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How to earn money from your blog with media.net contextual ads

media.net contextual ads

Media.net is quite unique amongst the other ad network providers in that it gives what is called  ‘contextual ads’ to your blog. What that means is that the ad system looks at the content on the page (not the entire site!) and create the ad based on that. It’s because of this that Media.net is one of the highest paying ad networks out there with people earning 3 figures numbers per day when they use them on their site.

Signing up to Media.net is simply a case of heading over to their site and putting in some details about yourself and your blog however they do have some CORE rules before you will be excepted which include

  1. Your blog must contain a significant content that is updated on a regular basis
  2. The majority of the traffic that you receive must be from the US / UK or Canada
  3. English needs to be the primary language
  4. You need to have a ‘reasonable’ volume of traffic to your website
  5. Your site doesn’t already have an excessive level of advertising

Beyond these 5 golden rules there are other technical requirements which aren’t out of this world and wouldn’t be an issue for any regular WordPress blog.

media.net contextual ads email

Once you’ve applied you will receive the above email and then 2 business days they will come back to you with either a yay or a nay. If you do get rejected you can appeal via an email address they provide you with which from what I’ve read is worth doing as it gives you a chance to have a ‘right to reply’ and give them more information than you can on the initial application form.

Once approved you will be allocated a personal account manager. Treat them like your best friend and it will pay off financially in the long run. Ask them questions and work with them to get better-suited ads on your site and it’s a win for everyone!

One of the biggest advantages of Media.net over say MediaVine is that you have full control over the ads. You can run a maximum of 3 on any one page and they can be placed wherever YOU want them to be. Once you are logged into the Media.net dashboard simply click on Ad Units and here you can create your desired ad boxes.

media.net contextual ads ad unit
media.net contextual ads ad unit colour

As you can see above creating an ad unit is simply a case of giving the unit and name and then choosing the dimensions and colours you want to use for the ad. Normally with traditional ads I would say colours that make it stand out work best however for these contextual ads you want to choose colours that blend into the colour scheme of your site.

Once you are happy you can click on ‘Get Code’ and it will give you the code to paste into your blog. I use Advanced Ads for my ad placement needs on WordPress. It’s very simple to do and you simply copy and paste the code that Media.net give you into it and decide where you want the ads to fit. I’ve found the best results to be one in the widget on the sidebar and 2 within the content. One being under the first paragraph and one being just above the last so they blend in well so let’s have a look at an example of one of these ads.

Contextual ads

media.net contextual ads

This blog post is about housing with the main blog being around earning money online. Media.net is taken all that into account and made the displayed ads a mixture of the two with a bit of geolocation thrown in as well which is why you see ‘Leeds Property Sale’ there. The ads are presented in this sort of ‘listacle’ format which makes them seem like part of the blog content also makes them FAR less intrusive than say, all singing, all dancing graphical ads that other ad networks provide.

One thing your account manager will do is look at how things can be improved on your site in regards to placement and branding so don’t be surprised to login one day and see the ads in your sidebar have had their colours matched to fit the header of your blog. It’s all being done to help you!

media.net contextual ads earnings graph

Media.net has some fantastic reporting tools you can take advantage of to see which ad blocks are working best for you and if things need changing. As you can see from the graph above it is common for the first few weeks (I would say 3-4 weeks) for your revenue to be all over the place. This is because their system takes time to analyse your site so don’t be concerned when things are all over the place for a while as it will stabilise. The biggest learning curve for me was around ad placement as like I mentioned above I found having these sort of ads WITHIN the main content work extremely well.

media.net contextual ads earnings

One last thing worth mentioning is that Media.net offer a sort of ‘mobile bar’ at the bottom of your blog if you want that. It appears as a constant contextual ad at the bottom of the users’ browser on their mobile device while they are on your site and is another great way of getting your ads exposed to users.

What do you think?

Written by themoneyshed

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