How to Monetize Your Website Without Advertisements
Monetizing your website can feel like a failure in execution when you’re relying on ads. Using ads can even present more chores than they are paying you for space on your website. You may have to chase down the advertisers to get your payments or wait until you have hit their minimum payout threshold before receiving a payment. Or you are chasing them down to advertise on your website. You could even be having trouble understanding Google’s AdSense software so that you can get the most out of it. But the biggest con for using advertisements on your blog is the mere fact that you are growing someone else’s business, when you could be growing your own.
However, there is hope to monetizing your website without having to rely on an inconsistent ad revenue stream. You don’t have to have a huge following already to be able to monetize your website without relying on third-party ads.
Getting Started
Before you start monetizing your blog, there are a few things your website needs if you want to be successful from the get go. This is a good time to consider upgrading to a managed hosting plan to ensure your website can handle any additional traffic as well as to ensure your website is kept up to date and protected against latest security threats. By doing this, you can focus on delivering your content, product, or service to the world at large, instead of worrying about the technical upkeep.
You should also consider getting serious about growing your email list and slowly work on turning your readers into potential customers. Using some form of popup to grab those email addresses becomes essential. Don’t worry that you have nothing to sell at the moment; focus on making your email following grow.
Have mobile technology at the forefront of everything that you will do. Mobile visitors are larger than desktop visitors and account for more sales. The real reason for this is that our phones or tablets are easily transported and can be accessed anywhere, where we need to be at home to use our desktops. Why wait to get home to check out a sale if I can do it on my 15 minute break at work?
Make sure your website loads as fast as possible. Any kind of delay hurts you; even when you aren’t selling anything! Make use of great visual effects that captivate your audience, the more captivated they are the more willing they will be to hand over an email address, and more likely they will be to purchase from you at some point!
Five Ways To Monetize Your Site
Once you’ve made sure that your website is ready to be monetized, it’s time to explore potential revenue streams.
Write an eBook
You can easily look at your post stats and see which ones were major successes and which ones were, quite frankly, a flop. Without reusing it word for word, you can use the aspects that really resonated with your followers (look at their comments) and start putting together a book based on the community in your niche.
You can get in contact with your favorite followers and offer them a free look at the draft and use what they say to make that ebook a real gem, and have an idea of what your target audience is willing to pay for it! When you give those same followers the finished product it is more likely that they will direct everyone they know to get a copy from you!
Offer some merch
This idea takes a little time to research, and then even more time get right. Merchandise picking can be a private affair like stationary that almost no one else will see, or it can be a very public affair like seeing someone wearing your custom designed tee or hoodie. This idea should resonate with the personality of the blog, is this a place where people come to be entertained or informed? Does it have that quaintness about it? Or is it loud and in your face? Coffee mugs may be great; but no one sees them whereas everyone will notice your clothing line.
Make a membership area
Almost everything on the internet is free. You can look up just about anything without having to pay for it, and for the sharing of information that really is a good thing. But more and more websites worldwide are starting to make some changes. They are starting to leave out the juicy bits in favor of having visitors pay for it through a membership. Some websites are completely members only, while others have both a free and paid access to their content.
Directory listings
You know how you love to praise other people in your niche or community? Here’s how they can pay you for the praise, in a way. You can make a directory listing of all the relevant things within your niche, from other websites that cover the same topic matter to the brick and mortar shops that supply your needs for that topic.
Make an eCourse
Only for those that are truly passionate about what they do with their blogs, an ecourse can really be a great way to make a residual income. People are constantly looking to improve themselves and learn new skills which means you can make a course on literally just about any topic. It’s a great way to get back to basics and then drive through some really complex matters, and best of all, it establishes you as the true expert in your niche.
Get Started With Monetizing Your Website
The ideas above have the potential to make you a passive income and give you more control over how much you earn. There are no advertisers to chase after, or bits of code to put in to get the next ad working. Finally, you only need to create your product once and then focus on marketing it to drive consistent sales.
