Rodney Ringler |
About the Author: Rodney Ringler is President of Advantage1 Web
Services, Inc., which owns a network of Web Hosting Informational
Websites including HostChart.com, ResellerConnection.com, FoundHost.com,
ResellerForums.com, and HostingKnowledge.net. Rodney has
over 15 years industry experience from programming to internet
marketing. |
Rodney Ringler
has written 2 articles for SB Informer. |
View all articles by Rodney Ringler... |
Ways to Make Money from your WebsiteRodney Ringler
July 10, 2008
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Websites are one of the top ways to make money online, and there are
many ways to make money with your website. Do you want to monetize your
Website? Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to
making money from their Websites. If you think commercializing your
Website is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious,
or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it. But also
remember that if your website provides quality information it is just
like any magazine or newspaper. Generating income from your Website is
very challenging in today’s environment compared with several years
ago. You should feel good to earn income from your Website — you should
be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your website provides
genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it.
Can you make a decent income online?
Yes,
absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is
certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from
home. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable
income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote
a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.
How
should you choose an affiliate program? My suggestion is not to choose
a program according to the payment scheme, but rather according to the
kind of people who are likely to visit your website. For example, if
you are targeting parents on your site, links to affiliates with
educational software, books and the like may generate more revenue than
banners that link to web hosting companies. The most important rule of
choosing an affiliate program is to know your target audience.
Affiliate systems allow you to run ads for other businesses and make
money when people click on the ads. Content websites typically earn
money through one of four ways: Commission/Affiliate ads, selling text
links, selling your own ads, and pay for click search engine content.
Most
news websites earn the bulk of their money through ppc advertising
networks. Google, Yahoo, and Miscosoft search engines all offer these
services. Ad networks can handle the sale and display of ads on your
site. All you need do is drop a few lines of code into your Web pages
where you want the ads to appear. The most popular ad network for
independent publishers is Google's AdSense program. AdSense is a "pay
per click" program, where you earn money each time one of your readers
clicks on a Google-served ad. Since you earn money on clicks, rather
than completed sales, PPC ad networks can provide a more reliable
source of income for sites whose readers are not looking to make a
purchase right away. Other notable PPC ad networks include the Yahoo!
Publisher Network and Ad Voyager.
The following are the Various way to earn money.
PPC Advertising Networks
Google
AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are
also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste
some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve
contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and
you will earn a certain amount of money for every click. The
profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels
of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR)
and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website.
Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend
to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of
the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education
Direct Banner Advertising
Selling
your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization
methods. First and foremos it enables you to cut out the middleman
commissions and to determine your own rates. The downside of direct
banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get
qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the
sales process, the banners and the payments.
Text Link Ads
After
Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag
would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular. Many
website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites,
though, some using the nofollow tag and some not. The advantage of this
method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly
through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and
Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process. The major search engines
determine a websites rank and placement based on how many other sites
link to them. So, webmasters buy links to their website to help boost
their search engine rankings.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate
marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system
you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the
affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in
exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also
called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based. Affiliates
can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from
banners to text links and product reviews. Commission Junction, cj.com,
is one of the most popular Affiliate networks.
Monetization Widgets
The
latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website.
Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services
operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others
yet leverage affiliate links. Their main differentiator, however, is
the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user
to plug and play the service on its website.
Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost
pioneered this model, with much controversy in the beginning (related
to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon
other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe,
refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model. Joining one
of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity
to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics.
RSS Feed Ads
With
the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users,
website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content
distribution channel. Feedburner already has its own publisher network,
and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your
feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as
well, with a PPC scheme.
Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If
you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an
interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find
companies to sponsor them individually. This method increases the
monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the
possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced
commitment.
Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away
part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium
content and exclusive tools. They have a very popular blog that gives
advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of
that visitors can decide to become premium members
Private Forums
While
the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the
possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single
or recurring fee to join. There are many possibilities to create a
private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle
that will make it worth for the members.
Job Boards
All the
popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra
income. Needless to say that in order to create an active and
profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a
specific niche, and a decent amount traffic. The advantage of this
method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the
job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10
up to $100 for each.
Marketplaces
Depending on your niche, a
market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products
could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for
new product listings. The problem with this method is that there is no
standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get
a marketplace integrated into your website.
Paid Surveys and Polls
There
are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on
your website. Basically, you need to sign up with them, and select the
kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services
operate under a CPM model.
Selling or Renting Internal Pages
These
websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal
pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high
traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in
some way. Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult,
but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
Donations
Placing
a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn
money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and
gain value from your content. Personal development and productivity
blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems.
In-text Adverting
In-text
adverting networks will place sponsored links inside your text. These
links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal
links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising
will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some
money. Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain
from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note
that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text
advertising.
Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet
annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to
make as much money as possible from your website, you could experiment
with them. If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal
visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just
consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason
why they are so popular.
Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per
Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the
concept is pretty simple: play a small advertising audio (usually 5
seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should
not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique
visitors.
Selling the Website
Selling your website could be
your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of
money in a short period of time. Marketplaces on online forums like
DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and
sellers. Keep in mind that they use parameters to determine the value
of a website, such as the monthly revenue.
Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As
more and more people decide to get an online presence, website
templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter. On this
segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as
individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work
independently.
Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending
on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related
services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and
information that you will share will build your profile and possibly
certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain
customers.
Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists
and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money
making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates,
and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a
popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of
subscribers on your list.
Automated Context-Sensitive Advertising
One
of the latest trends in website sponsorship is to sign up with an
advertising network like Google AdSense The advertising network
automatically checks your web page and determines the most relevant
advertisement for the page. As a result, without much additional effort
from you, you get advertisements targeted at the interests of your
visitors. As mentioned earlier, targeted ads tend to result in better
performance and returns
Selling Banner Ads
Advertising
revenue is one of the most effortless ways to earn money from your
site. You merely have to put the banner there and wait for the money to
roll in. (Well, okay, not quite. You will still need to have some
visitors first before you can make anything.)
How to build traffic for your Websites,
Now
if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels
if you’re starting from rock bottom? Why is traffic so important?
Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a
function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably
double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly
consistent). You can mess almost everything else up, but if you can
generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient
traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to
monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those
visitors coming). If you can’t build traffic, it is going to be very
difficult to succeed. Traffic is the primary fuel of online income
generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales,
more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more
of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means
you’re helping more and more people.
With respect to traffic,
you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High
traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just
aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. If you’re intelligent and web
savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web
site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more
traffic.
In the End I don’t think one will get very far if
money is his motivation for website. You have to be driven by something
much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that
matters most.
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