Improve Blog Monetization With CPM Advertising

Many bloggers and webmasters are familiar with AdSense and its potential to generate excellent revenue for blogs and web sites. Unfortunately, many bloggers and webmasters focus too much on AdSense and forget that there are other types of advertising — i.e., CPM advertising — that could improve their blog monetization further, and without affecting their existing AdSense income. After all, there’s only so much AdSense optimization that could be done.

Photo by RichSeattle via Flickr

AdSense is great, but it’s not the only solution for blog monetization

Although AdSense is a good place to start because there’s no traffic or page views requirement, it shouldn’t be the only blog monetization solution. Once your blog or web site reach a more consistent traffic level (i.e., 5,000 to 10,000 page views a month), you should consider adding CPM advertising to the mix — and I am not talking about AdSense CPM ads.

Due to AdSense revenue fluctuation and general downward trend in March, I decided to add CPM advertising to my personal finance blog this month — despite many warnings that CPM advertising is dead. I am happy to say that I am seeing positive outcome with minimal negative impact on my AdSense revenue.

Why is CPM advertising good for your blog monetization?

I believe the three primary benefits are:

• CPM advertising provides consistent daily revenue proportionate to your traffic level
• CPM advertising provides additional daily revenue above and beyond AdSense revenue
• CPM advertising is great for social media traffic — i.e., Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. — where visitors are unlikely to click on your AdSense ads.

Which CPM network to choose?

While there are many CPM networks to choose from, the two networks that I am currently using are ADSDAQ, BURST Media, and ValueClick Media. However, you should do your own research, or you could simply try them all. Here are a list of articles about CPM advertising that I recommend:

• 12 CPM Alternatives to Adsense at ProBlogger.net
• Best CPM Network - Top 10 CPM Ad Networks at Freakitude
• The Pros and Cons of CPM Advertising at The Indiepub Blog
• ADSDAQ - CPM alternative to make money by advertising at Making Money Online