How do websites make money? Do you have a website or blog that you would like to see make you money? Maybe you don’t have a website yet, but you’ve seen thousands of “bloggers” making money with websites. Wouldn’t it be nice to supplement your income with the income generated by your own website?
While this idea may seem far-fetched, you’ll be surprised to learn that many people make a respectable living simply by creating websites on topics that interest them.
Traffic, traffic, traffic
The most important element of any strategy for a site to make money is traffic. Without traffic, your website could have the best content in the world, but no one knows about it. Most website owners spend more time looking for new ways to generate traffic than any other site-related activity.
If you’re not familiar with website traffic, it’s simply the number of unique visitors a website receives. Typically, it is determined on a monthly basis, although many tools allow website owners to view daily statistics. This is useful when you publish new content and want to know how many people have seen your latest posts.
Once you’ve created a website, how do you drive traffic to your website so it earns agents?
Although there are many effective methods, the most popular traffic generation methods include:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO involves optimizing your website for major search engines such as Google. A large percentage of a website’s traffic (sometimes as much as 75%) comes from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other popular search engines. To be successful at this money-making website, you need to make it search engine friendly. This allows readers to find your content among thousands, or even millions, of other websites.
Good SEO is a delicate and dynamic component. Many websites care little about their readers and only focus on search engine optimization. Google and other search service providers periodically change their search algorithms to penalize these websites and reward those that provide authentic information to Internet users. Basic SEO best practices include an easily navigable website, fresh and useful content, and a healthy community of readers who actively participate in group discussions on your website.
Websites Make Money: Social Media
The popularity of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has made an active social media presence a necessity for attracting new visitors to your website. Not only should your website have easily accessible links that allow readers to “share” content via Facebook, but it should also have an active Facebook page that attracts readers and promotes engagement from other social media users.
Facebook marketing has taken off over the past couple of years and represents an entirely new angle that often makes it possible to reach hard-to-find readers and potential customers using only conventional marketing techniques and SEO best practices.
Youtube
Many successful money-making websites have realized the power of marketing on the popular video-sharing website YouTube. As a website owner, you can create interesting and useful videos that potential readers can watch and share with others. The goal is to attract these readers to visit your website based on the content you have shared through YouTube.
The popularity of YouTube is increasing every year and many experts agree that YouTube for websites has not yet been fully exploited. YouTube Marketing Mastery gives you an overview of the power of YouTube for your website and how it can be an effective strategy for your website to make money.
Email lists
If you regularly visit websites, chances are you have been offered a free product (such as an e-book) in exchange for your email address. Believe it or not, this is a very effective technique for websites to bring in money and traffic.
The email list you get is people who are interested in your products or information. Unlike traditional spam lists that send offers to thousands of people who may or may not be interested in a particular niche, your email list is full of potential customers. You can share new content with your email list or offer them special subscriber-only offers. In any case, websites make money if they learn how to effectively use email lists which is a powerful technique.
Websites make money from advertising
Once you start getting traffic to your website, you can start making money from your website. Advertising is by far the best way for websites to make money. Some ad campaigns only pay you for the number of visitors who arrive at your site, while others require the visitor to take an action (such as making a purchase or clicking a link) for you to get paid.
Websites make money with Google AdSense
As the biggest name in search engines, Google is a great place for a site to make money. Joining the AdSense campaign is free and allows ads to be placed on your website based on the type of content you provide.
For example, if you have a European travel website, Google AdSense will automatically place travel-related ads. When users click on these links, you get paid. This is called a pay-per-click or PPC campaign. Although the amount paid for each click maybe just a few cents if your website receives a large number of visitors, these clicks quickly add up to a respectable salary, and therefore the websites make money.
Optimizing AdSense for your website helps ensure that your site takes full advantage of this powerful tool.
Sites Make Money Through Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing involves advertising specific products on your website and receiving a commission each time they are sold. This model works well for information products such as e-books, as well as physical products from large retailers.
When you’re just starting out, there are a variety of sites that allow you to offer affiliate products without directly contacting the company selling the products. As your website’s popularity grows and you gain experience, you may decide to contact large retailers directly with affiliate opportunities.
The key to effective affiliate marketing is making sure that any affiliate opportunities you offer on your site are related in some way to the content you provide to your readers. Returning to the travel example, affiliate offers that allow people to save money on plane tickets, for example, could generate a substantial passive income stream through travel marketing affiliation.
A site makes money by selling your own information products
You may realize that you have built a solid base of readers who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. If so, consider creating your own informational product. E-books are a great way for websites to make money, this passive income can represent a significant portion of your monthly income.
Of course, creating your own information product requires in-depth knowledge of the subject and a certain degree of writing skills. You can also outsource the writing to an experienced writer to get better results. In exchange for a small one-time fee, visitors can purchase and download your information product and you immediately reap the benefits of this revenue stream. Learn more about website monetization strategies with this course that provides you with a detailed plan for creating and selling your information products.
There are hundreds of other ways for websites to make money. Millions of websites generate revenue every day using the techniques described above as well as a variety of others. Remember, the key to successful monetization of your website is traffic.
The more traffic you have to your site, the more money websites make. Focus on creating unique, valuable content and the traffic will follow. When you start making money from your website, you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of it sooner. So go ahead and join the millions of people who make a living from their websites!