Creating and maintaining a site means investing in development, hosting and domain name fees, content filling, and traffic attraction. Even if you create a site on a free website builder, you are wasting a valuable resource – time. Monetization of the site helps to return the money spent.
Website monetization’s definition includes all the ways to make money on your resource via your visitors. Contextual and banner advertising, affiliate programs for making money, selling your own goods and services, and even the very site can be a money-making tool.
The main condition for monetization is the presence of traffic. If more and more users visit your site every day, you can start making money on it and even reach passive income. In this article, we will tell you what you need to get the most out of your resource, and how to do it.
Monetization Types
PPC Advertising via Google AdSense
PPC (Pay Per Click) is an online advertising model from which site owners can earn passive income every time a reader clicks on an ad banner. The most popular tool for this is Google AdSense.
Google AdSense is one of the easiest ways to earn extra money because it doesn’t take much effort to advertise on your blog or website. Another great point is that you can apply for an AdSense partnership even if you have multiple sites.
And Ads plugin by BestWebSoft can simplify all the other work you need to set this, or any other kind of advertisement on your WordPress website. You can download it by clicking on the banner.
Advertising Space Selling
You can also try selling free space on your site directly to advertisers. This method takes longer, but it maximizes the revenue you’ll get from showing ads.
Free space refers to links at the bottom of the page, side banners, or small pop-ups. Prices for each type of advertising can also vary – you negotiate them directly with advertisers. However, to use this monetization method, you need a high conversion rate, not just traffic, since this method uses a pay-per-click or pay-per-visitor model. Advertisers will pay you based on the number of people who click on the ad or visit the site.
Unlike with Google AdSense, it requires more skills, as your site most likely would take more effort to make appealing to your partners. As well as it tests your negotiation skills, but in the end, the profit might be higher if done correctly.
Affiliate Programs
There are other ways to monetize a site, such as affiliate marketing. If you have a talent for reviewing and promoting a product, this method is for you.
With referral links, you can earn commissions when readers buy products or services from companies you partner with. Affiliate marketing is one of the most affordable sources of passive income.
The steps are as follows:
- Your site has to work in the recommendations or product overview field.
- Find partners to advertise their products.
- Unobtrusively add referral links to your content.
By the way, BestWebSoft also has its own Affiliate Program, you can join it by following the banner.
Donation Acceptance
This site monetization method involves your skills and the creative content you post. Some readers are willing to give monetary rewards to their favorite influencers. If your content has value and you need support to grow your site, you can politely ask for donations. Not every reader will donate, but if you have a lot of traffic, you can get enough funds to keep the site running.
You can place a “Donate” button on your site so that readers can contribute directly. Link it to payment systems such as PayPal, Stripe, or Fundly. Add buttons as widgets and place them anywhere. But make sure readers can easily find them. Website monetization depends on it.
Direct Selling of Products or Services
Suppose there is a website with interesting posts about real estate. It is regularly updated with interesting news and articles. A seller of apartments in new buildings orders advertising on this portal.
As a result, its visitors receive an abundance of valuable information on the subject of real estate and can at any time go directly to the site of the seller of apartments. The portal owner’s fee often depends on the number and volume of sales through such advertising. More often it is 5-10% of the cost of goods or services.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is a collaboration between you as a publisher and partner brands.
Companies pay to create content for them and publish it on your site. These could be product or sale announcements, special offers, infographics, or reviews. They can be written by you or by the sponsoring brand itself. You can charge a higher fee if you write and publish a text on your site yourself.
The factors to take under consideration are:
- Your influence on your readership.
- The number of posts you are doing monthly.
- Time and resources spent on content creation.
- The brand you are dealing with.
The better the former two factors and the lesser the latter, the better for you.
Membership Websites
Membership Websites are an advanced form of “Donation Acceptance” monetization. Unlike the former, to access certain content on such a site, the reader must pay.
If you are sure that your content is worth paying for, this method of website monetization is for you. Find the right model for your site:
- Subscription: Users pay monthly or yearly for access to the site’s content and benefits.
- Transaction: The sale of individual content, such as educational videos, audio recordings, or tutorials.
- Limiting your content: Content is free until readers reach a certain milestone. They will have to pay a certain amount if they want to continue reading.
Affiliate Coupons
A somewhat simpler form of Affiliate Marketing. In essence, it boils down to offering your visitors coupons from affiliates. Placing coupons on your site is also an opportunity to get more traffic.
The catch is, 97% of internet users nowadays try to find discounts for the goods they are going to buy. That’s where traffic is coming from. The rest is just the same as with affiliate programs.
The steps are relatively similar, but there is a number of actions you can take in that direction, for example:
- Post coupons from partners/programs your site works with.
- Contact your local and national retailers and bargain for offers that you can promote on your site.
- Or even create a site that exists to amalgamate all the coupons possible.
Conclusion
There are many places where you can find useful WordPress tutorials and improve your skills in administration, monetization and website building. To monetize a thematic website, news portal, or any other resource, you must first take care of its popularity and high attendance. The longer the site exists, the greater the number of unique visitors per day, the more money you can earn by selling traffic. In order not to lose the trust of the readership, it is better to use white promotion methods: links in the text, banners, branding, contextual advertising.