Traffic
I own a website for a Half-life 2 mod named Desolate.
http://www.limzb.uni.cc/desolate
Although the mod is not fully complete yet, I still somehow managed to draw some regular visitors. These regular visitors are known as 'traffic' to your website. The more traffic you recieve, the more advantage you will have in PPC(and even other types of ad).
This is simply because the more visitors you have, the more people will see the advertiser's ads.
A traffic of like 10 unique visitors a day should be enough for you to earn a few cents. As we know by now, the more the better.
Ad Networks
Now, the problem of 'Who?' as in which ad network you should approach to place ads on your site comes in. I would recommend Ad Brite.
www.adbrite.com
It was also the first ad network I used. Note: Companies that provide ads for you to place on your website are known as ad netwroks.
AdBrite, although is not the best ad network, nor does it pay you gold for clicks, it is a good start for beginners. The interface is quite initutive and you should be able to place ads on your website without much hassle. You also do not need to go through a review/approval process or let an crawler crawl your website. This lets you place ads on your site and earn money immediately.
This is very important for beginners because usually if you have to wait for a few days, you would get very bored and in the end, decide not to put ads on your web. Also, you can also get to see the ads immediatly so it gives you a quick first time experience on how ads are like on your website.
If you don't like AdBrite's ads on your website, you can forget about using other ad networks. Ad Brite's are similar to most of the ad networks' ads out there.
Get a feel of it. If you hate it, stop it.
Adhearus and Google should be your next stop if you feel comfortable with having ads on your web. However, for these networks, you need to go through an approval process which can take anywhere between 6 hours to a week.
Adhearus
http://www.adhearus.com
http://www.google.com/adsense/
Note:Google's very strict with fraud clicks to make sure not to try anything funny with them. You'll only lose out in the end.
Another important factor is how fast the ad networks are. Some ad network's ads are very very slow. These can be detrimental to your website's overall performance.
Where?
Ads should be placed in a comfortable position to both the webmaster and the visitors. It should be non-obtrusive and should not disturb the experience of visiting your website. More than often, people put many many ads on their website, hoping for more revenue. But in the end, it drives away their visitors.
A good place should be probably at the left or right hand sides of your page. Try not to put them at the top or at the bottom. At the top, it ruins the visitor's impression of your page. At the bottom, it will probably never be seen, unless you have interesting content at the bottom.
How much is enough?
I would recommend a maximum of 2 ad netwroks placing their ads consecutevely on your website. As I mentioned earlier, if you have too many ads on your website, it will only drive away your visitors. This is because, the ads will be menace, rather than a help to your wallet. And if one ad network goes down temporarily, your visitors will still have another network to click on.
1 ad network is fine, but most web pages have enough space for comfortably placing ads for 2 networks.
Ever heard "2's a company, 3's a crowd"?
Images or Text Link ads?
You should always keep in mind that images always load slower than text. Although mroe than often, the difference is negligible, always keep this fact in mind. Especially when there is high internet traffic in the area of your web host, this difference can be very noticeble, or to 56kers.
But images can make your site looks more vibrant and interesting. Some image ads are quite comical too. It can be quite interesting to have funny ads on your site.
I would recommend having 1 image banner ad and 1 text link ads. This would provide a good balance.
Last words
Ads are not for everyone and not everyone likes ads on their websites. If you like ads and an extra source of revenue, go for it. If you hate ads on your web, don't force it. This is more of a personal choice than of anything. Don't let the money force you to put nasty ads on your website.
This is just a small contribution from my about my knowledge and advice on PPC advertising. Hope this helps.....
Feedback welcomed.........
-Shackman
