How Website Owners and Bloggers Get Paid for Advertising

Do you also think running a website or blog and getting paid for the ads is a simple task? But in reality, certain things always make people stressed, such as which network to use, what formats will pay more, and how payouts are going to work. In this guide, you’ll read about all these topics, including a real case study of a food blogger earning $15,265 in just one month from Popunder placements alone.

The short version on how to get paid for ads: sign up with an ad network, place ad codes on your site, and earn based on impressions, clicks, or conversions. The details are important, actually.

How Getting Paid for Advertising Works

Ad networks sit among publishers and the advertisers who want eyeballs. A visitor lands on a page, an ad loads, the network logs the impression and pays out a slice of what the advertiser bid for that audience.

Three pricing models cover most of what’s out there:

Model	What It Means	Best For
CPM	Pay per 1,000 impressions	High-traffic sites
CPC	Pay per click	Content with engaged readers
CPA	Pay per conversion (sale, signup, install)	Niche audiences with buying intent

CPM is where many publishers start. Rates shift by geo, niche, and how hard advertisers are competing for that particular audience on any given day.

What You Need to Start

A website helps, but some formats run mainly on social traffic or a plain link. That said, WordPress or Blogger gives the most flexibility for placement and long-term earnings.

WordPress is the reliable option: hosting costs run $3 to $10 a month, but plugins handle ad code insertion and layout control is granular. Worth it if the plan is to scale.

Blogger is free. Google hosts it; setup takes minutes. Several of Adsterra’s top-earning publishers started there prior to moving up.

How to Get Paid for Ads: Step-by-Step Setup

1. Sign up with an ad network and submit your site for approval;
2. Generate ad codes for the procedures you want to run: Popunder, In-Page Push, Social Bar, or Banners;
3. Place the codes in your site’s HTML according to the format: Popunder goes in the page head section, Social Bar before the closing body tag;
4. Check your stats after 48-72 hours to see which formats and placements act best;
5. Request a payout once you hit the minimum threshold. With Adsterra, that starts at $5 via Paxum, with payments twice a month.

Test two or three formats at once rather than single at a time. Real data beats any general recommendation.

Ad Formats That Pay Publishers

Format matters. A placement that turns well on a gaming site can sit dead on a recipe blog. The formats that tend to get paid for ads consistently across most niches:

• Popunder: opens in a new tab when a visitor clicks anywhere on the page. Pays CPM, fills well across most geos, and needs zero space on the page itself;
• Social Bar: runs in-page, looks like a notification or chat widget, works on all browsers and operating systems, subscription-free. CTR runs significantly higher than standard web push;
• Native Banners: blend with editorial content, customisable in size and colour. Lower intrusion, steady CPM;
• Smartlink: a plain URL that opens a monetised landing page when clicked. Place it in text, on a button, or in an image. Works on social traffic too, outside any website.

Adsterra runs all of the above across 248 geos. For a content blog, Popunder plus Social Bar is where most publishers start. It’s also where a lot of them stay, because it works and the page stays reliable. Either way, both formats get paid for ads on CPM from day one.

Real Example: A Vietnamese Recipe Blog, $15,265 in One Month

A Vietnamese food blogger constructed an English-language recipe site around authentic, high-intent search queries. In March 2026, that site created $15,265.53 from Popunder placements alone. Blended CPM: $2.813. Traffic came from multiple geos, with recipe-focused visitors reading the content and leaving. Average session under four minutes. Popunder fires once per visit.

High-intent traffic and the accurate format. That blend does most of the work.