Which Advertising Option Is Right for Your Joomla Website?

So you’ve built your website, done the SEO thing, written some great content and you’re starting to get a good amount of traffic. Now you want to monetize. You want to turn all of that work into revenue, and you know that one easy way is to put ads on the site.

You’ve got three choices:

Ad Sense — Easy, Cheap But Inflexible

The easiest way to get started is with Google’s AdSense program. Just sign up, create your ad and paste it into your website. If you’re using Joomla, it’s even easier: download one of the many great AdSense modules available, install it and enter your ID, and you’re done. Each time a visitor clicks an ad on your site, you make money – Ka-ching!

Who’s really making the money here?

Sounds too good to be true, right? Because it is.Google recently revealed how much of the revenue from your ad clicks it keeps as a commission: between 32% and a whopping 49%! It’s no wonder many publishers are frustrated with the tiny checks they get from Google, even if their site is splattered with AdSense units.

Also, you have no control over how much a click is worth. Nada.

Unfamiliar and inflexible

The ease of AdSense for publishers though has made it popular — so popular, in fact, that users can spot the ads a mile away and ignore them. There’s little you can do about that. While you can customize the units a little, blending them into the site, you can’t remove the “Ads by Google” announcement and you can’t change the size of the units. If your template doesn’t have the exact sizes that match AdSense, the result could be pretty ugly.

Win clicks, lose visitors

Worse, when users click an ad, they leave your site. You can’t force the ad to open in a new window, a new tab or anywhere else. Google only allows that to happen in some markets, based on the user’s IP address and without asking you. They click, you earn but they’re gone!

Pros: Super-easy to implement.

Cons: Google keeps a lot of the revenue; clearly an ad; ad links open in the same window.

Affiliate Ads — Simple But Slow

Affiliate ads are the oldest way of advertising online and many ecommerce websites offer them, including iJoomla.com. Publishers with websites similar to yours can sign up as affiliates, take your banners or links and place them on their site or in their promotional emails. Each sale they generate wins them a commission.

Commission rates vary from 5-20%, although they can be higher depending on the industry. We pay 20% commission to our affiliates, but Amazon pays only 5% (and nine years later, I am still waiting for a check.)

You can either sign up to an affiliate program of a specific website (iJoomla.com), or register at one of the affiliate networks (cj.com ). You might have to wait for approval before you can grab your banners/links.

Commission thresholds cost you cash

The affiliate program may have a threshold for payments. A famous Joomla template club, for example, only pays if you have at least $100 in commissions. With each sale costing only $10-$20, that could take some time and may never happen. In that case, the program owner gets to keep your hard-earned money.

Demands careful management

If you sign up to more than one program — as you should — you will quickly find out that some programs sell better than others and some banners convert better than others. You will need to track the stats and tweak as you go to maximize your profits.

You can also negotiate your commission with the affiliate program manager if you have a large site with lots of traffic. Some affiliate programs will go out of their way to help you be successful. The most outrageous thing I’ve seen is alt.com ’s offer of a condo in Florida to the most successful affiliate.

Start Simply — But Securely

To start, find the affiliate program you’d like to promote, read their terms, and if it works for you, sign up, take the banners/links and add them to your site. It’s simple enough but it could be a lengthy process if you register at more than one site.

I also recommend using a little extension called Jumi that allows you to use code safely, either with a module or by calling a file on your server that contains the code.

Pros: Easy to set up.

Cons: Could take time before you see your money — if ever! Commissions can be low depending on the industry.

Your Own Advertising Program — Your Site, Your Money

If you’ve been playing around with Ad Sense and affiliate program, and you’re getting nothing but pathetic checks and a site full of ugly ads, this could be the time to consider creating your own advertising program.

You can use a free and open source non-Joomla software called openX. Your advertising program won’t be inside your Joomla site because there’s no integration, but you can still display your ads on your site. It’s an option but there is a better one.

iJoomla Ad Agency, was designed specifically for Joomla and contains everything you need from advertising software.

Invest time now, enjoy the rewards later

Ad Agency takes longer to prepare than the seconds required to set up AdSense but the rewards are greater too. Within just 30 minutes to an hour, you can be up and running, and pretty much hands-free with your own advertising program. You’ll then be able to promote the program with an email blast, social media or calls to qualified advertisers. It’s a little effort but a valuable investment in your business.

Ads that are attractive and clickable

Have you noticed that the ads on Facebook don’t really look like ads? That’s why they receive more clicks than regular banners or AdSense units. One of the biggest advantages of Ad Agency is that you can now offer your advertisers similarly-designed ads. Our new and improved Text Ads allow your advertisers to upload image and text so that you can choose the image size and alignment to match your site. The result? Facebook-style ads that give your advertisers the results they want — and the desire to keep paying you.

Of course, you can still have your pop-ups, floating and transition ads, as well as your regular standard and flash ads. And you can make any of the ads open in a new window so that you don’t lose your visitors forever.

Let your advertisers choose their audience

AdSense lets advertisers choose where their ads appear and now Ad Agency does too. If your advertisers are local, the last thing they want is to spend all their marketing money on the wrong people. Now you can allow them to select a Geo Target: it can be a continent, a country, a state or a city. Even an area code or a zip code. Local business will appreciate it, because they know it’s not always about reaching as many people as possible but about reaching the right people.

Full control, full payments

Ad Agency gives you complete control. You get to decide who can advertise with you and which ads they use. You can accept or decline advertisers, ads and campaigns. It’s your program and no one has control except for you.

And the money is yours too. You can create the packages you want, set the price you want — and keep all of it.

Cons: Takes longer to implement, needs some promotion.

Pros: Features rich, full control; clickable ads; you keep all the revenue.

I recommend you giving all these options a try to see which one works for you. The first two are easy to test and Ad Agency comes with a satisfaction guarantee, so there’s nothing to lose there either.

PS: The price of Ad Agency will soon rise to $149.99, so be sure to get it for the old price now!