As a webmaster, there are many choices to choose from when wanting to monetize web content. Variety is always good when it comes to monetizing, but it can become rather difficult for a webmaster to choose which solution works best for them. For some webmasters, CPM (cost per 1,000th impression) may work for them. For others, you may hear that PPC (pay per click) is the same story as well.
What explains this phenomenon of every webmasters having different results? If you are a webmaster, you have probably researched which solution works best and have heard both sides to the story. For the PPC solution, it may go along the lines of, “The pay rate is low and I don’t get much clicks no matter how much impressions I push towards my PPC ads.” Or for the CPM solution, “I get paid so little, I wonder how other people make much with CPM advertising?”
Well today, the reason why this article is present is to finally explain what causes these scenarios for webmasters and which solution is most probable for an individual to maximize their profit. If it happens so you don’t have any idea which solution may work best for you after reading this article, I have failed as a blog writer.
What is PPC and CPM?
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To give you a brief idea, PPC basically means pay per click and if you are with a PPC company, most likely, they are paying you by how many clicks you deliver to their advertiser base. On the other hand, if you are with a company that is CPM Based, pay rate is strictly based on how many impressions you deliver to their banners. In other words, every single visitor, regardless if they don’t click on the CPM banners showcased on your site, it is counted and qualified as an impression – which means money for you.
Which is the better solution?
If you think choosing which ad solution would be difficult, you thought wrong. All it takes is a bit of research and maybe a bit of experimenting, but nonetheless, it should be pretty straight forward when choosing which is best for your website.
For one thing, your niche is a big deciding factor in determining which advertising solution is best for you. For example, if your website is on something entertainment related, it is most likely better to go with a CPM solution due to the sole reason that most PPC companies don’t pay much for each individual clicks from entertainment related audiences (note that I said “likely”). I’m not saying that if your website is entertainment related, the PPC solution is out of consideration, rather just giving you a brief idea of what works and what doesn’t for most webmasters. If on the other hand this proves to be wrong with your website, that is great. Remember, everyone may have different results and for each individual, results may be different. Testing, or experimenting is really key to figuring out which is best for your website regardless of what other people may say. Who knows, maybe PPC may work out for you while others may claim otherwise.
If you are working on a niche that has a somewhat decent pay out, it may be best to stick with a PPC solution, because think of how much you could make if you optimized your pages for better click through. Some free tools I use to research to determine which niches are worth using a PPC solution are: Google’s Keywords Suggester Tool and Spyfu. Using Spyfu should be pretty straightforward, but with the Google’s Keywords Suggester Tool, basically what you are looking for is how much advertisers are willing to pay. If the competition is high, from a publishers standpoint, that is good. As you can see, basically we are reverse engineering the usage of this tool to help us better approximate which niches are worth going for the PPC solution.
The bottom line is that you should research which niche is better paying for the corresponding solutions and see what may work for others. But ultimately, if you are able to test both solutions yourself, it is ten times better than any recommendation or research you may have found on the web.
