We look at various ways how you can make money online with a website.
Online money-making has become easier over the years, due to the growth of the internet and the online opportunities it presents.
But how easy is it to earn money online and keep earning a regular income from it?
Most think about creating a blog or website when looking to make money online. In theory, it sounds easy, just create a website, write about your favourite subject and then sit back and watch the money come rolling in.
Errr…..if only it was that easy, yes ok, it’s easy to create a stunning-looking website in only a few hours using a platform such as WordPress or Wix etc. However, getting traffic to it and monetising that traffic can be difficult, take a long time and become an absolute labour of love.
With over one billion websites at the last count active on the internet, your site would need to be something pretty special or operate in the right niche to stand out and attract visitors.
Although “organic” traffic predominately via Google is what we all strive for, there is now a growing breed of websites (BuzzFeed for instance) that rely on Social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, etc.) to attract the bulk of their visitors and earn revenue.
So let’s say you have created a nice-looking website, found the right niche to blog about and have discovered the Holy Grail of achieving a high level of daily visitors to your website…….how do you earn money from these visitors?
There are many ways to achieve this, quite often the best results are achieved by using a combination of the following.
1) Google AdSense
Perhaps the quickest and easiest means to start generating an income from your blog. Once you have registered for an AdSense account, you just simply cut and paste the code that Google supplies into side banners or posts on your website.
This code will then render the right genre of ads for your audience, subject to your website’s niche or the visitors viewing history (via tracking Cookies).
You earn money when someone clicks through one of the hosted ads (whether they purchase anything or not). Although AdSense is quick and easy to set up, you do need a high amount of traffic to earn any decent revenue from it.
As an example, to earn £100 you will typically need approximately 150,000 visitors. That’s a lot of traffic needed for such a relatively small return.
2) Lead Generation
Capture enquiries on your website for products and services and then sell them on a cost-per-lead basis (CPL) directly to a company. This works particularly well with companies operating within the property, investment and travel sectors.
3) Email Marketing
Similar to the above. Build a database of opted-in subscribers and then offer companies the opportunity to send an email marketing campaign to them, again this works well with companies operating within the property, investment and travel sectors.
4) Sell advertising space on your website
This has the ability to produce a much higher revenue stream. You approach companies that operate within your website’s niche or a related niche and offer them a range of advertising opportunities on your website. These opportunities can be banner advertising or an advertorial feature.
5) Affiliate Marketing
Similar to AdSense in some respects in that you will typically need a high amount of traffic to earn any serious revenue from it. You will need to open an account with an affiliate program directory such as Commission Junction or Affiliate Window.
These directories will facilitate you to work with an affiliate provider, they will usually supply you with a range of marketing material for you to add to your website, you usually only get paid on a Cost Per Action basis (CPA), i.e. you only earn a commission when someone actually buys something, unlike AdSense when you get paid for just referring a visitor whether they purchase or not.
The above list is not exhaustive by any means, but it does offer a few simple and realistic ways to earn an income online, however as stated at the beginning of this article, it lives and dies on the ability to generate traffic to it.
In Summary:
Making money online with a website is very achievable, there are websites making a lot of money each month from a variety of online money-making strategies.
However, as stated above, it takes time and patience to create content, posts and articles, etc. You then need to wait for Google to index it and show it in search results.
The alternative method to speed up the process is to pay for traffic by promoting your website and content on social media or search engines like Google and Bing etc.
Good luck!
