MONETIZING YOUR WEBSITE

WEB TECHNOLOGY POST by Gene Vann
INTERNET MARKETING (SEO) TECHNOLOGY BLOG

8:55 PM PST | September 20, 2015 | Marketing post | Monetizing Your Website

HOW TO MONETIZE YOUR WEBSITE
WEB MARKETING TECHNOLOGY POST DESIGNED TO HELP YOU MAXIMIZE YOUR REVENUE 

Hello again my friends.  Today let's talk about the best ways to monetize your blog or website. Here's what we will be looking at:

• Local small business opportunities to pay you for space on your blog
• Local small business paying you per click from your blog to their web site
• Affiliate marketing products direct for a company 
  
• Affiliate marketing through an advertizing network
  
• Advertising programs i.e., Google Adsense
  
• Do reviews for companies right on your own blog site for pay
  
• Sell merchandise
  
• Provide a blogging service from your home
  
• Get into a blogging network that pays freelancers to blog
  
• Blog for various websites that pay to have their blogs down
  
• Become a consultant
  
• Write a book
• Write an E book
• Become a public speaker
  
• Sell other peoples product on your blog for a cut
  

Let's discuss each of the monetization bullet points above after we talk a little about what bloggers could do to be a little more helpful . You want to monetize your blog to make money and that's a great idea. But I don't want you to make the same mistake I did monetizing my own websites. Once your site is up and running the first thing that comes to mind is: How to make money with it? Things come to mind like Adsense and Adwords, the Google stuff. And that' good, the Google brand is trusted and we take on a sense of confidence and trust, but not so fast. There techniques and methods to making money with Adsense. 

What about traffic to your blog? You should probably handle that before monetizing? I recommend doing that first. Getting caught up in the monetization process first will throw you off your traffic building efforts. So if you haven't developed some experience at getting traffic to your site, you should do that first and monetize afterwards.

There's lot of recycled tips and information on the web about SEO, monetizing your sites and other marketing staples.  

And that's fine as long they are all still in effect. But too often they're not! Devoted SEO training specializes in bringing up to date when the need arises too. What good does it do you if I tell all about adsense, and how to get started if I don't tell you about the science I'm using for my own success. Where do I place my ads, what kind of ads, text or image, what size for which, when and where to put them? What kind of websites do best making money with Adsense ads? 

ITS ABOUT BUILDING TRAFFIC AND MONETIZING

All it takes is to be sure all the critical points are covered and detailed for you. Granted that does require a little more work. I read a blog the other day where one blogger was putting his friend, another blogger up on a pedestal and showing his site's stats and all the money he's making from his websites with Adsense. It was an interview, so the other blogger was there confirming everything that was being said about his success. 

But not once did they give a link to any of his successful websites, not once did they use their pointer on just one of his website to show his ad placement strategy, his content to ad ratio strategy, text over image strategy or what he blogs about. Never did they talk about which type of ad was making him the most money. That's information critical to your success. Without that you're still left feeling around in the dark for your actual increase in sales. 

Bottom line here is that bits and pieces of the information you need for monetizing your particular business is probably out there but you'll need to do a lot of research and a lot reading to get at it and to assemble it. Then you'll need to do a lot of testing. 

I'm not a Meany, critical yes, but I'm not a meany, and I'm certainly not asking anybody to do anything they don't want to do. I just wanted to touch base with reality for a minute. Because make no mistake about it, you're going to need all the help you can get for your website or blog. Each website, each blog, each blogger and each blog subject will have its own separate and distinct roadmap for success, it's own secret formula to successful monetization. This means you'll need a lot of ideas for a lot of testing. 

A nice thing about Adsense is websites with low levels of traffic can test for which ad types to use and where to place them based on current running results and start making money right away.  

It won't be much money money but at least you get to see some revenue starting to come in for your work. But once your traffic increases, if your adsense income doesn't, it's back to the lab for you. If you only want to make money from ads on your site, which is what most people prefer, you have to develop and project your own personable voice, your own authoritative knowledge, your own distinct and unique character and your readers need to get to know you. 

Your click through rates will definitely increase then. Once that's established continue to experiment with monetizing methods. And be creative about it. Don't forget I teach creativity here too. What better place to practice it than on monetizing your own website. 

In essence you're developing the system/process your website wins traffic with, and generates revenue by. It's really just a lot of little processes that come together to make up the sum total of the whole process that works for that particular website to generate income.  

First and foremost no website is going to make money without traffic. 

The key to all of the above listed monetization efforts is traffic to your website, and unusual amounts of it day in and day out every week, month and year.

Without high levels of traffic you can only make money by knowing exactly what personas frequent your site and how to create sales funnels. Sales funnels tend to get more click throughs. I'm just being honest with you about traffic. I've given you some traffic generating ideas and training for key word strategies inprevious blogs, that will put you on track to generate organic traffic to your site. So you're cool for now, but you'll need to keep your focus on generating traffic your entire online career. Keep posting blogs and work your backlinks strategy. We'll be discussing other techniques for generating traffic very soon, including backlink strategies. I think I may have touched on backlink strategies in previous blogs, but not in detail like we will in coming weeks. Okay, let's talk about some site monetization strategies in detail, shall we:

 Local small business opportunities to pay you for space

You can charge local businesses to advertise on your site. You just allocate a spot to them they like and charge them by the click (You simply create hyperlink to their business from that spot and track the activity on it. You can do that using Google analytics for free). Or give them a flat rate monthly fee for the spot. I prefer the latter, it's simple. You can have varying cost depending on the location of the spaces you're renting out. For example space above the fold on your homepage should probably be the most expensive rental space on your site. When your site starts to get thousands of unique visitors a day, you can go door to door in the business districts in your city and sell ad space. You can sell ad space to other internet business by putting the words "ad space available" somewhere on your site where it will be seen.

Affiliate marketing products direct from a company

This is a good one. You go online and find a product that fits what you blog about and the personas that frequent your site if you go to that company and ask them if they have an affiliate program. If they are not and online business, they be willing to consider developing a program based on your offer, you never know. I've heard of businesses hungry for an internet presence doing this. You may be the first person to give them the idea and they may like it. Always talk to the decision maker about these things. When you go to those lengths however, you have to deliver. Be honest with yourself, can your blog deliver clicks and conversions for this company's product? Your blog traffic has to be pretty high. And the personas there need to match their product. It's a great way to grow your business through other businesses. Word of mouth recommendations are good at bringing you more business. So impress these companies so they'll recommend your website to their sister companies. 

Affiliate marketing through an advertising network

Another one of my favs. These networks sign merchants up and then sign publishers up to market their product. The ad network manages both merchant and affiliate marketer. The benefit to this is that you don't have to go out and find merchants with products for you to sell; the ad network gathers them all into one place for you to choose which products you want to sell. They provide all the links, all the display ads; everything is there for you to go directly to selling the merchant's products and making money. Another thing about this is that you can go through merchants until you find a product that sells on your blog. These companies make affiliate marketing easy but you still have to find the product that will sell on your particular kind of website. There are lots of ad networks around. You can choose one to work with or several all at the same time, it's up to you. You'll be using the same ad strategies with them as would with Adsense and I'll be give your those in just few minutes down the page. 

Advertising programs

Google's Adsense is an advertising program. There are lots of other advertising programs out there for you to look at. These programs control who advertises on your site. Similar to Adwords, a merchant bids for a spot on your site they like, Adsense then charges them for every click your site sponsors and shares the proceeds with you. Now, since we're back on the subject of Adsense lets talk about the best ways to use it. I will assume you already know how to get setup over at Google with Adsense. Just follow the instructions after you get there. Okay for those already using Adsense or just beginning, here are some tips: 

• when using banners always choose: text & image
  
• Adsense works best above the fold on a page using the 728x90 image/text ad
  
• I've never seen 728x90 banners work well anywhere except above the folds of your pages
  
• Use the 300x250 rectangle (box shaped) ads above the fold upper right side of pages. These have been know to work on certain sites below the fold, test and see for your site. 
  
• Skyscraper ads don't work. I've never seen one work and I've tried everything
  
• Unit link text ads work great when you modify their color to blend in with your site's text color and background colors. Try to make them inconspicuous. They can be used below the fold.  

Text link units can be placed above content (or page section, large paragraph etc. and the algorithm will read the content and display text ads relevant to that particular content on the site. Likewise if you place one above the fold it will deliver texts ads that reflect what you Website is about as a whole. Your brand in other words. Depending on the subject of your site will determine if it works. Because sometimes there are no ads or bids on that particular subject. For example: If your site is about cutting the heads off of dolls the link unit will choose an advertising bid closest to that subject. So it might put an ad up that's selling dolls, but none about cutting the heads off of them. That's an art you'd be flying solo with. 

Overall Adsense is easy to use, which is one reason it's very popular. But if I may, I'd strongly suggest firing up a friends computer and going on your site to see what kind of ads are being delivered to your site. Remember, you can't tell what kind of ads it's showing people who come to your site because they're tailored to each IP address based on its search history. With one exception: Link Text Units as I mention they tend to reflect your sites content regardless of a visitors search interests. Adsense is in essence a computerized sales person who follows people around on the internet showing them things they've already expressed an interest in. You follow these tips, you'll make money with adsense. 

Do reviews for company's right on your own blog site for pay

This one can be a bit tricky. There are sites that help you find clients for this. You'll need to be a crafty blogger to do this without hurting your own original blog traffic.

Sell merchandise

Here you're simply selling from your own online store right off of your blog. There are companies that specialize in helping you to get set up to do this: CafePress , Printfection and  Zazzle. I make money at will doing this using my Amazon store. I spend a lot of time working out of cafe's and you get to know people in cafes. When I learn of something someone need or is looking into I tell them I have it. They, knowing me tend to go ahead and get it from my Store. I sell cell phones and lots of other electronics that way. Much of my internet income has come from sending people to my sites off the streets. It's really just a kind of word of mouth recommendation, with the difference being I'm doing the recommending. I've gotten marketing clients the same way. Word of mouth. 

Provide a blogging service from your home

Are you a confident writer? If so this may be for you.  You simply work from home by writing the blogs for websites that hire bloggers to write their blogs. Here's some free blogger templates.  Here's a list of sites you can work for.

Get into a blogging network that pays freelancers to blog

A blogging network is a group of bloggers all working under one branded company. You're either paid a flat fee per post or by word count. I recommend flat fee. It keeps things simple and puts you on top when writing about subjects that don't need to be long. 

Blog for various websites that pay to have their blogs down

Talk to people you know or people you don't know who have websites and offer to write their blogs for them. Charge them a simple fair flat rate so as not to make it complicated and to make it easier for them to take you up on your offer.

Work as a consultant

Are you really good at what your blog is about? Are you an expert on the subject of your blogs? If so you can offer consulting services to other people or businesses that could use your expertise. You could offer consulting services related to developing and writing a successful blog as well.

Write a book or an EBook

Do you have large following from your blog? If so you could write a book and self publish. Amazon is great for that. You could sell it there as well. It also brings more credibility to your blogs for some. 

Be a public speaker

Offer your services as a public speaker at events related to your area of expertise. If you've mastered your trade you can join forums and take advantages of opportunities to be the speaker or guest speaker at events of your trade. I can recommend a book that I'm reading titled: "Speak Up For Your Business" by Michelle Mazur, Ph.D.  Copyright 2014. This book will help you get your speaking skills up to par. 

Sell other peoples product on your blog for a cut

This certainly speaks for itself doesn't it? Talk to merchants who sell at swap meets, or anyone who has products and offer to help them sell it on your site. Take nice flattering photos of the product, post it online with a link to your paypal account for them to order and pay at the same time. Paypal provides that complete service. I use the same procedure to sell T-shirts. Something I started and didn't finish yet. You can quietly speak with your local shipper, tell them you'll be shipping a lot of product and would like a discount on your shipping. This way you can even do give-a-ways as loss leaders on occasion. They notify you by email when someone has paid for a product they bought on your site. You simple check and verify the sale then ship the item off or hand deliver it when the person making the order is local. Then you split the proceeds with the product's owner.

Thanks guys, hope this helps
Gene