Common Publisher Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

In Publisher Solutions on

Written by Neda Mijovic

Common Publisher Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

“Mistakes” are a normal thing in the world of affiliate marketing. That’s how we learn, after all. Publisher mistakes happen regardless of the experience, although they are more common when you’re first starting out.

  • You have a website? ✅
  • You want to earn money by placing ads on it? ✅
  • You started your first campaigns? ✅
  • Something went wrong? ✅

Yeah, we get it. The tricky part is figuring out the reasons behind your campaign failures.

Since we’ve all been beginners in website monetization, we’ve made more than enough mistakes in our website monetization beginnings. Bad for us, I know. But good for you.

We’ll go over the most common mistakes that website owners make on their website monetization journey. We’ll also teach you how to fix them so you can boost your profits quickly. So…

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Being Impatient

Many publishers see website monetization like this – you sign up for a platform, take the ad tag and put it on your website, and become a millionaire.

We’re exaggerating here a bit, but you get it. Although getting rich overnight does sound good, it’s not very realistic.

Of course, monetization will start soon after you create a zone, but it will take some time until you earn large amounts of money. The more traffic you have, the faster your revenue will increase. What is important here is not to quit too fast. Do not remove tags or add new ad formats before testing the first one. Give your website a couple of days at least. This is the best way to see how your visitors respond to the ads you place on your websites, and avoid the trap of falling into one of the common publisher mistakes.

For example, you started with push notifications, and on the first day – nothing. Don’t panic – this can happen. After a while, you might see that your audience actually responds well to them. CR is good, and you’re satisfied with the revenue.

Go ahead and test how will in-page push and contextual work on it. But one by one – that’s how you’ll be able to separate the performance of one ad format from another and continue using the ones that work better for you. however, be careful not to exaggerate here, which brings us to the next point:

Placing Too Many Ads

You must be thinking: the more ad formats I put on my website, the more profit I will have. How to put this… It doesn’t really work that way, although it is one of the common beginner publisher mistakes. If you put too many formats at once on your website, you will decrease their efficacy. How is that?

When visitors come to your website, they expect them to enjoy the content of your website. If you put too many ads on a page, people won’t be able to find relevant or interesting information. A page that is covered in ads is not only frustrating, but it will also most probably lower your conversion rates. Visitors will simply close them without even clicking.

This doesn’t look pretty, does it?

Another issue related to this one is registering at too many publisher platforms. By having your website on three or four platforms at the same time, you won’t be able to see which one works best for you – the stats you’ll be getting will be skewed. You won’t be able to track the performance of the platforms you registered at since you’ll be getting only pieces of data for each of them.

What Can You Do to Fix This?

If all your website visitors see are ads, you’re in danger of losing them. That’s why you should use ads in moderation. But how can you know what moderation means?

Begin by testing ad formats one by one. After you’ve seen how they perform, start adding more of them and track how your audience reacts to them. If you notice that your revenue started rising, you’re probably doing a good job!

By fine-tuning your campaigns and customizing the ad formats you’re using, you’ll find the approach that affects your revenue optimally.

As for the ad networks, go one by one until you find the one that suits you best. But avoid using them simultaneously.

Not Placing ad Tags Correctly

This is one of the publisher mistakes that is technical by nature, and the one so many publishers have been doing that we had to mention it.

Publishers sometimes alter the tags, use the same tag on multiple websites or place the ads in the wrong place inside their websites. The list goes on and on… Sometimes, it can mess up the webpage’s settings if it’s placed in the wrong part of the HTML code.

The consequence of messing with your ad tag is that no ads will appear on your website. And that means no revenue.

You don’t have to overthink this part – we’ve created guides for each ad format. Your probability of making a mistake is close to zero.

Here’s how to create zones for:

Creating Low-Quality Content

This one is pretty obvious. And, how to put this… It’s completely your responsibility.

Sometimes, in order to have fresh content constantly, publishers hyperproduce it, not paying that much attention to the value they provide to their audience. Creating low-quality content will do you more harm than good. It frustrates visitors, damages your SEO campaigns, and will give a negative signal to the search engines.

This is what your website should NOT look like. These folks admit it publicly – https://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/


So, What is Quality Content?

That is the million-dollar question. Simply put, it is the kind of content that creates value for your audience. That value can range from education to entertainment. What is important is that your audience thinks it’s useful.

Knowing how to write quality content will help you attract new visitors, reduce bounce rates and help you get higher conversions. Figure out what is that your audience wants to read about and learn how to write approachable, easy-to-read content they would want to come back to.

Conclusion

The world of website monetization is large and complex, so publishers have to come up with creative ways to grow their audience and earn from their websites at the same time.

While fixing the publisher mistakes that we covered won’t get you an immediate increase in revenue, it is a wise behavior, long-term.

After all, you should see website monetization as a marathon, not a sprint, and invest consistent long-term efforts to reduce the behaviors that could become obstacles along the way.

Neda Mijovic

Neda Mijovic

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A passionate marketer with a love for copywriting. Currently on a quest of understanding the affiliate ecosystem in-depth, from both publishers' and advertisers' side.

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