RachelTo monetize your website or blog, you will need to incorporate an advertising feature on your blog. These advertisements will be strategically placed on your site for readers to organically click them and possibly make a purchase through that click. If this happens, you receive a payment. This is blog monetization 101, and allows for bloggers to receive passive income from their site.
Today, there are many advertisement management companies for bloggers to choose from. To determine which is the best for you and your website or blog, we need to look at the three most popular to see what they have to offer and what they lack.
Google AdSense
We are going to start with Google AdSense first because this ad management service is the best for newly created websites. All you need is a Google account (Gmail or other Google account) and a website and you can get started. Google AdSense is completely free for users.
The Google AdSense platform makes it really easy to place advertisements on your website. You will simply copy the HTML code from Google AdSense and paste it into the HTML body of your website. With Google AdSense you can start earning an income in no time!
How Much and How Often Does Google AdSense Pay?
Users running Google AdSense will receive 68% of the revenue earned from the transaction conducted through the advertisement. To put this into perspective: if a user clicks a Google AdSense advertisement on your website and purchases an item for $100, you will receive 68% (which is $68) from this transaction.
Google AdSense will pay you monthly, as long as you meet the payment threshold. First, you need to set up your payment threshold. Your payment threshold tells Google what the minimum amount needs to be in your Google AdSense Account for them to send you payment. The default payment threshold is $10, but you can increase this anytime.
Google AdSense will review the earnings from your account on a monthly basis. If you had an eventful month, your earnings will be reviewed at the beginning of the following month for finalization. Once finalized, Google will issue a payment between the 21st and 26th of that month.
Ezoic
Ezoic has teamed up with Google AdSense as a Certified Publishing Partner. Basically, Ezoic takes the basic Google AdSense control that you would do yourself, as a novice, and focuses solely on optimizing these advertisements.
As a business owner running a website, you don’t have time to learn about ad placement, much less constantly change ad placement on your website. Ezoic understands this which is why they have teamed up with Google AdSense to maximize the ad placement, location, and content to increase revenue generated from ads.
Ezoic requires a minimum of 10,000 visitors to your website per month in order to create an account, so if your website is just starting out, you will need to meet this requirement to create an Ezoic account.
Ezoic offers three subscriptions to choose from. You can choose a free subscription, a paid monthly subscription associated with guaranteed monthly ad revenue, or a flat fee paid monthly subscription with desktop, mobile, and tablet versions.
How Much and How Often Does Ezoic Pay?
Unlike Google AdSense, Ezoic does not keep a percentage of your earnings. What you earn is what you earn. Depending on the subscription you choose, your website may include an Ezoic-only advertisement banner where Ezoic can make money from those advertisements only.
Ezoic follows a pay schedule similar to Google AdSense. At the beginning of each month, Ezoic will review the earnings in your account from the month before. If you meet the payment threshold (defaulted at $20 unless you increase it), then Ezoic will pay out between the 27th and 31st of the month.
MediaVine
If your website has been established and brings in at least 25,000 visitor sessions each month, you are qualified to apply for MediaVine to manage the ads on your website. This 25,000 minimum session-per-month requirement makes MediaVine a difficult full-service ad manager to obtain if you are just starting out.
If you have at least 25,000 sessions per month, you can submit an application to MediaVine. They will request to verify your Google Analytics, which is essentially your Google AdSense account information.
How Much and How Often Does MediaVine Pay?
The MediaVine revenue share is 75% to you (the publisher) and 25% to MediaVine. There are certain occasions where this may increase. If your website creates over 5 million advertisement impressions within 30 days, your revenue share increases to 80%. If you hit 15 million impressions, your revenue share jumps to 85%.
MediaVine also rewards users who remain a MediaVine customer. They call this the MVP Loyalty Bonus. For every year you are a MediaVine customer, your revenue share increases. These bonuses are located on the Dashboard in the Credits section.
The payout schedule from MediaVine is a little different from Google AdSense and Ezoic.
MediaVine pays out on what they call a NET 65 pay period, and the pay day always falls on the 5th of each month, or closest business day if the 5th falls on a weekend.
MediaVine gives the following payout chart for users to know when to expect to get paid.
| Month Earned | Payment Date |
| January | April 5 |
| February | May 5 |
| March | June 5 |
| April | July 5 |
| May | August 5 |
| June | September 5 |
| July | October 5 |
| August | November 5 |
| September | December 5 |
| October | January 5 |
| November | February 5 |
| December | March 5 |
So, Which One Should I Choose?
You have decided to monetize your blog through the use of an advertisement management company. If you are just getting started, you have to take advantage of Google AdSense. Until you begin receiving thousands of visitors each month, you will not be able to take advantage of other ad management companies, like MediaVine and Ezoic.
Once you have reached the required session minimum for Ezoic or MediaVine, you will be able to apply for these full service ad management services, hopefully capitalizing on their expertise to generate more revenue.
For website exposure, share your website on social media, through emails, and on business cards. The best way to increase traffic to your website is to put your website out there for users to click!