How to Make Money from your Website/Blog?

Do you have a website or blog that you wish was making you money? Maybe you don’t have a website yet, but you have seen thousands of “bloggers” making money from websites. Wouldn’t it be nice to supplement your full-time income or even replace it with revenue generated from your own website?

Although this idea may seem far-fetched, you may be surprised to learn how many people make a respectable living simply from websites about topics that interest them. How to Get Your Blog to Pay Your Bills is an excellent example of how to implement this fun and profitable strategy.

Traffic, Lots of it

The most important part of any website monetization strategy is traffic. Without traffic, your website could have the best content in the world that nobody knows about. Most website owners spend more time figuring out new ways to generate traffic than any other activity related to the site.

If you are not familiar with website traffic, it simply refers to the number of unique visitors a website receives. Typically, this is determined on a monthly basis although many tools allow website owners to view daily statistics. This is helpful when you post new content and want to monitor how many people view your recent postings.

Once you have created a website, how do you actually generate traffic to your website?

Although there are numerous effective methods, the most popular traffic generation methods include:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO refers to optimizing your website for major search engines such as Google. A large percentage of website traffic (sometimes as much as 75%) will come from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other popular search engines.

To successfully earn revenue from your website, you need to tailor your website to search engines. This allows readers to find your content amidst thousands or even millions of other websites.

Proper SEO is a tricky and dynamic component. Many websites could care less about their readers; instead focusing on search engine optimization only. Google and other search providers periodically change their search algorithms to penalize these websites and award those websites providing genuine information to Internet users.

Basic SEO best practices include a website that is easily navigable, content that is fresh and valuable, and a healthy community of readers who actively participate in group discussions on your website.

Social Media

The popularity of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has made an active social media presence a necessity for driving new traffic to your website. Not only should your website have easily accessible links that allow readers to “share” content via Facebook, but your website should also have an active Facebook page that is appealing to readers and promotes engagement from other social media users.

Facebook marketing has taken off in the last couple of years and represents an entirely new angle that can often reach readers and potential customers that are difficult to find using conventional marketing techniques and SEO best practices alone.

YouTube

Many successful websites have also realized the power of marketing on the popular video sharing website YouTube. As a website owner, you can create interesting and helpful videos that potential readers can watch and share with others. The goal is to entice these readers to visit your website based on the content you have shared via YouTube.

Making Money from All This Traffic

Once you have successfully started driving traffic to your website, you can actually begin to make money. Advertising is by far the best way to generate revenue from your website. Some advertising campaigns pay you just for the number of visitors coming to your site while others require that the visitor perform some action (such as make a purchase or click on a link) for you to get paid.

Google AdSense

As the biggest name in search engines, Google is a great place to start earning money from your website. The AdSense campaign is free to join and places advertisements on your website based on the type of content you provide.

For instance, if you own a website about traveling to Europe, Google AdSense will automatically place ads related to traveling. When users click on these links, you are paid. This is known as a pay-per-click or PPC campaign. Although the amount you get paid for each click may only be a few cents, if you have a large amount of traffic coming to your website, these clicks quickly add up to a respectable paycheck.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you advertise specific products on your website and receive a commission each time they sell. This model works well for informational products such as e-books as well as physical products from major retailers.

When you’re first 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 grows in popularity and you become more experienced, you may decide to reach out to major retailers directly for affiliate opportunities.

The key to effective affiliate marketing is to make sure any affiliate opportunities you offer on your site are related in some way to the content you are providing your readers. Using the travel example again, affiliate offers that let people save money on airline tickets, for instance, could result in a substantial passive income stream from affiliate marketing.

Selling Your Own Informational Products

You may realize that you have built a strong reader base who is genuinely interested in what you have to say. If so, consider creating your own informational product. E-books are a great way to generate passive income from your website and can represent a sizable portion of your monthly revenue.

Of course, creating your own informational product requires detailed knowledge of the topic and some degree of writing skills. Alternatively, you can outsource the writing to an experienced writer for better results. 

For a small one-time fee, visitors are able to purchase and download your informational product and you immediately reap the benefits of this income stream.  Learn more

There are hundreds of other ways to make money from your website. Millions of websites generate revenue every day using the techniques described above as well as a variety of others. Remember that the key to successfully monetizing your website is traffic.The more website traffic you have, the more income opportunities will be presented to you. Focus on creating unique, valuable content and traffic will follow.

Once you begin making money from your website, you will wonder why you didn’t think of this sooner. So get out there and join the millions of other people making a living from their websites!