10+ Proven Ways to Make Money Online: Monetization Guide

Many websites are not monetized well enough, which results in poor looks and conversions. However, this can be avoided if one is aware of the top ways of making money online. Monetization is not only about making revenue but also considering several other important things that you should implement when monetizing your website. Read further to find out how to monetize a website.

Monetization means conversion of something into currency by means of banner and text ads, various tools, sponsored blogging, etc. These are only a few factors website owners should take into consideration when working on the enhancement of the look and functionality of their projects.

10 Proven Ways of Making Money Online

For many marketing specialists out there, the best example of monetization techniques implementation in practice is a simple newspaper. Even though one can find loads of ads in newspapers, there nothing distracts uses from the main content. The main focus is given to the main body, whereas commercials are considered as an additional content that may come in handy to the readers when they need it.

This is the perfect scenario of how to organize content on your web page. Everything should look clean and organic, without the abundance of extra elements that can make it look cluttered and annoying. Clever website monetization results in better conversions and more engaged visitors. In you want to achieve success but don’t know what to begin with, follow the tips we have listed below. Applying these you can not only enhance user experience but also get a number of conversions.

Properly Chosen Keywords

First, think about the niche and topic of your website. Every web resource has its particular target audience. For instance, when we are talking about women’s clothing store – those will be female users, when dealing with hunting or fishing project – you should most likely target male customers. Based on this knowledge, with the help of Google tools like Keyword Planner, search for the most relevant keywords that will bring traffic and profit to your website. The quality of content is of highest importance on any website. So, making it grammatically correct and properly spelled you can improve your site’s SEO ranking.

Using Google Monetization Programs

Google has developed several tools that will help you improve your website monetization. These include Google Adwords, Google Adsense and Google Analytics. Let’s see what exactly can be done with the help of each of the aforementioned solutions.

• First things first. Though Google Adwords is a paid service, a number of websites provide free Google Adwords credits to have your site up and running. This is a form of Pay-Per-Click advertising that enables your website appear at the top of Google Search based on your business’ keywords. So, how does it work? Many of you have faced this without even knowing that these are the results of the work of Google’s clever tool. When searching something, you get two types of search results – the organic results are listed on the left side of your page, whereas there is also a column with ‘sponsored links’ placed on the right side of the page. These are the pages that are somehow related to your search terms, powered by Google Adwords. The biggest advantage of this tool is that you are targeting the audience that is interested in the products and services you provide. It just makes it easier to find you out of the thousands of similar projects.
• With Google Adsense, you are to decide what ads to display on your website. Devending on the topic and audience of your resource, you can set up commercials that match your site’s theme.
• Having the website launched, we need to keep track of its success on the web. This includes the number of visits, conversions, clicks, etc. Google Analytics tool provides access to all this data.

Banner Advertising

This is one of the most traditional, basic forms of website monetization. It works in the following way – people reach your website, see a catchy ad, click it, and you get paid. Everything is easy as breathing. Mind that location of ads on your page highly matters. It’s been discovered that banners placed ‘above the fold’ perform way better than those placed below. The same happens with any area close to primary navigation and page content. On pages featuring long texts, Google recommends to place ads in the end of posts. In such a way, you can give visitors a hint on where to go and what to see next.

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No matter how you decide to place ads on your page, there is one thing to remember – it should look organic and uncluttered, otherwise you risk to simply loose viewers because of the poor content organization. Not only users will turn away from a website with too much advertizing, but such a resource goes under the risk of being panelized by Google as well.

Contextual Advertizing

Unlike banner ads, text ads contain written data mostly, sometimes accompanied by small image thumbnails. The goal of such commercials is promoting a particular site or service on your web resource. You don’t have to adjust them on your own, everything is done automatically to match the content on the website.

Text ads can be found either within posts on your site on grouped in a special block moved to the right or left side of the main content. Tastes differ, as well as the way people perceive such type of advertizing. While some find these intrusive, for others this is a clearer form of promotion of certain services on the web.

Affiliate Programs

There are so many affiliate programs available to website owners on the web. Most of them are free and require minimal effort to start gaining revenue. Affiliate marketing is all about promotion of someone else’s products on your site. You are free to choose what products you want to promote, write a short review about them, and create a banner with your custom link. The more people click it and make a purchase, the more revenue you get.

Lead Generation

In many ways, lead generation is similar to affiliate marketing, with one slight difference. In affiliate marketing you get paid only for a purchase a visitor made after clicking a commercial shared on your website. When it comes to lead generation, you get paid for the number of clicks on affiliate links. Lead generation is of special use for businesses with engaged audience that reaches a web resource in search of more information or stuff to buy. So, if your audience is right for it, such monetization technique can bring you much profit hassle-free.

Sponsored Blogging

Once your website is popular enough, with good amount of monthly visitors, you can start offering sponsored posts. There are so many advertisers who would be interested in sharing such content on your website. Another option is gaining profit by writing short reviews for advertisers and posting it on your resource. For instance, you have a travel website and an advertiser asks you to review a tour and share it for users to read. Some sponsors will ask you to add a direct note disclosing that the article has been sponsored and should be considered as advertising. Depending on the product or service you are writing about, you may get paid form $5 and more.

Newsletters

Newsletter is considered one of the proven ways of keeping in touch with the audience. Start with gathering your visitors’ emails to build a list. Create relationship by providing helpful, interesting information and assistance for free. Only after that start sending different offers, discounts, etc. via email. This is never a bad idea to keep the audience informed.

Selling Digital Stuff

Digital products are in high demand among modern users. Thanks to the ongoing tech progress, more of us prefer ebooks to the more traditional paperback; we watch videos, listen to seminars and other stuff on the go. So, it will be a great idea to start selling ebooks, audio files, video series right on your website or via the largest online retailers, like Amazon, eBay, etc. One of the biggest advantages of selling digital stuff is that after being created once, it brings revenue for months or even years to come. If you are working in the field that doesn’t change a lot, there will be no need in releasing updates of such products that often.

Sell Your Site

So, you have developed a great website, it gets constantly updated and a fair amount of visitors, but for some reason you can’t or don’t want to maintain it any longer. This is when the time to sell it comes. When deciding on the cost of your brainchild, there are several factors to consider:

• Traffic always matters. So, the more traffic to get on a daily basis, the higher price you may demand.
• How trustworthy is your domain on scale from 0 to 10? What PageRank can your website boast? The higher PageRank indicates a better website, so the higher you rank, the more you get.
• How much revenue do you get from your website monthly? Let’s say, your site brings $500 a month. So, the price to sell it would be a year’s worth revenue, i.e. $6,000. That would be only the starting price. Along with other factors listed above, it may grow manifold.

Well, now you’ve learnt about the 10 best ways of making money online. To some degree, all of them are interconnected and can be applied to one and the same web resource for gaining more revenue. However, there are plenty of other less popular yet effective website monetization ideas. We’ve included some of them on the list below. Read, investigate, test, and earn more money on your website.

• Offer consulting
• Provide teaching programs
• Host paid webinars
• Create a conference around your site
• Create a poll asking people on what they like/dislike about your project
• Provide coupons
• Add a ‘hire me’ page, especially if you are working with freelance writers
• Sell content
• Display audio ads
• Ask for donations

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Any other ideas how to make money from a website? Share with us in the comments block below. We always appreciate your feedback!