If your goal is to earn a full-time income with your Christian blog, you will definitely want to consider working with ad networks. These networks place ads on your site and you earn income based on impressions and/or clicks to those ads.
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Understand How Ad Networks Work
Before you jump into putting ads on your site, it is important to understand a few things.
- Earning revenue with ads REQUIRES SUBSTANTIAL TRAFFIC
- The type of traffic matters (forced from sharing threads vs organic traffic)
As a brand new blogger who isn’t yet getting organic traffic, placing ads on your site won’t be fruitful. You need organic traffic that is consistent and growing in order to see substantial earnings.
So, how do you actually earn money from the ads?
Whenever your visitors see or click an ad on your blog, you’ll earn money. Most ad networks for bloggers pay you in two different ways:
- Pay per click advertisements (PPC):
You will get paid only when your readers click on ads. - Pay per view (PPV) or impression ads:
You will generate passive income based on how many people see an ad on a given page on your blog.
Pay Per View (PPV) ads are the best type because you simply need consistent traffic to your site so they see the ad. It doesn’t matter if they actually click on them.
When someone visits your blog, they may see several ads on a single page. Each viewed advertisement counts as an impression. The more ad units a visitor sees, the more impressions and revenue you generate.
** It is important to understand that the type of traffic your blog gets really does matter! These programs will take a look at your Google Analytics to determine where your traffic is coming from. If the majority of your traffic comes from share threads, they will see this as false traffic and may not approve you. This is why focusing on organic growth (SEO) is so important.
The Best Ad Networks for Christian Bloggers
There are many ad networks out there and each one has different requirements for joining their program. Also, not all networks are created equal in that some work with better companies (which pay higher revenue for the same amount of traffic that other networks pay less for).
The biggest requirement for most of them is in the way of traffic (sessions or page views). I would highly recommend AGAINST joining a platform that doesn’t have a minimum traffic requirement because you need traffic in order for those ads to convert to revenue.
Google Adsense
This is probably the most common ad network you may have heard of. They do not have a minimum traffic requirement so this is the first stop for most newer bloggers. With few exceptions, they pretty much approve everyone.
I recommend NOT using Google Adsense! Their ads look horrible and are very difficult to manage. And if you are getting some decent traffic, you’ll most likely only earn a few dollars.
Instead, just focus on growing your traffic so you can qualify to join a more reputable ad network that is easier to manage and pays more.
Ezoic
Ezoic is a great program for newer bloggers. They do have a minimum traffic requirement of 10,000 sessions/month. But their ads are easy to set up and manage. They also work well if you get a lot of non-US traffic because they work with advertisers that are relevant across geographic boundaries. Check out Ezoic here.
Monumentric
Monumetric is another platform that newer bloggers might choose. They require a minimum of 10,000 monthly page views (not sessions).
The biggest “con” of using them is that if you are below 80K monthly page views, you have to pay a $99 setup fee. Check out Monumetric here.
SheMedia
SheMedia is a great ad network to join as a Christian blogger. In addition to ads on your site, they also offer a variety of influencer campaigns (sponsored content opportunities). They have a minimum traffic requirement of at least 20K page views monthly. Check out SheMedia here.
MediaVine
MediaVine is somewhat the “goal” for many Christian bloggers because the earnings are great. This one is more of the “long-term” goal because you must have a minimum of 50k monthly sessions to qualify.
The high traffic requirement means much higher payouts. Also, they offer a lot of tips and training on how to optimize your blog and ads for the highest conversions.
MediaVine is what literally helped me to achieve fulltime income status with Kingdom Bloggers! My monthly ad revenue is more than my total revenue from everything else (affiliate marketing, sales of my coloring books, and sales of my blogging courses)!
You can check out MediaVine here.
Which One Should You Choose
My best recommendation is to maybe wait until you’ve reach 10k monthly sessions and apply to Ezoic. Then, keep working on increasing your traffic until you reach 50K and apply to join MediaVine.
Even though you won’t earn a ton with Ezoic, you’ll have enough traffic to earn something decent until you qualify for the better programs.
Be sure to check out our tips and tutorials on Monetizing a Christian Blog.
