One of the first challenges you'll likely face is the task of converting your site visitors to paying customers-whether you want them to buy from you or from advertisers. People are coming to your site expecting something free. To persuade your visitors to even consider making a purchase, you'll have to make sure that any advertising on your site is closely related to the content that brought them there in the first place.
Of course, before you begin selling "all those eyeballs" to advertisers, you might want to consider whether you have anything to put in front of them. Is there a related product you can develop?
However, if you prefer to cash in on your site traffic without the hassle of developing and promoting a product of your own, there are a number of lucrative possibilities. Let's take a look at two strategies: attracting paid advertising and promoting affiliate products.
Attract Paid Advertising
Your site is attracting a lot of visitors, all of whom are interested in a specific topic, so you should definitely be able to sell ad space on your site to advertisers of related products. However, you should keep in mind that the value of online advertising has dropped a lot since the early days of the Internet. Most online ad formats just don't generate the revenue they used to, so these days, advertisers offer modest payment for placement on all but the most visited sites.
If you don't want to seek out advertisers who are interested in your niche market, one easy alternative is to sign up for Google's AdSense program. Google evaluates the content of your site, then serves ads it thinks will interest your visitors. When someone clicks an ad on your site, the advertiser pays a fee to Google, and Google pays you a portion of that fee. It's an easy, almost hands-free way to generate some extra revenue from your site traffic.
Ad brokering companies such as Real Media and Burst Media offer similar services, but be sure to check out their terms and conditions, which can vary widely from company to company.
If you don't mind taking a more hands-on approach, you can research companies that market products related to your site content, then contact them with an offer to sell space. Remember, they will be cashing in on the value of the site you've created-so before you accept an offer, make sure you decide what ad space on your site is worth.
Promote Affiliate Products
Recommending affiliate products is a great way to get started making money online. An affiliate program is simply a no-risk partnership that allows you to promote another company's product or service on your Web site to earn a percentage of their sales.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you are assigned a special "affiliate URL" that tracks all the visitors you send to a company's Web site and all the sales you generate. Each time someone you've referred makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
Reference: http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/gettingtraffic/asktheebusinessmarketinganddevelopmentexpert/article69616.html |
