Monetizing your website in the wrong way can drive away customers. For instance, recently I was doing research and ran across a runner's blog that had some great information. The only problem was that there were ten ads on all of their pages. I was so annoyed I quickly ran away from that page.On another site, I started reading a great article, only to find it broken into twelve pieces with ads between each section. I understand the need to sell to your customer, but ad networks are probably not the best use of your advertising efforts. Ad networks may be easy to install on a website, but the customer experience suffers and customers run away.
I know it seems easy to buy a website theme with ad spaces and plug-in an ad network. Yet, when we look at the numbers, we are being paid pennies for each of those ads. They may work if you
have thousands and thousands of visitors a day, but what if you only have a hundred or ten followers?
Here are two quick tips to you get started monetizing your blog
1. Understand Your Customer
Create a customer avatar. An avatar is a researched mental picture of your ideal reader. For instance, if I run a blog on how to cook BBQ, I can expect my readers to be men who are married and like watching sports. That is a good start, but did you know those guys are likely to drive a truck, go fishing and live in the southern part of the United States?
When you do your research, you pick up little cues about the kind of person they are. You can look at books and comments on sites like Amazon. You can look at forums and other web pages that cater to your type of customer. What kind of things are they trying to sell? What would be helpful to your ideal customer?
2. Change your thinking
Change the way you think about monetization. Instead of, "How can I make money with my blog or website?" ask "How can I best help the people who are visiting my page?"
When you know your customer and you think in terms of helping and serving, making money becomes much easier.
Ways to monetize
Review Products
The first way to monetize your website is to review products you found helpful. Create an account with sites like Amazon and Walmart. Select a product, write an honest review and include a referral link to that product. Anything visitors buy after visiting from your referral link will be credited to your account and you will get a percentage of the sale.
Use Beneficial Affiliate Products
Many people have created online products that could benefit your customers. Find a couple of products that would help your customers and share it on your page. You can post these banners in your ads spots or you can do a full write-up, much like the previous review product. A good place to start is to create an account with a site like ClickBank and search your topic.
Create Products
It is not hard to create your own digital product. With today's technology, we can record video from our laptop, phone or tablet directly to YouTube. We can even use YouTube's video editor to add words and titles. Or, we can record some audio training or motivation using simple free software like Audacity. We can even combine some of our own posts into a collection and add some additional information and create a book we can sell on our page or on Amazon.
Conclusion
The most lucrative way to monetize your webpage or blog is to know your customers and create products that help them. You are already an expert in your industry or you wouldn't have a website. Just learn to leverage that expertise and help your customer. They will respond by trusting your opinion and buying from you.
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