Make Money with your Website!

I hope you completed yesterdays homework. If so you should now be the owner of a brilliant looking website with a great initial article/blog post that people want to read.  Today we will be looking at ways that your website can make you money!!!

How to make money online

I bet the majority of people reading this training course think that to make money from your website you just need to put adverts on your pages.  Wrong!!!  There are many ways to make money from your website, adverts being just a small portion.  The best way to make money online is to use a combination of these so that you aren't relying on one method.  After all it's better not to keep all your eggs in one basket! 

Different methods to monetize your website

Adverts! 

 

Let's start with advertisements.  I'm sure that you have all seen these before.  Many websites display adverts on their web pages.  These can vary in size, with the most common being; Wide Skyscraper 160x600, Banner 468x60, Square 250x250 & Leader board 728x90.  These can be placed anywhere on your pages.  It isn't however as straight forward as simply adding an advert, there are many different forms of advertisements out there that can be used.  Understanding these can help you earn the most from them.

1. Pay Per Click Advertising -  These types of adverts pay you every time someone clicks onto them.  You have to sign up to a provider, who will give you code for you to place on your site.  This code allows the provider to send contextual ads to your site (either image or text based) that are relevant to the content of your site.  Google Adsense is the most famous and widely used provider of this service, but there are many others out there.

These types of ads vary in profitability.  It all depends on how many clicks you are getting.  The more traffic that you get, the more likely that some will click onto them.  This can be helped by the positioning of your ads, as certain parts of your web pages are more valuable than others, such as the beginning and end of an article.

2. Cost Per Mile Advertising -  This type of advert is similar to 'Pay Per Click', however instead of earning for every click that you get, you get paid according to the number of impressions that you receive.  This is worked out for every 1000 impressions that it has.  For example, a website that gets 200,000 page views per month that displays a $1 Cost Per Mile ad will generate you $200 a month! 

Just like Pay Per Click, Cost Per Mile adverts can pay you more depending on where the advert is placed on your website.  The higher the ad is placed and the bigger the ad is, it will generally make you more money.

3. Advertising Space -  You could instead cut out the middle man and make money by selling your own advertising space.  This way advertisers would pay you an agreed amount for you to display their advert for a set time.

Affiliate Advertising! 

 

This method can net you some serious money if done right.  It takes much more time to set up, but the rewards are much bigger.  Affiliate advertising allows you to plug other peoples products, services, website, etc.  In return, you get a commission for every sale that resulted in your recommendation.  This is often worked out on a percentage of the sale price, maybe 10-20%, sometimes more depending on the individual product.  You have to do a bit of research for products that you can do affiliate ads for, sites such as ClickBankare great for this and list loads for you to use.  There are many ways of implementing this type of advertising.

1. Text Link Ads -  Text link adverts allow you to place ads within the text of your websites.  These just appear as a normal link, but for every visitor that follows that link that results in a sale, you get a percentage.  There are plenty of sites out there that that can supply you with plenty of text link ads, such as Text-Link-Ads.

2. Product Reviews -  Simply write a detailed review about a product (that has an affiliate scheme) and publish them on your site, just add a link at the bottom.  Obviously it is better to review products that are related to your website, as you are catering to your target audience.

Make your own Product! 

 

You don't have to rely on making money by selling other peoples things, you can make your own.  Write your own book or eBook and sell it on your site.  If you are good at programming, write your own software program and sell it on your own site.  Sell your own art work, photographs, sculptures, etc.  What ever you are good at!

The great thing with selling online is that you have a potential market place of 6+ billion people. You wouldn't get that down your local high street now would you!

Sell your Self! 

 

Not literally of course, but if you have a skill that you are good at, then you could sell your services.  For example, if you are a fitness instructor, you could sell your services at the weekend as a private trainer.  Clients could find you through your website and book you for an hour on a certain day.  If geography is a problem, you could charge people for a one-on-one video call to outline a personal fitness regime and diet plan.

 

These are just some of the ways that you could make money online with your website.  For more ways, check out my '30 Ways Your Website can earn you Money'.  

Homework!!!

I hope that these have opened your eyes to the possibilities of making money online.  As I said earlier, the best way to earn online is to use a combination of a number of different ones.  For today's homework, I want you to follow these steps and add your first advert on your website.

1. Sign up to Google Adsense.

2. Pick which sized advert that you want to display.

3. Copy the code that they will give you.

4. Paste it into your WordPress account in the proper place.

Congratulations, you have got your first advert up on your site!  Now we need to increase the traffic to your site to try to increase the chances of someone clicking on it.  Tomorrow we shall be looking at ways to increase traffic to your website!!!