You own a website. You may even give advice there or share information of some kind. Whatever you are doing, if you are not using it to make money, then there is an untapped market waiting to be yours.
Website Traffic
This involves people coming to your website. What you want to count are your unique visitors. These are people who visit for the first time. Repeat visitors are great for sales but to gain interest, the more people who come, the better.
In order for a business to make money it needs traffic. These people will do something for you on your site that will enhance their life and make money for you. There are a variety of ways to do it but for any method you use to be cost effective, you will need traffic.
One way to gain traffic is to have a focus. This is your niche. This will determine which traffic comes your way and if they are going to buy whatever you decide to offer on your site.
Having Great Content
Now, turn your attention to your content. That is why your traffic is there in the first place. If you haven’t already, optimize it for a wider readership. This involves targeting certain keywords in your articles, blog posts, headers and picture text.
Not only will your content get ranked higher for those keywords, but also your website. If you haven’t done so already, register your website with the major search engines.
There are a couple of programs that I use for optimizing my website. The one I LOVE the most is Scribe SEO.
Scribe will allow you to try out their services for FREE for 30 days to make sure you like it which is what I did. Well within the first 30 days I was HOOKED and I’m sure you will be too. If you’re serious about running an online business then you may want to consider giving them a try! It’s made a huge difference in my SEO, ranking and traffic and even helped me tremendously with researching my keywords.
Click here for your FREE 30 day trial.
Another one I use is SEOPressor. I love this one too but honestly not as much as Scribe. For me, Scribe is a little more advance but this one still does this trick and for a little less money too! Still, I it may be more of a personal preference. They both work excellent so you can’t go wrong with either!
The benefit with SEOPressor is that you make a one time payment to use their service versus a reoccurring monthly payment with Scribe SEO. So having used both, I can tell you they both work great and I highly recommend them but it also depends on your budget too. Either way you need SOMETHING to assist you with optimizing your site and get some traffic in, one of the two will do the trick.
Click here to check them out.
Monetizing Your Website
Now that you have made a few tweaks to gain more focused traffic, you are ready to start making money with your website. Here are some ways that you can use to get the job done.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
This basically means that you are posting ads that people will click on. Whenever someone clicks on that ad, you get paid. Depending on who you are using for your service, there are other ways to do this besides just the click-through rate. One you can start with is Google AdSense.
Banner Advertising
This is a way to get noticed. If you have a good fan base and have networked with others in your business niche, this can work for you. Sell advertising space on the top of your website. You can also sell on the sides, but keep in mind that the top half of your web page is where people’s eyes tend to gravitate.
Affiliate Marketing
You not only advertise for others and sponsor their products, but you also get access to lots of helpful tools so you can do just that.
One of the companies that I love working with is Share A Sale, because they have such a huge range of products and services. So regardless of the industry you’re in or the services you, you’re almost guranteed to find something of value that’s related to what you do that you can offer to your audience.
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, the way it works is you earn a commission on your click rate as well as sale rate depending on how the affiliate program is set up. Some people make their entire living off of affiliate marketing so it can be quite lucrative if done properly!
You can visit Share A Sale’s website by clicking here.
Paid Surveys
Companies will pay you to offer surveys to your visitors. Each time one of them takes the survey you get paid. I have not tried this myself but I have heard of others who do pretty decent on a part time basis.
There are many other ways to monetize your website but this is just the beginning. Once you have started, try other ways to make your expertise work for you.
I hope you’ve found this information to be helpful and if so I’d love to hear from you! Please let me know what is the one tip you received from this post that you think will help you in your business the most by sharing your thoughts in the comments section below.
If you have any additional questions about starting your business or need assistance with expanding or marketing your business, please feel free leave me a comment or post it on my Facebook Page and I’ll try to assist you in any way I can!
Have an awesome day!
Pam Lawhorne
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome article. I run a Counter Strike Community forum and I have to say that your ideas are brilliant. Will test the methods and get back with a reply if it worked or not.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
Pam