What Ads to Use – Choosing Between CPC CPM & CPA Ads for Blogs with Multiple Ads

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Ads are one of the main money earners for bloggers. One of the most interesting questions that I am constantly asked is what sort of ads to use on the blogs? Should it be text ads, or image ads? Should it be the CPM ads or the CPC ads?

Though there is no empirical formula to decide that, the are various ways to figure out what works for you.

In the context of new bloggers, people who have just started seriously to make money on the internet, the answer is quite simple. I will tell you from my experience what has worked for mein making money from ads  & what has not!

Let’s look at the payouts of each of these ad types:

CPC Ads pay per click. If anyone clicks on the ads shown on your website, you get to make some money. The payout depends on the rates set by the advertiser – it could be as low as 1 cent per click to as high as US$ 1.50 per click. I have seen both the extremes.

When I was advertising, very often I had to payout as high as 70 cents an average for some keywords, while in general my CPC payout varied from about 20 cents to 30 cents per click!

CPM Ads pay per 1000 visits. In some cases, advertisers pay only for unique visits, which in some, advertisers pay per 1000 page loads. What that means for Unique Visits is, if you have a visitor who sees one page of your website & goes away, the advertiser who showed their CPM ad on that page will pay you by the CPM rate for 1 impression. If the visitor visited 10 pages & the same advertisement showed up 10 times, the advertiser will still pay for only 1 visit.

When the advertiser is paying for page loads, then you get paid by the advertiser every time your page shows up & their ad is shown. In order to avoid malpractices, various ad agencies have rules as to make sure that the visitor is genuinely interested in your page. Google only pays for CPM after analysing Time on Page, Bounce Rate & other parameters. You can read the details of all the important parameters on the Google’s page.

CPA Ads pay per action. CPA ads result in the advertiser getting what they desired. Some ask for email IDs, some ask for contact numbers whicle some ask for a credit card number. The action depends on the advertiser. But for the publisher, any time a visitor clicks on a CPA ad & completes a set of actions like the ones I mentioned, the advertiser pays out a referral amount.

CPA advertisers do not care if you have low hit rates, or even if your pages are very popular. You get to make as much money as your visitors do the actions that the advertisers wants. The payouts on CPA ads vary from about a dollar to over US $100 per action depending on what the advertiser is trying to sell.

Now lets look at which of the above advertisers logically make sense for new bloggers.

CPM Ad earnings:

• if your website or blog is new & you have only a few hundred visitors a day, that is like having about 5000 – 6000 page loads a month, even with the best CPM rates, you can only make a couple of bucks a month. Lesser monthly page views would result in even lesser CPM earnings
• if you webaite or blog is fairly old & has over 20,000 page views a month, with at least about 10,000 unique page views a month, you can fairly make close to about US $100 a month from the CPM ads

CPC Ad earnings:

• if your website or blog has the correct search keyword you have a very high possibility of making a few hundred dollars a month, even with page views between 5,000 to 10,000 a month. CPC earnings depend on how good your content is, how well your page shows up on the searched keywords & where your ads are placed
• the earning I mentioned above can vary depending on the relevance of the ads shown. Some advertisers provide very contextual ads whicle some dont. I have assumed that the ads shown on your pages are very relevant to the page’s content

CPA Ad earnings:

• you can safely assume an earning of a couple of dollars from CPA ads, unless your blog is very reputed & visitors can trust you.  Generally, free giveaway ads tend to get more attention & the users often do not mind giving out their email addresses for something free
• serious CPA ads often payout well over US $100. These ads however require visitors to buy something, or requires visitors to pay some money. For a new blog, the chances are low that the reader could trust your lead & spend a large sum of money on a product that you are referring

In summary, for a new blogger, the CPC ads make more sense & could make you a few hundred dollars every month. The important aspects in all these 3 ad channels are:

• the quality of your website – the value the reader finds on your blog page. When the readers see a lot of value on your page, they are likely to stay longer & explore
• the quality of ads served – the advertiser should have the ability to understand your content & provide relevant ads. You have to choose your advertisers well. Refer to the list of some of the best CPC CPA & CPM advertisers
• the design of your blog – this lets you show ads of the right formats, in the right places & should not distract the serious readers. Pro Media Blog has a lot of great themes that are designed especially for people who want to show ads & make money