Create a website and the money will soon start rolling in…right? Well, no, not really. There are many factors involved with making money online and the stories you see online about people having an instant passive income or quickly generating more cash than they can count are either not real, or very few and far between.
When you start making money online, you soon realise that you have to work for every penny generated. Very rarely will it simply fall into your lap. So what are the best ways to make your website or online presence profitable?
Find your niche
A simple soundbite, but one that is absolutely true. It basically means find a niche area of your expertise and expand on it. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, hone in on a particular speciality within your sector and cover everything there is about it. Using websites as an example, a search for ‘web designer in your area’ will bring back thousands of results of companies all targeting the same keywords. However, web design for Golf Clubs / Hotels / Manufacturing etc will bring back much fewer results, allowing you to compete more successfully.
Think about what makes you different and emphasise this as your USP (unique selling point) to make people want to engage with your offering, rather than a competitor. Whilst this article is about making money online, this technique is recommended for SEO as well to help get your page more positions in the top 10.
Regardless of what your product or service is, there will be a niche that you can offer, leveraged with your USP’s, to create an offer for your ideal customers that is more enticing than your competitors offering.
Translate viewers into revenue using Adsense.
You know those adverts that appear on peoples websites when browsing the web? Well, each of those websites is making money from those advertisements and you can too.
This type of display marketing works by signing up to a platform like Google Adsense which takes over areas of your website to show adverts of companies that are running Google Ads on the display network. The website owner makes money on each click on these ads. Whilst it is a very small amount per-click, these can soon add up, and as you can imagine, the more visitors to your website, the more clicks the ads will get and the more revenue you will earn.
Creating a popular website that generates thousands (hopefully hundreds of thousands) of visitors per-month is not an easy task, but it is one that be be fruitful. Most online newspaper publications run ads on their articles, which is what makes them money and allows them to pay for Social advertising to display a ‘free’ link to an article.
Directories, high content news sites and other websites with lots of content do well from a money making perspective through allowing these ads on their website, but it does come at a cost. They are super annoying! When you visit a site that has lots of ads, it can generate ill feeling and turn people away from the website as it does not translate to a good user experience.
YouTube Videos
The seemingly #1 profession for many youngsters these day…a YouTuber or a Tik Tocker!. But could they be onto something? YouTube and Tik Tok rewards highly viewed content in the form of cash payments per 1000 views (more if you allow ads in your video) The difficult part in this is you first have to create video content that people actually want to watch and ideally related to your primary service.
Not only can YouTube create a passive income when people are viewing your videos, but YouTube can also help drive sales and conversions in a more traditional way. YouTube is the second most used search engine on the world (second to Google obviously) so if yo have, or can create great videos, then YouTUbe is definitely a great place to post them to.
If you have a website that you want to make money from, or are looking for ideas on how you can use more, please get in touch with us to start a conversation and get you on the path to a higheer, more efficient income from your website.
