If you have your own website, advertising with pay per click ads can be a great way to generate passive income. With easy implementation through Google AdWords, it hardly takes any time at all to get your ads running, and start earning money. By investing a very small amount of time in getting your website set up, you can get extra funds daily for as long as your website is active.
How AdWords Make Money
Google has a feature which allows advertisers to bid on certain keywords. For example, let's say a keyword is "freelance writer." Whenever someone types the phrase "freelance writer" into Google's search bar, there are advertisements on the top and at the side of the page. It stands to reason that anyone working as a freelance writer would want their ad to appear on that page. In order to get the ad, they would place bids on Google. The highest bidders get the ads which appear on the page.
AdWords are also pay per click, meaning that the people who own the ads only pay Google when somebody clicks on their ad. Say that the phrase "freelance writer" has a lot of bids, and it's worth $1.80 every time somebody clicks on the ad. Google makes money because whenever anyone clicks on the ad after searching for "freelance writer," the person whom the ad belongs to pays Google $1.80.
Although your site isn't Google, you can still make money through Google's ads. When you allow Google AdWords to run on your website, a portion of the profits is split with you every time someone is directed to a website through an advertisement running on your page.
Setting Up AdWords
If you want to earn some money by running advertisements on your website through Google Adwords, you'll need to start by going to adwords.google.com. Sign in with your Google account, or create one for free. Then, simply follow the instructions to get AdWords up and running on your site. If you don't have direct access to your website's source code, you may need to contact your webmaster.
Advertising Without AdWords
Of course, Google isn't the only provider of online advertisements - it's simply the easiest. You may find more lucrative deals by contacting business owners and offering to run their ads on your website for a certain length of time in exchange for a specified amount of money. If you decide to do this, collect a sample of your website statistics so you know approximately how many unique visitors you have every day. You should be able to present this number to the business owner to demonstrate how many people will be reached by their ad daily.
What You Can Expect
Unless your website is extremely popular, you probably won't be making a lot of money from advertising on it. You only get paid when people actually click on the ads, which is usually a very small percentage of the actual visitors to your site. Depending on the keywords you are working with, you might expect to get only a few cents per click. Although this can add up over time (depending on the popularity of your website), it certainly isn't a highly lucrative proposition and must be viewed as secondary income. Still, considering that only a very small investment of your time is required, setting up ads is still a worthwhile endeavor.
Whether you use AdWords or do all the work yourself, owning a website can help you earn passive income with a minimal amount of work on your part.
