OK, awful pun aside, it is an important question. After you have covered the basics of getting your site live and have real traffic coming in, it is time to consider how you can start generating income through web-based advertising. It is an easy way to monetize your site by simply trading some of your online real-estate.

The easiest way to get started is to create a Google AdSense account and have a Google Ad block generated on your site. Fission has a module type called 'Google AdSense Block' where you can place the code generated through your AdSense account. All you need to do is configure your module to show up where you want it and you're done.

With just a little more effort, you could seek out advertisers (e.g. business contacts, local companies, etc.) and solicit them to include a banner image on your site. Charge a flat fee for a specific period of time and have a banner image or logo displayed within a standard content module or rotating image module. You might want to leverage your analytics tool to provide your advertisers with some basic site statistics on your sites monthly traffic. Pricing should start low, and can be increased as you receive more advertisers.

If you have a lot of traffic, or want to maximize your ability to generate advertising revenue, you will require a more sophisticated management of ads on your site. At this level you will need to be able to manage all aspects of the banner ads and placement and be able track and limit ads by both impressions (ad views) and click throughs. This is why we created our newest add-on component called Fission Ads (clever, huh?).

Fission Ads is a powerful tool that will give you everything you need to manage full ad campaigns on your website. You can maximize ad sales by creating advertising packages to sell ad space based on sizes, placement, clicks, impressions, time, or whatever combination works best for your site and business process.

Before getting started with any type of advertising, it is important to consider whether or not this makes sense for your site, and is in sync with your web presence. Nothing can bring down the credibility of a professional site faster than cheesy, non-relevant banner ads. However, even professional sites can benefit from advertising, as long as it is tastefully and thoughtfully done. The important thing to remember is that if it makes sense for your site you should take advantage of the new Fission Ads component so your website can start making cents for you; otherwise you're just leaving money on the table.

For more information on the Fission Ads component, please contact us here.