Today, I saw a great video on ways to monetize a website/blog, or other ways to make money with your website. Even though it is a promotional video to one of Joel Comms' free reports (video below in the post), it does help and explain other ways to make money with your website.
One of the most often asked questions from novice webmasters is: How do I monetize my site? How do I earn an income from my site or blog?Every famous webmaster/blogger/marketer gets these types of emails all the time, its just natural.
Below, Joel does promote his free report on other ways to make money on the internet other than Adsense. But the video is very informative and helpful, and is a typical email which most marketers will receive.
Joel explains there are so many ways to monetize your website/blog. They range from affiliate marketing, which consists of banner ads and preselling. For blogs, you can sell ad space and text ads to other blogs and businesses. Darren Rowse from ProBlogger has a good list on "How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs." He even has a more in depth post on "How to Make Money Blogging." Similar to both post:
...is to experiment with the many different ways of making money from blogs. There are literally hundreds of options for doing it and each method will suit different blogs differently...
When I first started with my blog, I had very little aspects to monetization besides Adsense. I experiment with placement and type of ads. Gathering click information to determine proper placement and proper banner size. With the data I receive I then decided where and what type of banner should be on my blog. But this can change, depending on the type of traffic my blog receives. So I tend to monitor my site every morning to see where traffic came from and what was clicked on.
A lot of marketers are against Adsense, since they say its for the field of the newbies. Joel Comm aka Mr. Adsense disagrees as most of his teachings are about adsense. In likelyhood it is the easiest form of making your first couple cents online.
Besides adsense, there are many ways to monetize your blog, they can range from:
- ClickBank Affiliates
- Affiliates in General
- Sell Ad Space
- Sell Text Links
- Email Marketing/List Building
- Contextual Ads
- Banner Ads
- and many more...
ClickBank and Adsense would be the most used; it is speak of on the internet all the time especially in Internet Marketing. But what is the point if you do not gather any data or information from your blogs/websites? There are so many factors involved; it is more than just throwing a few banners or text ads on your site. Factors that will greatly determine how much income you will derive from your blogs or sites.
Like I stated prior, I had to do some studying of my Adsense blocks to see what banner size will be better than another. Then ad placement had to be determined, left or right, top or bottom. When this blog received its second facelift; I had my adsense to the left of my post then I switched it to the right as I received no or little clicks on the left but more clicks on the right. From there I left it on the right, which again can change from the amount of traffic or type of traffic I receive.
You can not just put up a banner up in hopes that it will convert into a sale, you need to test those vendors as well. Is there ads not providing the proper image to their product, is their product not good enough for the readers, is their sales page poorly written, what about price? These things take into affect for the reader that may want to click on an ad.
Testing your ads, vendors, products, placement, keywords are all part of monetizing your blog or website. It is important as those aspects will determine if you will be making money or not!
Here is a short list on how this Blog Makes Money:
- Adsense
- Affiliates
- Pre Selling
- Context Links
- List Building
- and more...
I try not to clutter my blog with all the ads as it will even deter me away from my own blog. When I look at sites with all these ads I tend to just hit hte back button to continue my search or just leave the site. I do not want to be bothered.
I do not just choose certain monetization just because it will make me money. I do testing and see if it will affect the blogs brand and me. For example a lot of bloggers are making money from donations, buy allowing their readers to buy them beers. I will not do this just because I do not want to use this plugin as a main source of income.
I strictly chose what to put on my blog by first testing its popularity and reading about its products or services. Research and Testing are my keys to what I want to add to monetize my blog. Its not just because I want to just put it up in hopes to create a sale.
Creating the ads to look and be part of my website is my goal. If it looks like its part of my website then it will be more likely to be clicked on and maybe even convert into cash!
There are countless ways to monetize your site or blog, but testing and research described above will give you a head-start on your competition. Naturally your blog has to be popular and visited often, and your Google ads have to be in the correct position and style for you to make any significant money from Google Adsense.
In the end you need to concentrate on providing good information and details to your blog readers. You must educate your blog readers and build personal relationships with them in order to cause your blog reader to want to take interest in the products and services you may be promoting on your blog.
