No matter what online business you have in mind, one of the first things you’ll need to set up is a website. But after creating a website, the real work of making money with it begins. Obviously, you can make money online when you sell products or services from an ecommerce website. However, your site can also earn through other means. Take a look below at some of the best ways how to earn money with a website.
Monetize Your Website
1. Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising
The most popular example of PPC advertising is Google Adsense. After you sign up to a PPC advertising network, you need to copy-paste some HTML code onto your website that will allow the network to serve either text or image ads that are relevant to your website. You will earn revenue every time someone clicks on an ad; hence, it’s called “pay per click.”
How much you will profit from PPC advertising will depend, first, on the level of traffic to your website. However, the two most important factors that affect profitability of this model are:
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): This is the percentage ratio of how often someone who sees your ad actually clicks it. For example, if the ad was shown 1000 times (100 impressions) and it was clicked 2 times, then the CTR is .2 per cent. The design of your website can have a big impact on your CTR. For instance, ads that typically receive higher CTRs are those that are integrated with content or placed above the fold. The overall rate can also be affected by the source of your site traffic. The CTR tend to be better with visitors coming from search engine results (organic traffic) since they are actively in search of something rather than those from social media networks.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): This is how much you will earn for every ad click, depending on what the advertiser has set. CPC can sometimes depend on the niche of the advertiser. Ads from financial product and mortgage websites often have higher CPC than tech-related ads.
2. Cost per Mille (CPM) Advertising
Mille or M is the Roman numeral for 1,000. CPM refers to the cost per 1,000 impressions or views. In this Internet marketing model, you will earn depending on how many times the ads on your website are viewed. For example, if an advertising banner has a CPM rate of $1 and your website that displays that banner generates 20,000 monthly page views, then you will earn $20 per month. CPM rates differ depending on the network, the placement of the ads and their format.
3. Direct Banner Advertising
Selling advertising space directly to advertisers instead of signing up to advertising networks is one of the most profitable ways to make money online. On the downside, this model is more time consuming. Getting advertisers takes a lot of work, not to mention the actual ad placement and ad monitoring if you don’t have a platform that handles this for you. The benefits can outweigh the challenges, however. Direct advertising gives you the ability to set your own rates and not have to pay commissions to a middleman. It also allows you to get paid upfront and in full, whereas you normally have to wait up to 3 months before you get paid in PPC or CPM networks.
4. Affiliate Marketing
In this model, you have to sign up to an affiliate program where you become an affiliate of a merchant and can get paid commissions by selling (directly or indirectly) the merchant’s products or services on your website. As an affiliate, you will post links on your website to encourage your visitors who could be potential customers to the merchant’s site. You can use banner images, text links or post product reviews with an affiliate link.
5. Sponsored Reviews
If you have a blog, one way to earn is through paid reviews of specific websites or products. You can make good money writing reviews on so many different topics and sponsoring them on your blog for a price. For beginners, you can explore this opportunity by joining sponspored reviews networks. Later on, you can offer them directly to companies to eliminate the middleman and earn more. Remember to write reviews about subjects that are related to your blog. You must also always fully disclose if a post is a paid review.
- Premium Content
Are you an expert on a particular subject matter? If so, you have significant potential to make money from your website by giving expert advice and highly useful information on the topic you specialize in. You can publish some content on your website for free and offer your readers paid membership to gain exclusive access to your premium content, guides or tools.
Get Started
Do you already have a website or blog? If not, what are you waiting for? Create one now and start earning from it. If you do already have a website or blog, don’t let it sit idle. You can start earning from your website with any of the proven methods listed above. Check out my number one recommended program for excellent detailed training from Internet marketing experts on how to earn money with a website.
