Creating content is not easy. You need to have a properly set up website running, write quality content, apply best SEO practices and much more. After your blog starts getting traffic from various sources, you will surely want to monetize your site.
Apart from personal benefit, monetizing your site will help you to improve your site. For example, you can use the money earned to purchase premium themes, better plugins, upgrade your hosting plan and much more. There are many ways to monetize your site. But, the most important thing is traffic. The more the traffic, the more you earn.
Let us now look at three most popular ways by which content creators monetize their blogs/sites.
Advertisements
Displaying ads on your website is a popular monetization practice. It is often the first choice of monetization among new creators. There are two ways of running ads. Either you run local ads on your website and charge a fee from the advertiser or you can join some advertisement network.
The second one is generally more preferred as it removes the headache of finding potential advertisers, especially if your website is new. The most popular advertising network is of course, Google’s AdSense. It is the primary way many websites monetize.
For running AdSense ads, you must fulfil Google’s criteria. For example, you must have sufficient amount of quality content on your site. You have to submit your site to Google and after reviewing it, you will receive a mail conveying their decision. If you are approved, congratulations! And if you are rejected, then no need to lose hope, you can always improve your site, write better content, optimize it properly and submit it again.
No one can predict exactly when Google approves a site, it varies. Some websites get approved with even ten posts while some struggle to get approval even with twenty+ posts. One thing to keep in mind is that Google also checks for the quality of the posts and not only the quantity. So, the best you can do is to write quality content and keep improving. You will definitely get approved at some point of time.
Apart from AdSense, there are also other ad networks like Facebook’s Audience Network which you can use. You can explore various opportunities and settle for the one you find the best.
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs are one more popular way of monetizing your site. In fact, many creators earn more from affiliate programs than what they do from ad networks. But here also, the most important factor is traffic. You need to have a lot of traffic ,because not everyone who visit your site will purchase through your affiliated link. So, the probability of purchase increases with increasing number of traffic.
There are many affiliate programs out there. Some popular ones are Amazon Affiliate Program, Bluehost Affiliate Program, etc. You can visit their sites and read about their terms and conditions before applying.
Affiliate Programs work because the visitor believes in the authenticity of the website. Therefore, it may not seem to be a good option for beginners. After your site becomes popular and people start trusting it, you can go for affiliate programs.
Most creators provide affiliate links along with a relevant content. For example, if you post about the specs and features of a phone, then it is most likely that after reading the post, the visitor may make a purchase through the provided affiliate link. On the other hand, if you just display a link randomly, then chances are that people will ignore it.
Selling Digital Products
You can sell digital goods through your website. The most popular one that many creators sell are e-books. Apart from e-books, you can sell images, courses, subscriptions, etc.
If you have knowledge of a particular domain, then you can create a series of videos explaining the concepts and then upload it to your website in the form of a digital course. Apart from this, you can offer subscriptions in your website in exchange for some extra features like some special posts, services, etc.
There are many e-commerce plugins which will let you sell digital goods easily. You need not worry much about handling payments and all. In this case also, your content matters and users should feel that they are getting what they paid for. Otherwise, your reputation will suffer and it will affect the purchase rate of your digital goods.
Wrapping Up
The goal should be to create valuable content and give your visitors a reason to visit again. When traffic increases, your monetization opportunities will also increase. Hope you liked this post and wishing you success!
Also read: Get Yourself A Professional Website
