How to Create and Monetize your web stories

Web Stories is an open-source format for visual storytelling. You can use AdSense to show ads in your Web Stories. Only Google Display ads are available through AdSense, with more demand partners coming soon. In this article (Create and Monetize your web stories), I assume that you are using the WordPress CMS tool for your website.

Web Stories are for everyone! If you are a website owner, content creator, or publisher on the web, embracing the Web Stories format would be great to enhance the quality of your content strategy. The value you bring to your readers and your chances of achieving sustainable success.

Web Stories immerse your readers in fast-loading full-screen experiences. Easily create visual narratives with engaging animations and tappable interactions. The Web Story format (formerly known as AMP Stories) is accessible and part of the open web and is available for everyone to try on their websites. They can be shared and embedded across the web without being confined to a closed ecosystem or platform.

Web Stories provide content publishers with a mobile-focused format for delivering news and information as visually rich, tap-through stories. Web Stories offers a robust set of advertising opportunities for advertisers and publishers to reach a unique audience on the web with immersive experiences.

The benefits of Web Stories

Create beautiful and engaging content easily. Web Stories make the production of stories as easy as possible from a technical perspective. 

Creative and flexible for editorial freedom and branding. The Web Stories format comes with preset but flexible layout templates, standardized UI controls, and sharing and adding follow-on content components. 

Sharable and linkable on the open web. Web Stories are part of the open web and can be shared and embedded across sites and apps without being confined to a single ecosystem.

Track and measure. Support analytics and bookend capabilities for viral sharing and monetization. 

Fast loading times. Web Stories are lightning-fast so that your audience stays engaged and entertained. 

Immersive storytelling. Web Stories are a new and modern way to reach existing readers. 

Robust Advertising Support. Web Stories enable monetization capability for publishers using full-screen immersive story ads and using affiliate links. For advertisers, Stories are a way to reach a unique audience within a new storytelling experience. 

Web Stories Monetization Options

Single Page Story Ad

Story Ads are full-screen, single-page ads that appear within Web Stories. Advertisers/ Publishers can invite users to a web page, an AMP page, or an app with a single tap. A story ad has a rich, flexible canvas that allows images, videos, animations, or all those elements.

 Story ads are supported by Google Ad Manager and Google DV360 (Beta), with additional ad server support coming soon!

3 Steps to Create and Monetize your Web stories, How it works

1. Create your Web Story
2. Create an ad unit for Web Stories
3. Embed the ad unit in your Web Story

Step 1: Create your Web Story

I assume that you are using the WordPress tool for your website. Use the Web Stories WordPress plugin (Plugin by Google) to create a web story.

Web Stories Editor

The Web Stories editor for WordPress brings together a robust set of story creation capabilities in a user-friendly, WYSIWYG creation tool. Some of the key features you can leverage out of the box are:

• A visually rich and intuitive dashboard allows you to navigate the story creation process more manageable.
• Beautiful and expressive page templates to you get your story creation process started quickly and smoothly.
• Easy drag-and-drop capabilities, making it easy to compose beautiful stories.
• Convenient access to WordPress media library, enabling you to grab your media assets right from the plugin dashboard as you create your stories
• Customizable color and text style presets, making it easy to tailor the kind of your stories to the needs of your content strategy.
• And much more!

Using the Web Stories editor for WordPress, you can easily create visual narratives with tappable interactions and share freely across the web or embed them on your existing content strategies. The Stories you make are yours in every way, as Web Stories belong to the open web, instead of being confined to any specific closed ecosystem or platform.

Installation of Web Stories (plugin) by Google

Installation from within WordPress

1. Visit Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for Web Stories.
3. Install and activate the Web Stories plugin.

Manual Installation

1. Upload the entire web-stories folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Visit Plugins.
3. Activate the Web Stories plugin.

Create your Web Story

You have successfully installed and activated the Web Story plugin (by Google). Now it’s time to create a story. 

1. Click on Stories (you can find this option on the Dashboard of the WordPress Admin Area.
2. Click on Add New.
3. Use the story editor or pre-defined template to design your story.
4. When you have done, click to publish the story.

Step 2: Create an ad unit for Web Stories

1. Sign in to your AdSense account.
2. Click Ads Overview.
3. Click By ad unit.
4. Click Display ads.
5. Give your ad unit a name. We suggest using a unique, descriptive name to help you find your ad unit later.
6. In the “Ad size” section, leave Responsive selected.
7. Click Create.

Step 3: Embed the ad unit in your Web Story.

Method 01: add manually

1. Include the amp-story-auto-ads JavaScript file in your page’s <head>:

<script async custom-element="amp-story-auto-ads" src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-story-auto-ads-0.1.js"></script>

2. Embed the ad unit in your Web Story with the <amp-story-auto-ads> tag:

<amp-story>
 <amp-story-auto-ads>
  <script type="application/json">
   {
    "ad-attributes": {
     "type": "adsense",
     "data-ad-client": "ca-pub-0000000000000000",
     "data-ad-slot": "00000000"
    }
   }
   </script>
  </amp-story-auto-ads>
 ...
</amp-story>

3. Copy the data-ad-client and data-ad-slot values from your ad unit’s code and replace the highlighted code in the configuration above. To find these values in AdSense, click Get code in your Ads > Overview page.

Method 02: by using Web Story WordPress plugin by Google

1. Click on Stories (you can find this option on the Dashboard of the WordPress Admin Area.
2. Click on Settings.
3. Select Google AdSense under Monetization.
4. Add your Google AdSense publisher ID under Enter your Publisher ID option, click save
5. Add your Ad slot ID (created for your web stories) under Enter your slot ID option, click save

All done, now you have successfully created and Monetized your web stories. If you have any doubt in our post (Create and Monetize your web stories), write in the comment section. Share with others. Thanks for the reading. Happy Earning.