a blogger or just simply resting at home & have their website do the earning for them. So, here you are, you finally decided to join in & see for yourself how your website is gonna do.
Before you start out, though, you need to know that there are a couple of methods out there on how to monetize your blog's traffic, and I'll list them here.

Applying to an ad network

First of all, before you can implement & show ads on your website, you need to apply first.
Before doing that, you need to determine first what these ad networks offer, and if they would fit your website and if they would be effective.
I will be listing 3 methods here on how you can earn money through your website, so I suggest you read them out thoroughly first before proceeding in applying to these Ad networks.

Important Warning

1. At some point, you might get tempted in clicking your own ads for revenue. Don't do it, as you might try and get smart, they WILL find out. Best tip is to don't, rather than giving out tips on how to not get caught. Stay on the safe side, a single illegal click isn't worth it to have your account be banned. (Google can disable your account just from that, so be careful.)

First Method

1. Selling "Real Estate" or space in your blog for Advertising boxes & you can earn revenue from them directly.
There are 3 Models that falls under this category:

• First model is CPC, or Cost-Per-Click ads, which basically means you get paid every time a visitor clicks on a banner/box advertisement link on your website. The amount of revenue you receive per click varies, depending on which advertiser is shown & which country the visitor was in as there are certain ads that pay for example, $1 per click on U.S visitor clicks & only $0.10 for non-U.S clicks.

Here are some CPC networks you might want to consider in applying to:

1. Google Adsense - No one comes close to Google Adsense when it comes to Adsense as this is the top dog with the CPC networks, with its high number of Advertisers all around the world, almost no matter where your traffic is coming from, ads will be shown & thus, more chances for revenue. Their CPC rates are better as well than other CPC networks (Based on experience) as said earlier, because they have more advertisers that are bidding for a space on your website which of course equals to more earnings per click.
2. Chitika - Usually, people are only considering other CPC networks other than Adsense is because either A) Their application was rejected by Adsense B) They were banned from Adsense or C) The content of their website isn't eligible to participate in the Adsense program. If by any chance you fall under C, you won't have any luck signing up with Chitika as well.

• Chitika works the same way as Adsense, however, Chitika works well with websites that gain a lot of search engine traffic. How? Its because Chitika matches the visitor's search query on a search engine to show relevant ads to the visitor which would lead to a higher chance to a visitor in clicking a certain ad because it is related to his/her interest.

IMPORTANT WARNING: At some point, you might get tempted in clicking your own ads for revenue. Don't do it, as you might try and get smart, they WILL find out. Best tip is to don't, rather than giving out tips on how to not get caught. Stay on the safe side, a single illegal click isn't worth it to have your account be banned.
(Google can disable your account just from that, so be careful.)
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• Second method is CPM or Cost-Per-Mille (Cost Per Thousand) ads, while CPC (or Cost-Per-Click) earns you revenue per Ad click, CPM ads pay you for every time this type of Ad shows up on a visitor's browser. Say your Ad network pays you $2 for every 1,000 page views & your website garners about 10,000 views a day, you'll be earning $20 for the day. As opposed to unreliable earnings through CPC ads, CPM ads gives you stability and steady revenue from your page views. Certain niches (or website theme e.g Technology-themed website) don't work well with CPC ads, and thus they switch to CPM ads as most of their audience (the tech-savvy ones) usually just ignore the ads resulting in low clicks & low revenue.

The rates vary, however, and getting in these networks can be much more difficult than applying for CPC Ad networks, due to their strict requirements like:

• Have a good website design
• Have a niche (or theme) that is profitable. (Ex. Humor websites are often rejected regardless of traffic)
• No profanity or illicit words/pictures or anything that would promote anything illegal
• No websites that are free-hosted (a.k.a it must www.yoursite.com & not yoursite.blogspot.com, etc.)

There are more that I can list right now, but these 4 are the usual 'minimum' requirements for the best paying CPM ad networks.
Here are some of the top CPM networks:

1. Tribal Fusion - Tribal Fusion offer some of the best rates in the CPM Ad industry, however, they also require '500,000' Unique Visitors every month which only a few websites have overall in addition to the ones I've said above, but if you happen to meet their requirements & have the traffic, you will earn good money from Tribal Fusion.
2. Casale Media - One of the hardest networks to get in to, even if you have the traffic, if their approval team doesn't think that your website (including design & content & even URL at times) isn't a good fit with their program, they will not accept you as a publisher.
3. CPX Interactive - A fairly easy network to get in, however they have a website requirement of 30,000 unique impressions along that is an Alexa 100,000 Rank or better along with the minimum requirements I've listed above.

• Another model is direct advertising space selling which is basically selling your real estate directly to an advertiser (without going through an ad network) with a fixed amount for a certain duration of time (e.g. A 728x90 banner on top of your website for $300/month)
• Disadvantages of this model is no matter how much traffic you get (even if you get 3x more) you get the same amount of money, however, in contrast, it can also be an advantage as even if your website takes a dip on traffic, you'd still get to earn the same amount! So knowing your current situation would help out as well if you plan on going with this method.

Now, that's the first method.

Second Method

Now, for the second one, its called 'CPA' or Cost-Per-Action.
This is how it works:

• You promote a certain product or service to your audience, by any means (certain affiliate programs may disallow some methods) be it Social Media Marketing (a.k.a Posting about it on Twitter, etc.), email marketing (sending emails), or using up real estate on your website to put up a banner, or an image box showing the service or product you plan to promote.
• For the revenue, for the likes of Amazon.com, you get paid only per sale that was finalized through your link, no matter how many times your banner for this product got clicked, if not one of them purchased it, you will get 0 revenue.
• There are others that pays after a certain action is completed, or after submitting information. (Paid surveys are an example) Otherwise, if it was just a simple click & close with no action done, you will get nothing from that click.

There are others who thrive in this method than in direct selling of real estate of their website with Ads, however, there are others who don't as well.
Determining your audience base's age & interests is ky& would extremely help if you will engage in CPA offers to know what they want and what they "might" possibly buy, or service they might be interested in.
Example: "Your audience's age group is between 13-18 years old"
Obviously, selling insurance services or gardening tools will not be effective with this group at all, as they are not likely to purchase such services.

Your best bet will be going with e-mail submits (E-mail submits with the likes of 'Chance to win a free iPad') & get paid whenever a visitor of yours completes that form or Paid surveys that are relevant to their interests (e.g. Surveys about celebrities, etc.)
CPA takes practice to master, and you have to be experienced first before you can join some of the programs online like Commission Junction.
CPA has the potential to out-do your earnings with just mere ads, however, if not well done, will result to almost no revenue.
I currently use 'MyLikes', its a word-of-mouth advertising platform that offers you links (Varies from sports to humor websites) with certain topics for you to post & promote & then get paid per click you get. This platform works well for me as my audience base in my entertainment site will most likely click these links more than products from Amazon.com, I'm having decent earnings from this platform as proof that I am doing fairly. (About $10-$50 a day)
If I would describe MyLikes, its is a mix of both CPA & CPC, you get paid per click from the link you promoted from Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook. You can also make Youtube videos for the product you plan to promote & they set a certain price per video view.
And that should cover all of it.

Tips

You can read these & other tips online about this, but remember, experience is the best teacher.
So, go on, explore for yourself and see which method would work best for your website & remember, this isn't a 'easy-money-get-rich-quickly' scheme. Earning from your website requires a lot of work before you earn good money from it, so don't be disheartened if your earnings start out very low. Everyone starts from there & success doesn't happen overnight.
This takes practice & would take a while for new publishers to master, however, keep persevering, you'll get there.
And remember, traffic, traffic, more traffic & high quality content will get you there!
Good luck with your website, fellow publisher!