How to Add Pay Per Click Advertising to a Website

According to a 2018 report by the website businessinsider.com, internet advertising revenue, in 2016, increased 22 percent over 2015's total, to a phenomenal $72.5 billion. It outsold television advertising, for the first time in history, which came in that year at a paltry (by comparison) $69 billion. Could such impressive dollars mean there might be at least a tiny slice of a really big money pie with your website’s name on it?

I am a former college professor of advertising and other marketing communications courses (with a PhD in business and a specialization in marketing, plus a master's degree in advertising). Anything remotely related to advertising intrigues me, so I pay close attention to how it is used online to make money. And now, it gives me great pleasure to offer to you what I've learned about this particular topic.

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads and PPC ad campaigns are a primary method and an effective way website owners can advertise on the Internet. And, while adding PPC to your website might not make you rich, it could be a good start down the path to getting there, and it might be just what you've been looking for.

Pay-per-click advertising gives website owners the opportunity to make money simply from owning a website—that is, if you already have or are making plans to have lots of people coming to visit your site. Pay per click is a way of getting “built-in” advertisers, so that you don’t have to go in search of them, because the searchers will come to you. It works similar to what was described in the catch phrase from the movie “Field of Dreams.” Remember? It said “If you build it, they will come.” Well, if you’ve built a website, and if you add PPC ads to it, every time someone clicks on one of the ads, money will come to you.

Different from what is known as affiliate marketing programs—which are performance based, pay-per-click advertising is only concerned with clicks. Pay-per-click ads pay whenever a visitor to your website clicks on an ad, while with affiliate marketing programs, an ad click must result in a purchase before you can earn any money from displaying the ad on your site. Many websites accepting advertising will use either the pay-per-click method of generating money, or the affiliate method.

Step 1.

Before attempting to add PPC to your website, there are several things you must do, or at least check on, first. The most important thing is to check with your web host to make sure they will allow pay per click advertising. Some hosts, especially those allowing you to have a free site, will post their own advertising on all pages of hosted sites, and won’t allow site owners to have ads on their web pages. Other hosts, even those offering free websites, will allow advertising. Some will even make it easy for you to put Javascript on your pages. However, if your site is with a host that does not allow ads, then you and your site will need to find a host that will allow them.

Step 2.

If your web host allows advertising, your next step is to find and join an advertising network/program. Some of the large pay-per-click advertising networks are Google AdWords, Adroll, Facebook Ad, and Bing Ads. There are many smaller networks you can take a look at, but it could be that you will find better support with one of the larger programs. After deciding which advertising program you want to join, you will need to go to the program website and set up your account. Be sure to read the “terms of service” and everything else, before setting up your account. In addition to making sure the program is the right one for you, you will probably also learn how to generate HTML code for ads, and should be able to select both the type and sizes of advertisements you want to allow on your web pages.

Google AdSense is the most popular pay-per-click advertising model, and signing up to become an affiliate is free. Plus, the GoogleAdSense blog offers many valuable tips that could help you learn how to generate clicks on the ads you place on your site. If you choose this model, Google will match your website with ads based on your content. It seems that the more the ads look like or blend in with your site content, the greater the chance viewers will click on them.

Step 3.

No matter which pay-per-click program you join, after setting up your account, you will be ready to start generating HTML code for ads or groups of ads. With some programs, you will select and copy the code for the ads you want, and then you will need to open your web page into an HTML editor. After doing that, you paste the code you copied onto your web page in the spot where you want the ad to be, and finally, you upload the page to your web hosting account.

If you decide to choose GoogleAdSense as your pay-per-click program, all that’s required of you is to cut and paste a piece of code into the HTML of your website page (or pages, if you want ads on more than one page of your site). After doing that, the ads will simply appear on your web pages. The code pulls the ads directly from Google servers, after which they are displayed on your website page or pages. The more you learn about HTML code, the better. Knowing more about it will allow you to always place the code in the best spots to be seen by viewers of your web pages. For example, many people place the code in the middle of their web pages believing this is where ads are more likely to be seen (and perhaps clicked on) by visitors.

Step 4.

Be sure to keep an eye on the number of hits you are getting on the pay-per-click ads on your site. Remember, you are paid based on how much someone is willing to pay you for those clicks, so you need to keep track of them. Also, since PPC advertising is based on keyword selection, the more you learn about keywords, the better. Internet advertising revolves around selecting the right search terms and keywords, and some keywords will work better than others in bringing more visitors to a site. In addition, PPC thrives on page rankings in search engines. Therefore, you should learn as much as you can about search engine optimization (SEO), or, if you can afford it, hire a company to perform SEO on your site.

There are a few things that can help to ensure success when adding PPC advertising to a website. These include being a “niche” marketer, and having a popular site that gets a lot of page views.

If your website is “niche” oriented, that is, if it appeals to a lot of people who have a particular, narrowly defined interest, then advertisers of products or services meeting the needs of your niche will be attracted to your site. For example, people who love to eat and know about gourmet cheese would be an example of a niche market. The “niche” would be “gourmet cheese lovers,” and niche marketers would be producers and/or suppliers of any and every type of gourmet cheese. Niche marketing is focused on satisfying a need that the general market does not satisfy, or does not do a good enough job of fully satisfying.

Still, remember, owning a website that satisfies the needs of a niche market won’t help much unless your site is popular and gets lots of page views. Therefore, I recommend that after or even before implementing a PPC program, that you spend time learning as much as possible about getting more traffic (visitors) for your site.