Sources of
Revenue
Before you think about
trying to monetize a website, you should create a
content-rich website that will focus on attracting
traffic. If you build useful content and attract a
readership, chances are you will be able to monetize the
site.
Take caution in getting
over zealous in making money - there is no "get rich
quick" scheme when it comes to monetizing a website.
Concentrate on getting people to visit your website.
There are several ways to monetize a site - when
thinking about how to pursue this, you should come up
with a viable business model. You may be
interested in creating a shopping website, or perhaps an
informational website about a topic you are deeply
interested in. But how can you make money?
One of the most prevalent ways to monetize a site is via
an affiliate program. An affiliate program allows
you to post banners, coupons, and links to vendor
websites; when a user purchases a product, you get a
commission payment.
Once you've created many good pages of well-written,
keyword-filled copy text, it may be time to join a few
affiliate programs. Deciding which affiliate programs
to join can be a challenge. Try to think of what is the
typical visitor demographic for your site. This
may help in deciding what affiliate programs to join and
eventually what banners to place on your site. Another
approach to take is to think of what products you might
be able to sell on your site? These products may be
directly related to the material on your site, or they
may be simply similar items or associated loosely with
the topic of your site. For example for your Puerto
Rico travel site, a directly related topic would
obviously be the airline tickets and hotel reservations
for Puerto Rico; lesser associated topics would be an
airline tickets to any Caribbean destination, or
anything to do with the travel industry in general.
Avoid the temptation of inundating your web pages with
dozens and dozens of banners. Find a couple of banners
or text links that you think might be effective and be
disciplined about how many and where you place them -
study their results and rotate the banners until you
find an effective combination. Generally speaking, text
links perform a lot better then banner ads. The
advertising industry is moving away from gaudy garish
animated banners - again, these have proven to be
ineffective and users are becoming more ad blind. A
conservatively designed, judiciously placed banner ad
can produce at a much higher rate and sprinkling grand
and banners across your agents.
When I first started integrating affiliate links into my
web pages I could not understand why text links
supposedly performed better than banner advertisements.
To me, it seemed that something larger and something
that could attract someone's eyes would be more
effective. That is simply not the case. The best way
to convert affiliate links is to integrate your
affiliate links right into your copy text. Obviously,
this is most easily done with text links. This is so
because these text links can appear in the middle of the
paragraphs, and are generally right in the middle of your
copy text. An example might be on your travel site
- in
an article discussing how to plan your vacation, you may
integrate a text link to a hotel affiliate program right
into the paragraphs that discuss the best places to stay
on the island. This does several things, first, you're
writing an article aimed at helping a potential visitor
plan their future vacation - this visitor is more likely
to be searching for deals or clicking on advertisement
banners because they may be actually planning their
vacation. Seconds, as they are reading your advice and
information, your information or review is integrated
into a link that delivers, and sends the user directly
to your desired affiliate program.
Another example of a way to integrate text links into
your copy text is to provide a review of or
recommendation for an item that are trying to sell.
For example, if you are trying to sell books related to
a certain subject, instead of simply throwing images
banners and links of books in the margin and around the
page, you should be integrating reviews of these
products (in this case, these books) right into your
copy text. A way to do this might be to discuss what
you want to recommend. Tell why you like that
particular item or why it is better than other similar
items. You may even discuss why you think your users
might enjoy that product. Embed a link to the product
within this review; place a link directly to the
affiliate program selling that item, for example
Amazon.com. We have discussed just a few ways to
integrate affiliate links into copy text. There are
many different ways to do this and all we can recommend
is be creative, and work hard at increasing your users'
experience.
Other affiliate links that integrate well into copy text
include offers for savings, discounts, or coupons. Just
remember to illustrate clearly how a user can redeem
such coupons, the limitations and restrictions, and most
importantly the dates when the coupons are valid for.
If you decide to post such information on your website,
you must remember to keep updating your site. Avoid
adding outdated material such as coupons that languish
on your site. Doing this takes away from the
credibility of your website and will erode our customer
base. Outdated information on a web site shows that the
website is not updated often and is a negative factor
for users viewing your site.
In the last several years, contextual ad programs are
becoming very popular among publishers. Advertising
programs such as
Google Adsense
and Yahoo Publisher Network allow publishers to
share in the revenue generated by a pay-per-click
advertisement. Since the genesis of programs like
these, there has been a large paradigm shift.
Prior to this, the only way to make money was to
actually sell products on your site - save the rare
direct advertising opportunity. Now, if you can
drive a lot of traffic to your site, you have a pretty
big opportunity to make money too.
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