Looking to earn a profit through your website? Well, there happen to be a number of different ways to generate an income online, each with varying levels of success. With that said, it’s important you have passion and dedication to your website’s purpose. Doing so will keep things moving forward during the inevitable ups and downs of any business venture.
Generating an income online can vary from highly profitable, to non-existent, and everywhere in between. So, it’s important to manage expectations as things will be more sporadic than consistent, at least when starting out. Now, let’s cover how to monetize your website and get things rollin’!
Adsense/PPC
Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising model that is used to direct traffic to websites, in which the advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked. This form of advertising was made popular by Google in mid 2003 with their, “Adsense” service. To explain things a bit further, here’s how this business model would typically break down:
Let’s say you have a home recipe website with thousands of visitors each day. You would create an Adsense account with Google, follow their instructions to place the necessary code in your website, and Google will insert content related advertisements where you choose. When visitors click on those ads, you will receive a small payment.
This sounds all well and good, but there are a few negatives aspects to keep in mind with this business model. First issue is you need a lot of traffic to gain anything substantial, we’re talking thousands of visitors a day. Second is that if you are just starting your website, it may deter some of your visitors. Advertisements can come across as “spammy” and unprofessional. I would consider this a viable income stream if it works for your website, but don’t let it detract from your brand.
Paid Advertisements
If your website has enough traffic, companies may reach out to you for advertisement placement. Essentially, you are renting advertising space on your website for a pre-determined amount of time. This could be days, weeks, months, or an ongoing engagement. Keep in mind that you don’t have to wait for 3rd party advertisers to find you. If you’ve got high traffic around a particular niche, you’ve got bargaining power to charge a premium.
Again, like PPC advertising, you want to be careful with how many advertisements you place on your site. Of course your online business needs to earn a profit, but don’t let short term profits ruin your long term goals. Always place your visitors/customers first and judge from their perspective. If the proposed advertisement is helpful to your users, go for it!
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is when an advertiser pays you to mention their product/service within your websites content. This can be seen all over the web from product reviews, product comparisons, product recommendations, and much more. It’s why you’ll see some celebrities mention cars, clothing, supplements, and more, all over social media.
I think this is a great way to monetize your website as long as it is congruent with your brand and provides value to your users. Don’t create sponsored content that doesn’t align with your brand because again, it will come across as spammy. This Wayne’s World clip should give you the idea, don’t sell out or you’ll lose credibility!
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular and effective ways to generate passive income. You start by finding a product you would recommend to your users. You take your unique affiliate link and provide it through your website, content, email, etc. When someone clicks on the link and continues to purchase that product, you receive a commission at no extra cost to the customer. This commission can range anywhere from a few cents to hundreds of dollars depending on the product.
Affiliate marketing is something I highly recommend as long as it’s done with integrity. Don’t personally recommend products you have never used because it’s misleading and doesn’t build a foundation of trust between you and your community. As an example, here are affiliate links to Bluehost, my preferred hosting service, and Adobe, my design suite of choice. I’ve been using Bluehost and Adobe for many many years and would highly recommend them to anyone that needs a hosting service or design software. Just remember to give your honest recommendation, help your community, and the commissions will come.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is when you place a 3rd party form on your website for visitors to fill out. Whenever one of your users submits the form, you receive a commission, regardless of whether or not they buy a product. For example, let’s say you have a website about local real estate investing that has a large following. After striking a deal with your local realtors office, you insert a form on your website offering your users further information on real estate offerings in the area. Every time someone fills out that form, you receive payment. In a way, it’s similar to affiliate marketing, only you receive payment regardless of a purchase.
If lead generation is a possible income source for your online business, I say go for it! It’s really a win win situation; The customer receives further information and the business can build a relationship that may lead to future profit. That said, don’t ever sell/give your customers information to a 3rd party without their consent. There’s nothing worse than receiving email, text, or phone calls from some company you’ve never heard of. This will also lead to feelings of distrust and brand degradation. Just remember, keep customers first!
Sell Products
Selling products is at the heart of (online) business. Just take a look at Amazon’s stock chart over the last number of years, it just keeps going up! The idea is to create a website that offers products & or services to your users. The more value you bring to the table, the more success you will see. Keep in mind that products can take on many different forms. For example, physical goods, e-books, online courses, digital media such as photography, music, and much more. When you sell your own goods and services, you are in control of the product and price, which can become quite lucrative.
I highly recommend selling your own products because it has the most potential return on investment (ROI). Sure you can make money through affiliate marketing, PPC, leads, etc, but what you’re really doing is sending people away from your own website to buy someone else’s products. This is fine if you never plan on creating a sellable product, but if you have something of value to offer your audience, package it up and sell it!
Membership Services
Generating income through membership has become quite popular these last few years. In this business model, customers pay a monthly/yearly fee to gain access to content and/or services. For example, Lynda.com (now owned by LinkedIn) offers a large variety of e-learning video content for a monthly fee. Adobe on the other hand, used to sell their software packages, but now provides software as a service (SaaS) for a monthly fee.
If you can structure your online business around membership, it too can be quite lucrative. The problem with selling products is that it can fluctuate through hot and cold market cycles. By selling monthly memberships, your income stream becomes much more reliable and predictable. The challenging aspect to a membership website is that you need to provide excellent value on a month to month basis. This requires you provide value such as, members only privileges, consistent/updated content, valuable software, and more. As long as the value is there, your customers will stay.
Premium Services/Consulting
Premium services and consulting is slightly different than the topics we’ve covered so far, but I wanted to mention it as a viable option. Essentially how this works is that by building a large following on your website, you’ve built authority in that space. With authority comes the opportunity to sell personalized value to your customers. For example, let’s say you are an experienced marketing professional that has a website about business marketing. Well, after enough articles, videos, social media interactions, etc, you will build authority in that space. You can then offer your consulting services to businesses at a premium price. This is considered more active income vs passive, but at the premium price, it may be worth it!
If you’d like to earn an income while building out other forms of passive income, this is a great solution. Creating a website, writing content, creating products, building a following, all takes time and sometimes you don’t have the luxury to wait. Also, by working with local clients, you build confidence, gain reviews/case studies, and start gaining real world traction. From here you can start raising your prices, build semi-passive product/service offerings and work to scale your business.
Now, Get To It!
Well, there you have it – How to monetize your website. As I said earlier, some of these will be easier than others and more profitable than others. Sure, you can throw Google Adsense on your website and make a small income relatively quick, but it will most likely fail in comparison to selling your own high value products or service. The idea is to find a balance between business and customer needs and by providing your users with massive value, you’re sure find yourself running a successful online business.
How are your online business goals coming along, are you finding success? Leave a comment below!
*Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something.
