Many see website monetization as a way to avoid office work. They like to work from home, be their own boss, and work out their own work schedule. A website that makes money can be the first step in building a reasonably successful business. To do this, you can build a website yourself or purchase a ready-made one. In any case, it will be a tool to achieve maximum income.
The experience of many has proven that any site can become a revenue generator, even without advertising, although this requires a lot of dedication, because before monetizing the site, you will need to focus more on creating a decent base of regular visitors who will become the first financial project donors.
Creating content and driving traffic
These elements are the foundation you need to complete before monetizing your site. The content of the site depends on its subject. Energycontent is the main motivator for creating captivating material. Without this, the site will be uninteresting and with zero traffic, a complete failure for bloggers, after which they simply stop working.
An important factor is the high level of content quality. This process is easy to control, just look at the site statistics, social media results and user activity. It's good when visitors can share content on social networks, waiting for the release of new material. And you can also use proven and true methods to get traffic.
Traffic generation methods that are carried out before monetizing the site:
- Email marketing - access to potential visitors via email. This is no longer as fashionable today as the use of other methods, but it works reliably. A successful email campaign should be simple, engaging, and include a strong call to action.
- Social media marketing is the forge of email marketing. By creating posts on popular social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, a blogger builds an audience that will visit his main site. Social networks are highly valued because they allow users to quickly spread new content, making it popular.
- Search engine optimization, which is performed before a site is monetized, is the foundation of the basics, its concept is so comprehensive that no website can escape its "all-seeing eye". This practice provides morehigh site ranking in search engine results.
Experienced opinion: no strategy will provide sustainable traffic. To attract visitors to your site, you need a base of great content and a subtle combination of several strategies.
Monetization of the site with advertising
The main set of strategies includes the use of paid advertising. This is one of the oldest ways to generate money. You need a website, traffic and free space to subtly insert sponsored ads. Modern display advertising looks like this:
- Promotional images are basically banner ads or rectangular ads that are displayed around the site's content.
- Text - Ads generated by algorithms to make them relevant to blog content.
- Pop-up banners - move across the screen above the content of the site.
- Wallpaper - change the background of the site, fill the entire page.
- New windows - appear in front of site text, display full ad for visitor overview.
- Flash are moving ads in the form of multi-rolls and text.
- Videos are short clips that can start automatically or be played by blog readers.
The prices of each type of advertising for website monetization can vary greatly.
Pay Per Click
The alternative is pay-per-visitor or pay-per-click models. Here they pay depending on the number of people who come to the site and click on ads. bloggers have a chancemake a big traffic breakthrough and get a decent income from 1000 impressions.
Most Popular Advertisers:
- Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most common online advertising models. This means that the advertiser will pay the blogger as soon as someone clicks on the ad.
- Infolinks is one of the best ways to monetize your site through the introduction of text ads. It offers publishers a 70% revenue share and follows the PPC (pay-per-click) model. Text ads use double underlined words that appear as clicked ads. They pay via Paypal, bank transfer, ACH, Payoneer, eCheck or Western Union once the blogger reaches the initial limit of $50 for Paypal or eCheck or $100 for bank transfer and WU, depending on the site monetization method chosen.
- Media.net is another great Adsense alternative and is powered by the Yahoo Bing network. The ads provide contextual links to relevant keywords and it takes some time before they are optimized for the site. As the blogger continues to use this network, the algorithm will determine the best keywords for the site's audience based on clicks. Unlike Adsense, Media.net assigns a specialized account that can also offer ways to generate more ad revenue. Money transfer options are bank transfer or Paypal. The minimum payout threshold is $100.
- Chitika is another alternativenews site monetization that serves only contextual ads and offers a CPC program. You can customize your ads and use them seamlessly with Google Adsense. They have a small minimum threshold of $10, payable via Paypal. If the blogger prefers to receive money by check, the threshold is $50.
- BuySellAds is an online classifieds marketplace where you can show your ads to others. The service does not accept blogs with low traffic, so before you start working with him, you need to wait at least a few months, creating good traffic.
More options for news site monetization services:
- Rotaban.
- Rotapost.
- Sape.ru.
- Blogun.
- Advmaker.
- Advertur.
- Nolix.
- Direct/Advert.
After choosing an advertiser, inform him of the intention to sell a place on the site. To do this, you need a multimedia kit and a statistics counter on the site so that the service can get detailed information about the movements on the site. To do this, you can use online tools such as Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, Hit.ua, Liveinternet and others.
Selling ads with Google
Google AdSense allows bloggers to monetize their website with ads. The user receives a code from Google, and then places it on his site in the place where he wants to place an ad, then processes all other functionssuccessful promotion without the participation of a blogger. It finds relevant ads and runs an ad auction to bring the highest paying ads to the site.
The blogger gets paid when someone clicks on these ads. This is a simple mechanism for monetization of the informational site, but at the same time, the owners transfer part of the control over it to Google. If they are willing to accept this deal, earning hundreds of dollars a month, with a large enough audience, then they accept the agreements, having previously read the Terms of Service from AdSense, and then strictly follow them so that the site is not banned by the advertiser.
Google AdSense displays ads that are highly relevant to user site content and pays the owner a percentage of revenue per click. The AdSense policy allows you to place up to 3 blocks per page in real time. This program is one of the most popular monetization methods due to its simplicity. Google processes all ad hits and each month the site owner receives a check or direct deposit for the revenue generated by the site.
Reason for AdSense rejection
The service is very popular all over the world, so AdSense has made the system very strict. Here are a few reasons why Google will definitely reject a collaboration blogger's offer:
- Unable to monetize low traffic website.
- Insufficient or inappropriate site content. Google pays a lot of attention to blog content. It will immediately reject the blog if the content is poorly written and hasgrammatical errors. Content should be not only grammatically correct, but also unique and valuable to blog users.
- The type of page and blog design should be considered. For example, a page with a bright yellow background and white text cannot be read by users. Blogs that are poorly designed and difficult for visitors to read are rejected by AdSense. The site should have a good and neat design that is soothing to the eyes and pleasing to the soul.
- Lack of privacy policy, "About Us" or "Contact Us" sections will result in non-cooperation. Before applying for Google AdSense, a blogger needs to create these few pages.
- Site does not comply with Google AdSense policies if there is no unique and meaningful content, high traffic, pages with original content, poor user interface with clear navigation.
- The site cannot receive traffic from illegal sources, have an excessive amount of keywords or poorly coded design. All such sites are rejected. Therefore, the owner must first obtain a complete guide and a list of prohibitions to consider before applying for Google AdSense.
Russian-language advertising service "Yandex"
Yandex is the dominant search engine in Russia with over 60% market share. Yandex also operates in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. The service has a full range of advertising products andanalytics tools to help optimize the site. Most of these tools have been translated into English to serve international clients and monetize the site with Yandex.
Like other major search engines, Yandex uses an auction model for advertising. The full range of ad management options can be found in the self-service portal called Yandex Direct. Search ads are based on both Yandex search results and partner search results. The contextual advertising network is present online for almost all Russian consumers. A wide range of destinations is available: weather, news, trade, cinema and others. Various thematic and demographic targeting options are available, which can be controlled on the Yandex Direct platform.
Sponsored ads are a great way to reach consumers who may be less familiar with the brand or the offerings on custom sites. There are various targeting options available for display ads. There are mobile advertisements. Yandex offers free bilingual (English-Russian) account management services for agencies and clients. These services include keyword research, media planning, copy creation and translation, localization of existing campaigns and ongoing optimization.
The service is offered by Yandex Market, which is the dominant consumer product comparison site in Russia. More than 18 million people a month visit it in search of goods.
"Yandex Metrica" is a powerful and easy-to-use web analytics tool designed to help you optimize your website. The metric is available in English and Turkish. Webmaster Tools Yandex Webmaster Tools provides an easy-to-use resource for viewing detailed reports on the visibility of custom sites in Yandex.
To connect a blog to Yandex tools, the site owner must have a Yandex account. The phone number is part of the verification to protect against bots. But before starting to use the service, a blogger should take into account that it is not suitable for monetizing a site from scratch.
To connect and start scanning the Yandex site, you need to do:
- Go to Yandex Webmaster Tools.
- Press the Add button.
- Enter your website URL and click the yellow "Add" button to continue.
- Copy verification code.
- Login to the website and "Personal panel".
- Press "SEO" and "General" and paste the code in the Yandex Webmaster Tools section.
- Click"Save changes" and check.
This spring, Yandex made major changes to its advertising system. Now its location on the page is no longer fixed. There are new page layout formats, called stencils, that change with user themes and plans, offering many different formats.
Search ads get more traffic and higher quality ads get better click-through rates. At the same time, foradvertisers' costs will not increase, as will the bids per click for ad spaces.
Affiliate Marketing
If none of the above monetization options suits the blogger, for example, because the site is still young and not very popular with users, he can try affiliate marketing, paid posts or his own advertising to generate money flow. He advertises these products or services under an affiliate agreement on his site by placing an "affiliate link" on the messages. When visitors click on it and then make a purchase, the blogger gets paid.
Popular affiliate marketing programs include ClickBank, Commission Junction, Share-A-Sale and Amazon which require you to sign up before you can monetize website traffic. Paid posts and "native ads" usually take the form of "sponsored content" that an advertiser has paid to participate on a site. Often these are commercials that connect their products or services. This method can supplement regular content with a little "extra" like a positive review of a product. The disadvantage of this way of making money is that responsive ads can be of low quality and content that can tarnish the site's reputation.
No ads
Sometimes bloggers find the concept of making money through ads a disgusting or counterproductive concept, and they are not alone in this opinion, especially when monetizing a young site. There are several shortcomings in advertisingads:
- Finding reliable advertisers is time consuming and requirements are not always acceptable.
- Ads don't always pay much.
- Income stream unreliable.
- Sometimes advertisers refuse to pay, referring to cheating.
- Ads can be creepy and intrusive.
- They also slow down the site.
When this reaches the limit of rejection, bloggers refuse such sponsors and start earning money from the site on their own, gaining a valuable audience.
Once a site has gained user value, there are several ways for a blogger to turn it into a source of cash. Selling a product is a great way to monetize website traffic. It can be a product or service: books, t-shirts, or anything else that is in demand in the market. Can offer consulting services and post online version offline.
Paywall setup
This paid model is somewhat related to the earlier concept of "selling something". In this case, personal content is being sold, not a physical product. It is possible to block segments of your site from "members" who pay a fee to access it. Or open mini-access to individual pieces of content, while each block of content will be inexpensive. You can try a subscription so that users pay a monthly fee to access the content. Parts of the site can remain free for everyone to attract new onesvisitors. However, "premium content" is only available to members.
If the content is in demand, you can get enough members who will gladly pay. There are several approaches to setting up this service. For example, politely ask the audience to donate to the site, reminding them that their patronage will allow the author to continue the interesting work on the blog pages. If the content provides value, then the audience will reciprocate by offering value in the form of monetary compensation. Of course, all visitors will not donate, and even half of them, but the blogger will definitely get a good amount of traffic and strong content, which can be a source of good funding in the future.
Before you can monetize a site with paid content, you need to set up a donation button on your page. Then users will be able to directly pay for goods through available electronic wallets, such as the Russian-language services Yandex Money, Qiwi, WebMoney, or a foreign PayPal wallet. Perhaps the blogger will try to set up a page on a service such as Patreon. This will allow viewers to browse content creators and fund the ones they like best.
Paid private forum
Creating a private paid forum on your site is another great way to earn extra income. This is a path that can take a lot of time, and besides, the blogger must have a lot of experience. If he created his site with WP, he can install the bbPress plugin before monetizing the site onWordPress, and instantly create a forum on your website. Settings allow you to make this a private forum, and there are add-ons that allow you to manage paid subscriptions.
To justify charging a price for access to their site's forum, a blogger would have to provide something incredible, a very strong USP (unique selling point) would be needed to justify creating a member forum. Premium content, specials and good offers as a membership provide an incentive for visitors to sign up for it. This provides an excellent opportunity to generate a steady income. The forum owner needs to properly evaluate access in order to reward a large user base. Setting a high monthly fee will only repel users and the forum will be inactive. Usually a monthly fee of $3-5 results in a good income with a huge group of members.
Monetization of digital images
Perhaps the blogger is intrigued by the potential of e-commerce, but has no idea what to sell. Most cannot sell any physical goods, but many have hundreds or thousands of amateur photos. They can benefit them, and not be abandoned and forgotten, aimlessly occupying microSD memory. And even if those images are somewhere in the cloud, the social giants shouldn't be the only ones who can benefit from a blogger's creative output. Fortunately, there are ways to monetize images through the site, for example, whenintegration with Fotomoto - an e-commerce service for photographers.
Using the Fotomoto shopping cart, the customer can purchase digital or physical images. In the case of the latter, the service will make prints for it. To use the service, a blogger will need to create a Fotomoto account through a simple free registration.
This is far from the only way to create an e-commerce website based on images, for example, there is another good e-commerce website photography service - Photodeck. Numerous digital documentation, in a performative life, is perhaps the most underutilized financial resource.
It's best for a blogger to try a few monetization options and then stick with the ones that make them the most money. With all the analytics and conversion data available, he will be able to accurately determine how much each visitor brings in. Some of the most profitable websites have multiple streams of income, so don't be afraid to test multiple services for your site.
The site monetization options presented here are the foundation upon which monetization strategies for any website are built. If the site has a lot of content and a lot of visitors, it does not matter what the blogger will do: sell ads, t-shirts, or the content itself. He will be able to do this because he has an audience to support his efforts.
Different audiences will respond to different approaches. Careful analysis, along with some trial and error,will show which methods will work best to select the best site monetization and turn your online presence into a permanent source of additional income.
