And it's still fast as shit.
Every tutorial about website ads assumes you want to turn your site into a slot machine. Six banners, a popup, a video that autoplays with the sound on, and a cookie wall the size of Texas. Then everyone acts surprised when half the internet runs an ad blocker.
This page has one ad slot. It's right below. It loads nothing, tracks nobody, and doesn't shove the text around when it shows up. That's the whole lesson. Everything else is details.
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Money this site has made so far: $0.00 (updated by hand, because automating zero is stupid)
Decide where the ad goes and give that spot a fixed width and height before you sign up for anything. If the slot has no size, the ad loads late, the page jumps, and your reader clicks some garbage they never meant to. A 728×90 banner on desktop and a 320×100 on phones covers most of what networks sell.
Put it above, below or beside your content, never in the middle of a sentence. Label it "Advertisement" so nobody thinks you personally vouch for foot cream. More slots don't mean more money when every extra one makes people leave or reach for a blocker.
Google AdSense has no traffic minimum, but it rejects thin sites and restricts anything that swears a lot. Yeah. Developer-focused networks pay better for nerd traffic but want volume first. Some networks serve plain HTML ads with no scripts at all. Or skip the middleman and sell the slot yourself to someone who likes your shit.
Once a network approves you, it gives you a line to put in a plain text file at yourdomain.com/ads.txt. It tells advertisers who's allowed to sell your space, and skipping it can cost you ads. It takes thirty seconds. Do it.
Load ad code asynchronously, after your content, never in a way that blocks the page from rendering. If your text is waiting on an ad server on another continent, you've already lost. Check your page weight before and after. If one banner doubled it, you've got a problem.
If you show personalized ads to visitors in places with privacy laws, like the EU and the UK, you need their consent first. Yes, that means a consent banner. Yes, it's annoying. Non-personalized or contextual ads make your life a lot simpler. I'm not your lawyer.
Banner ads pay a few bucks per thousand views, and plenty of nerds block them anyway. Unless you've got real traffic, this pays for your domain, not your rent. Check the counter up top if you want proof.
Inspired by motherfuckingwebsite.com and the rest of the list. The tone is a joke. The advice isn't.