Yahoo Publisher Network, Google AdSense, and a slew of competitors are all clamoring for Internet space to host their advertisements. Although this is causing some problems with the overall quality of content found for many competitive topics - due to sites specifically created to host these ads - we won't go there this time. The bottom line is that the portal pays the website owner every time someone clicks on an add within their designated box. These boxes are usually pretty obvious, marked with "Ads by Google" or "Ads by Yahoo." So how much can you make off this sort of Internet marketing?
A nice poll at Digital Point Forums asks YPN publishers what their average revenue per click (RPC) is. The choices range from less than 25 cents to above 2 dollars, with most respondents so far somewhere in between. In fact, in the small sample so far, 31% say they make an average of between 25 and 50 cents per click. That's not bad. Hopefully we'll get a much larger sample in there over the next few weeks and see where we as publishers stack up to the averages.
One thing to keep in mind when reading a thread/poll like this is that it is very specific. In this case, the only question is how much you make per click. Determining your actual profit takes many more calculations. Simple numbers (like your overhead including how much you pay to host the site, for example) mix with more complex numbers involved with arbitrage and other marketing techniques used to drive the traffic to the clicks. In either case, it is nice to try to get a good idea of what you could make. Of course it would be nicer if the poll was public and people told us what they made per industry, but chances are you can figure that out based on how much you are paying per click in one industry versus another.
Join the thread and add your average RPC at Digital Point Forums. I also dug up an old post from SER that actually ranks top page at Google for a related search. I wonder if this RPC theory still holds true?
