5.0 Monetizing Websites
If you have a website with reasonable traffic then there are plenty of real ways to make income from it without even selling a product or a service. There are many webmasters out there making money from their sites to varying degrees: some may make enough to pay for their hosting, while others are making full time incomes that would make a solicitor green with envy.
Here are just a few:
PPC Advertising (pay-per-click)
This involves signing up with an advertising network (free) and pasting some of their code snippets into your website code. Adverts (text or images) will then be displayed on your website relevant to its content and you will earn money every time a visitor clicks on them.
Profitability depends on site traffic levels, click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). CTR depends mostly on site design, i.e. where you place the ads (ads placed above the fold or blended with content get higher CTRs). The source of the traffic can have an effect too. Organic traffic (from search engines) performs well because these visitors were already looking for something and generally click on ads more often. CPC depends on the niche topic of the website. Profitable niches will earn more per click.
Popular CPC advertising networks:
CPM Advertising (cost per mille)
This is similar to CPC except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (page views) that the ads displayed on your site generate (cost per mille refers to the cost for 1000 impressions). Payout rates vary according to network, ad position and format. The more successful the network, the higher the CPM (as they have more advertisers). The closer an ad is to the top of a page, the higher the CPM. And the bigger the ad format (size in pixels), the higher the CPM. In addition, CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page view to visitor ratio (online magazines, forums, etc).
Popular CPM advertising networks:
Affiliate Marketing
Sometimes called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) marketing, this involves joining a network (free), displaying ads on your site using their code snippets, and if a visitor clicks from your site to the network's site and purchases a product or service, then you receive comission. One method is to place contextual links within page content. Then visitors are able to click on a link relating to the subject of a paragraph. There are thousands of affiliate programs to choose from.
Popular affiliate networks:
RSS Feed Ads
RSS (rich site summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. A lot of news-related sites, blogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as RSS feeds, allowing regular web users to stay informed by retrieving the latest site content they are interested in (using feed reader or news aggregator software). This saves time by not having to visit sites individually and ensures privacy by not needing to join email newsletters. And this content distribution channel can be monetized. Networks are available for displaying PPC and CPM based advertising on feed footers.
Popular RSS feed ad networks:
Sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks
Donations
Including a "Donate" link or button on a website is an efficient way of earning additional income, especially for blogs on niche topics where readers gain real value from the content (with personal development and productivity being lucrative).
Many payment merchants such as paypal offer a download button to facilitate this, and a variation on this is the "Buy Me a Beer" Wordpress plugin. A customized message can be inserted at the bottom of each article, asking readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.
Ebooks
One of the oldest methods on the web is to use a website to promote a related ebook. The website could either be structured around the book itself or the ebook could be launched based on the success of the website.
List building / Newsletters
Email lists and newsletters are powerful marketing and money making tools. They offer the possibility of offering services/products/adverts to thousands of people without spamming. For those who build lists in the tens of thousands, this offers immediate access to a vast market whenever a possibile money-making opportuity comes along.
Creating a big list takes time, so if you have a popular website you could use it to increase the number of subscribers on your list. This can be done by having a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to an email newsletter.
Useful software for managing email newsletters:
Domain Parking
Despite having arguable ethics, it is possible to make money from simply registering domain names and leaving them parked with the hosting company (parked page). With some, ads can be added here to generate income. Also, having a brainstorm and registering some really good domains means that sooner or later someone may want to buy them from you for their sites. In addition, snapping up domains that site owners leave too late to renew can be lucrative too (if cheeky), as the domain will come along with whatever traffic the previous owner built up (although again, you could offer to sell the domain back to them). Some people have made good money from domain parking.