When Should I place Ads on My site?

After starting a website, you will probably want to start making some money off of it. You may be asking yourself “When should I start placing ads on my website?” And that’s a valid question. We all want to be compensated for the the time and effort we put into something. Is placing ads a good idea for you? Let’s find out!

Metrics to use

Deciding to put ads on your site is a big big decision. The biggest factors in deciding if you should place ads on your website are: 1) Number of articles 2) Monthly page views C) Page speed and 4) User experience. For ads be be successful, you will want to make sure all of these things are on the right path. Let’s dig into them a little deeper.

Number of articles

There is no “set-in-stone” number for how many articles your site should have before placing ads, but you will need some content. To qualify for Google Adsense, a website must have original and quality content. They don’t specify how much content this is, but 1 or 2 articles isn’t going to cut it. 

As a general rule of thumb, I would say you need to have 20+ articles written before you try and put ads on your site. This is the minimum, and more is always better. Focus on getting a lot of quality content on your site, then you can think about ads. 

Number of page views

The second consideration is the number of people visiting your site. If nobody is visiting your site, ads won’t make you any money. The two images below are from the Google Adsense calculator. The calcuator is used to estimate the potential YEARLY  revenue from the service. For this example we looked at two different categories: Travel and Beauty & Fitness. 

How much you can make with google adsense
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As you can see, the estimated revenue with 50,000 page views per month is right around $8,000. If you were getting 500-1,000 page views a year, you might make a couple hundred for the year.

This isn’t meant to discourage anyone from using ads in the future though. Below I will show a list of other ad networks you can join. With 50,000 page views per month you could join something like Media Vine and make more money than you would with Adsense. The point is, if you are getting a couple hundred visitors a month, ads should not be your number 1 priority. 

In general, 10,000 page views a month is a good time to start looking at adding ads if you want. That could potentially get you a couple hundred dollars a month and will continue to grow as your site does. Once you get to the 25k-50k mark, you can start looking for other companies to use. They will pay better and help tailor ads to your content. 

Page Speed

Ads will slow down your page speed. It is important to make sure you are in a good place before deploying ads. A good load time is anything under 2 seconds, so that is what you should shoot for. You can check your load time with Google page insights.

If your page speed isn’t where it needs to be, I use a tool called WP Rocket. They help you get the best load speed possible by using things like gzip compression, caching, and lazy loading. 

If you don’t want a paid plugin to do it, you can find plugins for gzip compression, caching and lazy loading. They won’t work as good, but they will definitely increase your page speed. 

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Apple page load speed test

* Example of load speed test for Apple’s website. They did not do so great.

User Experience

User experience should always be on the top of your mind. Search engines want people to have an excellent user experience and they reward sites that deliver this. Overwhelming you visitors with ads is terrible and people hate those sites. And they don’t return to those sites if it can be helped. Some big names can get away with having an ad extravaganza (looking at you, Forbes). They have so many articles and so much domain authority, people are going to end up there regardless. 

There is a good balance in there somewhere. You can have ads while also catering to the customer, but new sites are at a disadvantage. Their site doesn’t have a lot of traffic so the ads aren’t making much money. To account for this, they display more ads. By the time its over, your site is one big billboard. And that will do nothing for sustainable growth.

In the early stages of a blog, it’s better to be more cautious. Ads won’t provide much revenue for new sites and they could kill your reputation if you aren’t careful. 

Alternate Options

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is by far the best way to start marking money with your website. With affiliate marketing you are promoting products that you know, use and trust. 

I promote things like WP Rocket (see above) and Get Response (see below) all the time. I use them and think they will be helpful for other people. If you click on one of my affiliate links I earn a small commission off the sale. I get a commission, a solid company gets a sale and people get quality tools. It’s a win for everyone. 

You can do the same thing. Write about whatever you want, and find products or services that fit in your niche or topic. Once you get approved for that affiliate network you can start earning money.

Build e-mail list

Building an email list is kind of like playing the long game, especially in the beginning. You probably wont see the results immediately. But as you build up your network, that e-mail list will become a major source of income. 

We know that the majority of website visitors never visit a site again. That is just a fact of life. They are looking for something specific, and once the found it, they don’t need to return. Capturing that traffic with a lead magnet and adding them to your e-mail list lets you continue putting your content in front of them. 

If your content has affiliate links, affiliate sales will increase. If you sell a product, you can let your audience know. The ways to monetize your list are endless and the best part is… these people have signed up to hear from you! 

For my email campaigns I use GetResponse. There are many other option available, but they are the best fit for me right now. Go ahead and explore some others.  

Ad networks

Ad Networks (1)

"Should I place ads on my website?"

f you are just starting out, work on creating a lot of quality content. Get some affiliate links in those articles and build your email list. Once you hit 20+ articles and 10,000+ monthly page views, you can start thinking about it if you want. That may seem like a big hill to climb, but if you stay consistent, you’ll be there in no time.

If you are established and get at least 50,000 page views a month, please don’t keep using Adsense. There are much better options out there. Explore some of the companies listed above. You’ll be happy you made the switch.

For websites with a lot of traffic, ads can make up all of their revenue. Some can even make 6 figures from just ad revenue. For most other sites, ads are another source of revenue. Ads con easily add 5 figures to your bottom line, so when you combine ads with other revenue generating activities, you have a recipe for success.

To prove the point, I have added some more Adsense revenue projections. With a Buisness & Industrial site, you could make around $22,000 with 100K monthly visitors. With a finance site, that number jumps to over $38,000. Again, this is with Adsense, you you would be leaving thousands on the table. This number will be bigger with another reputable ad service provider. Either way, an extra 20-30k a year doesn’t sound half bad. 

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To wrap things up, the answer to “should I place ads on my site” is.. it depends where you are. If you’re taking the time to build a site people want to visit, ads will become a nice source of income when it makes sense. With most websites, content is king. Focus on the content and everything else will start to fall into place. 

Good luck out there!