Eli5: how exactly does my clicking on a link to a website turn into money for the website’s owner?
In: Other
It doesn’t. In fact, by default, it incurs a very tiny cost (fractions of a penny) because their server load increases by that much.
But if the website has ads and you load one of them, they may be paid by the ad company a small amount just by you visiting and seeing the ad.
And of course, if the website is a business of any kind, once you are there you might buy something.
“Senator, we run ads” – Mark Zuckerberg
Websites that run ads are paid by the visit, and by the click. Depending on the contract a website will make fractions of a penny per visit, a tad more of the user actually clicks on the link.
To give you an idea what it costs to run an add using the Facebook ad service: *Facebook Ads CPM (Cost Per 1,000 views) – $14.9. Facebook Ads CPC (Cost Per Click) – $0.44. Facebook Ads CPI (Cost Per Install) – $1.97.* The hosting website in turn gets paid a tiny fraction of that.
Big internet companies like Google and Facebook are actually giant marketing engines. There ad platforms are a big part of how they make money and smaller websites can sign up for the Google and Facebook advertising services. FB + G take care of signing up advertisers and making ads, then they post ads on your site using their software that you integrate into you code. In exchange you get a cheque based on how many visits you get.
For website owners it’s a good deal because it’s passive income. Having that ad banner generates you revenue for no real effort and helps pay your website costs. The downside is you have limited say in what ads get posted.
Otherwise, unless your website is paid service (you are selling something) you don’t make money. The website actually costs you money to run.
Sites like Amazon and Ebay for example run their websites at a loss (cost of doing business) because they are selling products and make their money that way.
There are a few ways. The two most common ones.
Link on an ad: Makes money for the ad network. Example; Facebook ads make money for FB that the website pays when you click it.
Link on a website to another website: Usually makes money for the first website when you BUY something from the second website through a referral. The link has tracking parameters that tell the seller who brought that sale. The second website owners pays the first website owner, from the sale you made.
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