www.BreakingOut.NET » Launch Your Own Website – Part Ten: Monetizing Your Site

Launch Your Own Website – Part Ten: Monetizing Your Site

Written by kevin

This is Part Ten of my article series entitled “Launch Your Own Website”

The series is based on my practical experience in launching my own site.

Part Ten explains how you can start generating revenue by monetizing your blog.

Now you have your site researched, built and online, you can start selecting some products to sell. This is known as monetizing your blog.

Add Google Adsense to your site

One of the first things many people do to monetize their site is to sign up to Google Adsense. This is an advertising system provided by Google for owners of websites.

You register your site with Google Adsense for free. Google Adsense then automatically displays ads on your site and you will be paid when people click on them. The amount you will receive depends on how much traffic your site builds up and how many of your audience click on the ads.

Google Adsense is OK for your blog as a start, but it is a very poor way of trying to earn revenue from your site and not really advisable in the long run.

Instead of using Adsense, I’d strongly recommend selecting another mode of business which has more potential to generate income from your site. One such method is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is More Lucrative

Affiliate marketing is a vast subject in itself and I only have space here to mention the basics involved.

With affiliate marketing you are basically acting as an agent promoting the products or services on behalf of merchants.

You sign up with specialist affiliate networks who act as middleman between website owners and merchants or companies wanting to sell goods and services on the Internet.

This can be much more profitable than Google Adsense if you create relevant content to support their products on your blog.

You receive commission whenever a visitor clicks on one of the product links on your site. These commission rates vary widely depending on the product and the company, but they can be very lucrative. Obviously how much revenue you will make will depend on a number of factors, such as the type of product you choose to promote and the level of demand for that product.

Naturally the quality of your site content and the relevance of your site to the product and it’s market also determine your affiliate earnings, as well as how much visitor traffic your site generates.

It’s important to select reputable affiliate networks and only promote products and services which are relevant to your target audience.

There are now a large number of affiliate networks, but amongst the biggest are Clickbank and Commission Junction. So I would recommend that you start with these. Exercise caution though with Clickbank because some of the products listed there are of relatively poor quality.

Amazon also run their own affiliate program, although their commission rates tend to be much lower than other networks.

On the other hand, Amazon is very easy to implement and integrate into your site. The Amazon name is well known and they offer a wide range of different products. There’s almost certainly something in Amazon’s product range that will be of interest to the audience of your site if you wish to become an Amazon affiliate.

Here are the addresses of some affiliate networks that you can get started with:

www.clickbank.com
www.cj.com
affiliate-program.amazon.com
www.google.com/adsense

My advice is to go and visit the affiliate networks, familiarise yourself with their products, and select a small number that your audience will most likely be interested in.

Don’t go mad – it’s easy when you visit for the first time to sign up for all sorts of exciting looking offers. It’s better keep your affiliate “shopping list” selective and only choose the most relevant products for your subject niche. You can always add more later.

Affiliate networks have the advantage in that they provide a standardized, centralized interface to merchants that run affiliate programs. This usually includes sales and statistical information. Through the affiliate network, merchants make advertising and other digital promotional materials available for you to place on your site.

Also the affiliate network usually acts as a go-between between affiliates and merchants by taking care of the payments and forwarding of sales commissions to affiliates from the merchants in their programs.

Add Email Marketing to Your Site

Email is one of the most effective ways for communicating with your audience. The great thing about email is that you can provide your readers with relevant content and product offers sent to them directly and personally. You’ll get much more revenue from your blog if you add email marketing.

Email marketing is not spam, which is illegal. Rather it is “permission marketing” – whereby you first obtain the person’s permission to send them emails from your site. You never ever send emails to people who have not signed up to your site.

What you do is to create what is known as a “list” of subscribers for your site. You can then mail your list subscribers interesting content and selected targeted offers for products and services that are most likely to interest them.

An established and accepted way of doing this is to offer something – typically a newsletter or free report, guide or other free offer of value to your audience in return for their giving you their email address. You can then email them a suitable intervals with information about offers and deals relating to the products and services you promote.

It’s important to make sure you have their express permission to do this. Normally this is done by means of using an email opt-in autoresponder service such as Aweber or Mailchimp. This are very low cost (in the case of Mailchimp, for low volume mailings, free of charge) and provide a “double opt-in” check for when people sign up.

This means that when someone indicates by clicking on a link or button on your site that they want to receive your newsletter or free offer, the first thing that happens is that the email opt-in service sends them an email to the address they have entered on your site.

They then first have to click on a link within the mail from the email opt-in service to confirm that they wish to receive your newsletter and other future communications by email.

Once they have done this, you are permitted to email them in future. This is known as the “double opt-in” system and it was designed to ensure that Internet and Email Marketers have obtained express permission from their prospects before mailing them in future.

Your emails must also make it clear how they can unsubscribe if and when they wish. This also makes good sense because people easily forget that they’ve signed up and it serves to reinforce and jog their memories. The facilities and the links for this are provided by the email opt-in service and are easy to implement and include in your emails. You are also legally required to state your real name and physical business address in your marketing emails.

Open an Account with Aweber or Mailchimp

Both Aweber and Mailchimp are highly reputable and reliable email opt-in service companies. They both have excellent after sales and suer support. Mailchimp has the advantage of offering a free service for low-volume mailings.

When you sign up for your account with Aweber or Mailchimp, select a sign-up box to place on your website to collect email addresses. Make sure you create at least one email welcoming your subscribers to your list.

Both the Aweber and Mailchimp sites guide you through the whole list configuration procedure step by step.

Offer a Freebie – and a Newsletter

You can then link in your report or guide or whatever you wish to offer to your subscribers when they sign up.

It’s also a good idea to offer a newsletter series. This can consist of specially written content for your newsletter as well as posts or links to posts from your site.

Build your products and services into your newsletter posts

You can also include your marketing offers in your newsletter series.

Don’t overdo it on your marketing offers. Always make sure your newsletter mails contain worthwhile content for your readers, just as you provide for the visitors to your website.

There’s no need to be coy about sending your readers marketing offers. If these are relevant products for your audience – as they should be, then you’re providing your readers with a useful service by telling them about it. Just make sure that you provide valuable and relevant offers and that you include good quality content in your newsletters.

Do not spam people!

Spamming refers to sending what the industry calls “Unsolicited Bulk Email”. In other words, sending emails to people who have not signed up to your list.

Never email people directly without their prior consent. Apart from annoying people, this can lead to your Internet address – and your web-hosting account, being withdrawn by your provider. It’s also illegal. By law you are only permitted to email people who have given you their express permission for you to do so. By international agreement, anti-spamming laws now apply to most of the world’s jurisdictions.

This also means you need to be especially careful about passing on your email list to other marketers. Some Internet Marketers exchange their email with each other in order to cross-promote their own offers to them. This is sometimes referred to as a “Joint Venture”.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with joint ventures in themselves, you need to tread carefully where email lists are concerned to avoid contravening anti-spamming laws.

The problem with exchanging email lists is that you are in effect relinquishing control over your email list and you can never be 100 percent certain where your list will end up. Also, it may well be in contravention of your own website and newsletter sign-up terms and conditions.

Don’t go mad in emailing your list members. Whilst your prospects will want to hear from you occasionally and are also likely to be interested in relevant offers and deals relating to your niche – otherwise they wouldn’t have visited your site or have signed up in the first place, you should always treat them as you would wish to be treated yourself. No one likes being bombarded with emails continually from a website – even if it happens to be their favourite site. Moderation is always best!

Offer People Real Value

It’s also important to offer real value to people.

This means making sure that the content of your newsletter and also the contents of any free guides or handbooks or other material you provide on your site in return for people opting in is of consistent good quality. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it should be second class standard or worse.

TIP! Get Yourself a Lightbox from Popup Domination!

An excellent way to encourage more people to join your list is to use what is known as a “lightbox”.

A lightbox is a WordPress Plugin which provides a pop-up box to give people the opportunity to enter their name and email address and join your subscriber list when they visit your site for the first time.

By combining using a sidebar sign-up subscription box, together with a lightbox sign-up, you’ll be able to dramatically increase your subscription rates.

By far the best lightbox WordPress Plugin available is Popup Domination from www.popupdomination.com

This currently costs just $37 and it’s about the best email marketing investment you can make. It’s simple to install and configure, looks very professional and not at all spammy.

Invest Some Time in Learning Email Marketing

There’s a great deal to Email Marketing and the whole subject of “opting in” and there is only space here to provide a very basic outline.

The best advice is to refer to the free guides and handbooks that Aweber and Mailchimp produce on the subject. They also offer videos and occasional webinars on the subject of Email Marketing and List-Building.

Email Marketing and List Building is a vital part of monetizing your site successfully and it’s something you will need to invest time, effort and money in to learn properly.

Good Luck with your Email Marketing campaigns!