Monetizing your Website, Now!
You may be one of the many people who has a website but doesn’t know you can earn money from it. There’s no reason why you can’t take advantage of the amazing online income opportunities, even though your website may not be an official business. Extra money is always good for us, right?
It doesn’t matter what type of website you have - personal, business, charity, hobby, affiliate, etc. you still can make extra money. But most people aren’t doing it for some reason. If you have targeted traffic already coming to your blog, website, or MySpace page, you can monetize it by implementing any or all of the campaign we’ll discuss below.
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is one of the easiest things you can do to immediately earn money from your website. Just sign up for an account, get the generated code inside your account, and add it to your website or blog where you want AdSense to appear. Google will serve relevant text ads based on the content of your page. The more targeted and relevant your content, the more targeted the ads will be (and hence result more clicks). You’ll earn money from the advertiser when someone clicks an ad on your site! It’s quick, easy, and can be very profitable depending on the relevancy of your content and the amount of traffic to your site.
Affiliate Programs
It’s a simple concept, when you send customers to merchants they will pay you some commissions. There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs with products online.
Why not promote related products and earn extra money, if you have targeted traffic coming to your site? For example, you could recommend the DVD box sets of earlier seasons if you have a blog about your favorite TV show. The people reading your blog would be interested in the DVDs and when a sale is made at the merchant’s site from a customer that originated at your blog, you could earn income from merchants.
You need to identify who your customers are and what they would and would not be interested in. Then go look for merchants offering those products. In fact, while searching, you will probably come across products you never thought of. To get started, Google your website topic and ‘affiliate program’.
You can also visit one of the many affiliate program directories online. I always recommend considering residual income affiliate programs because merchants will pay you commissions/revenue share for the life of the customer (check out Residual Income Finder Directory for a list of merchants offering residual income). Simply, you get customers to buy once and you receive commissions on any re-order or monthly subscription thereafter. If your website is down or it’s a slow month, you can still be making income from past customers!
Once you sign up, get text links and banners from the merchants and put them on your site where people will see them. If you’re devoting a page to a product, include your affiliate link to the merchant website in the text. This will appear as a recommendation by you and people will be more likely to click it and visit the merchant. If the merchant product is relevant to the entire site or is more general, add a banner ad. Don’t be afraid to recommend products and place affiliate banners in your content. Sometimes you have to get right into your customer’s face for them to notice!
Sell Products
Instead of sending traffic directly to a merchant’s site, you can appear to sell their products on your site. Although it’s still an affiliate program, the merchant provides code that you place on your site to make it appear the customer is buying from you. This is accomplished with iframe or a popup window so that the merchant’s website opens in your website. For example, you can sell dating memberships or website templates on your site simply by including a snippet of code from the merchants. Merchants will even provide content, galleries, co-branded stores, and more so that more of the selling is on your site instead of the merchant.
Sell Advertising Space
Some companies may want to take out advertising on your website, if your site gets good targeted traffic and has a good page rank and reputation. You never know, one of those merchants with an affiliate program might be willing to pay you to place their banner ad on your site. If I was a merchant selling hiking boots and your website was a popular hiking site with local routes and tips, I might want to place my ad on your site because your site is my target market. Figure out a reasonable fee and ask merchants if they would be willing to advertise with you.
There are actually a few companies online that make selling advertising space really easy by bringing publishers like you close to advertisers. Two of the best companies are AdBrite and Text-Link-Ads. In both cases you set a price of how much it would cost to place a text ad on a page of your website. Advertisers who are interested can purchase the ad space you’ve offered and it will show up automatically. All you do is place the block of the code given to you where the ad will be shown. This is a great way to automate this process so you don’t have to find advertisers on your own - they’ll find you!
Newsletter List
Every website should have a newsletter/mailing list in order to get loyal visitors. Customers voluntarily give you their email address so you can send them related information that they’ll be interested in. Not only are they receptive and more likely to read what you send them, it keeps your website in their mind and encourages them to come back where they can then click your affiliate or AdSense links. You can also send them some of your affiliate links in the email itself (But do not send AdSense links in the email!). It’s really a great marketing opportunity that’s easy to implement. Your web hosting probably already includes a newsletter list you can enable. If not, there are many online that are free or for purchase.
Even if your site is not a traditional business website, you still can earn money from it. All you need is valuable content and targeted traffic. With those things, you could be making a great income at home from your website.
So, why not monetize your website now?
