Monetize your website or blog and make money

Today everybody talks about making money online. Is it TRUE?

Yes!

You can also make money online but making money online is not a Get-Rich-Quick scheme. Rather, it’s the way of making money in the right way. If you are on the right path of learning the skills, you succeed soon. But there is a time investment. The good thing is that the payment processors like 2checkout, PayPal, Payoneer and more have made your payment receipts seamless. Moreover, you can share your site with marketplace like share a sale and they will Find a sponsor for your web site.  Get paid for your great content.  shareasale.com.

 

To start with, you just need a website hosted (your address online) on some reliable hosting platforms. There are many hosting platforms in the market but you have to have a reliable one. See the comparison below and select the appropriate one, as per your requirements.

Disclaimer:  For some of the reviews and links, contentwriting.blog receives compensation from the companies whose product we review or link. We test each product thoroughly and grade high only the best. We are independently owned and the opinion expressed here are our own.

Let’s have quick performance recap for 5 top of the hosting services;

I personally grade Blue host,  and Site Ground are the best and in a reasonable price range. There is another hosting service  hostwinds.com  with many features but a little expensive so I have not compared it with others. But an excellent host.

Let’s Move Ahead

I assume that you have got the domain name and hosted it on some of the above platforms. This is your online address and you have got it. Now let’s develop an online house (Website).

To make a website, either you have to have the skill of HTML, CSS ao PHP to make a website or you need some CMS (Content Management System). There is a number of CMS in the market. Again you have to be wise (which you are) to select the right CMS to build your website. When finalizing the CMS, do analyze some of the following common capabilities and features, before making the final decision to select the CMS, look for the following features in CMS;

• The facility of Search Engine Optimization
• Integrated and online documentation
• Modularity and extensibility
• User and group functionality
• Templating support for changing designs Installation and upgrade wizard
• Integrated audit logs
• Compliance with various accessibility frameworks and standards such as WAI-ARIA.
• Reduced need to code from scratch
• Unified user experience
• Edit permission management

There are many  CMS but I use wordpress.com for the obvious reason. Already more than 28% of websites are created with wordpress.com.  You can visit this article on “how to create your own website with WordPress”.

This step-by-step guide to creating your own website will make your job easy.

As there is a number of Content Management Systems in the market. But when selecting the CMS, to look for the following basic points:

• Is it easy to use?
• Do they provide customer support?
• Are they updating their software regularly?
• How easy it is to integrate with the payment systems (Digital gateways).

Okay fine, you started a blog, then you have to work hard and struggle to get your blog to take off, to achieve the desired goals. Some bloggers start making some money right from the start, while others take time. Anyway continuously sticking to the right path (planned strategy), working hard and move on, will most likely yield positive results very soon.

Ways of Earning Money Online

There are many ways of earning money online but here I will give you the detail of only the proven ways. Even then, it depends on your passion, as which method would work best with your blog.

The need from you is, to focus on producing the useful and quality content that helps your audience in one form or the other. I’m sure if you write what you love, devote the right amount of time and put in the effort. Let me assure, that the money will follow you.

To add further, you need to market well so that you get traffic. Successful bloggers are making six-figure incomes because they market well. But all made with the legitimate ways of working hard online, from the ease of home.

As I already mention online making money is not a “GET RICH QUICK” scheme. You need skills, passion, and investment of time.  No need to do expensive online scam courses. They are a waste of time and money for those guys.

I’ve mentioned some of the easy methods in this article, but I will explain here only “How to Monetize your Website or Blog and Make Money.” If for some reason you don’t understand any point, my doors are open to help you. Just send a message through the form in the contact. Within 24-48 hours my response will be with you.

1. Monetize your Website/Blog
2. Create courses online
3. Create a Membership Website
4. Build a Directory website
5. Sell your own or somebody else Digital products. As eBooks, PDF, APPs.
6. Sell Physical Products Online
7. Dropshipping
8. Ask for Donations

Monetize your website/Blog content:

When we talk about making money online, the first thing that comes to mind is advertising. This is one of the ways to earn money online. But there are various other ways as well, to make money through Monetizing your website or Blog. You get paid through all the following methods. We will go through each one of these, one by one.

Affiliate Marketing

Google AdSense

Directly Sell Ads to WordPress

Sell Ads Directly to the Retailers by selling Sponsored Blog Posts

Writing Reviews

Flipping Websites 

How to Work as an Affiliate and Earn Money:

Many products and services online have affiliate programs, known with different names as, partners, affiliates, affiliate programs or associates. When choosing a product or service, keep this thing in mind that the product or service you are offering on your website is valuable and useful to readers. As an affiliate, you are representing the brand of a merchant, ensure that, It offers a solution to the problem. So, make sure that the product is aligned with your core content on your website or blog.

To drive your affiliate business up, you need to understand and incorporate affiliate marketing tools. You can work from social networks but for that, you have to pay in ads which most of the time is not a viable technique.  To create your audience in the target market for better results, you have to have your own website or blog. Then there are market places available just join and let them drive traffic to your website.
Find a sponsor for your web site. Get paid for your great content. shareasale.com.

How it all Works:

Once you agree to promote the product or service of any online advertiser or retailer or merchant, they provide you the referral link. And you incorporate that referral link into your blog content or display the Ad.

Once your audience reaches your relevant page, they see the relevant ad or link, and if they feel some value in that product or service, they will click and reach the landing page, designed for that product or service.

If a customer purchases that product, service or subscribes to membership, you get the relevant commission.

There is another technique to reach the customer through an influencer, for that you have to pay some portion of the commission to him as well, even by cold calls to advocate your product or service through your website or blog.

To join an Affiliate program, best would be that you start from the product or service that you are already using. Or use that product or service before you ask your readers to use so and so product.

The tips are:-

• Market the product that you already use
• Visit other blogs as which products they are recommending
• Directly reach out to the companies Join some of the big and trusted affiliate networks. Their market place offers good options. Some sound and trusted affiliate networks are:-

ShareASale:   Find a sponsor for your web site. Get paid for your great content. shareasale.com. Many different products in many categories

ClickBank:   Sell digital products

CJAffiliate:  Lot of products and merchants in different categories.

Amazon Associates: e-commerce store with millions of products

eBay: One of the pioneer online stores, offers millions of products.

Rakuten: They have plenty of promoters to offer their products. It’s easy to use and educative.

These affiliate network companies’ work as a middle man between merchant and affiliate. There are many more businesses, offering the affiliate programs but then, you have to determine, whether you get the commission or not. It’s always better to work with authentic and well-reputed companies. The companies  I’ve mentioned above, are all well-reputed and pay well. But select the product or service wisely. Try to concentrate on the products ranging between $20 and $82.

As the affiliate programs are almost in every industry. So, you don’t have to restrict to one product for your affiliate marketing. Diversify your income streams. The very old saying;

“Never put all the Eggs in One Basket”

Once you have so many affiliates to market then the issue comes of managing these. As you have to insert so many links, sometimes remove links.

Doing all these tasks will become cumbersome. For that, I recommend using a WordPress plugin like Adsanity. There are so many other links as well, so the choice is yours.

It takes over your many tasks of inserting the links into posts, auto-replacing keywords into links, link performance and many more. Please visit the Thirsty Affiliates page before you start.

In affiliate marketing, you get paid only, when someone takes an action (i.e. Buys, Subscribes, To become a member) and it works on the basis of CPA (cost per acquisition), or CPL (cost per lead). These affiliate networks pay better commission and your commission is safe. No issue of hiding CTA.

 Advice to Earn More Online as an Affiliate:

Always keep in contact with your merchants and their upcoming product launches. Get the relevant promotional banner ads, product feature videos or any other type of content which makes the conversion easier. They spent a lot on promotional material.

If your performance is good and you are driving crazy orders, a good merchant will reward you with better commission and incentives. Like free products, coupons, etc.

Anyway, your task is to direct the traffic to landing page then conversion rests with the merchant product or service. So, when selecting the product or service, be mindful of the following;

• Incentives are offered from the merchant in the shape of discount, it brings more conversions. A first-time buyer incentive is another good marketing tool.
• Coupons and cashback incentives make a good impact on sales.
• Season sales are a big hit, take this fact into account.
• Select the products with a large sales volume.
• Is a merchant offering a guarantee? It gives peace of mind to the buyer, hence a better conversion rate.
• AOV (Average Order Value) is within a reasonable price range. ($20 to $82).
• Merchant has offered free shipping. A recent survey from “retail study” shows that 9 out of 10 shopper’s top incentive is free shipping to make a purchase. Do consider this marketing tool.
• Look for following features in the banner ads;

–  With clear branding message

–  Simple and concise message incorporated animations in the banner

–  Ads have clear Call-to-Action

Monetize with Google AdSense:

In Google AdSense apply for the monetization of your website or blog. On approval, you get the Google script, just add Google script to your website and the Google will start displaying Ads on your website.

Meaning by, whenever someone views the Ad and clicks the Ad, you are paid the relevant commission. In Google AdSense, you are paid on a CPC (Cost per Click) basis. 

Directly Sell Ads to WordPress:

 If you’re using WordPress CMS then you can easily start monetizing your blog with WordPress plugin. It’s a simple and easy way but it works on the basis of CPM (Per Thousand Views).

Using the WordPress ad management plugin makes things easy. I recommend the AdSanity WordPress plugin.

AdSanity is an Ad management plugin that allows you to display self-hosted and network ads. You will find this plugin a great advertising solution. It not only allows to manage ads on your website, rather, also keeps you updated on views and clicks as well. Pretty COOL!

Some of the features include:

• It is light and fast hence no effect on your website speed
• All the core features are included in your basic plan but you can always augment the core features.
• You can set the date-based advertising ads,  by setting begin and end date.
• The core plugin starts as little as $49/year.

Sell Ads Directly to the Retailers by Sponsored Blog Posts:

If you’re mindful of your audience getting annoyed or offended by seeing Ads on your website. Then, this is the best to sponsor the blog for the company you want to advertise. Talk about their product and promote it to your readers but strategically incorporating the referral links into the content, without losing the usefulness of your blog.

For this, reach out to advertisers with one page your media kit i.e. your traffic stats, your audience demographics, social media following, likes, positive comments.

Negotiate a sponsorship deal and start publishing. But be mindful of the laws as at some places, you need to mention “sponsor Ads”

Writing Reviews on Your Website:

Writing review is similar to sponsored posts. But it’s not a blog rather a review of the products or services. In this, you incorporate the affiliate links in your content. But the content, so published must be relevant and useful.

In this, you approach the companies and ask for the paid reviews.

Flipping Websites on Auction sites:

If you make a website or running a blog that is getting traffic then you can sell it in the market and get paid for your efforts. Flippa is a big auction site. It’s a form of a marketplace where anybody can post a website for sale or can buy a website. There are 1000s of websites to buy and sell.

Please ensure that you build the website that’s in demand and price it appropriately. Put all the features into the marketplace. Rough formula to price the website is 25 times of your website earning. Revenue generating sites are always in demand.

To conclude, today almost every company is online and over 5 billion people search online for the product or service of their interest. With such a large online market, earning online should not be a problem. Just passion, hard work, consistency, and the right skill, with the investment of your time, will make you succeed 100%.