If you have ever taken the time to actually look at the websites you visit, you will see that there are few that aren’t monetized. In this day of digital technology, a monetized website is one of the very best ways to earn a residual income while building a site that is continually rising in value, itself, over time. Whether you are looking to sell your website at some future point or simply looking for ways to increase its overall valuation, here are five great ways you can count on to monetize your website in both the short and long term.
1. Affiliate Marketing
There are many reasons for developing a website, but blogs are among the most common. Not only are they easy to design but with quality content, they can be among the most accessed in cyberspace. This is primarily due to effective SEO that is designed with just the right amount of competition in the selective use of keywords and phrases.
Blogs are also among the easiest to monetize with affiliate marketing, especially when products and/or services are related to the topic of the content or the site itself. SEO brings traffic there and those affiliate links you’ve added can quickly answer a need you developed in your content. You can have reasonable expectations of selling well-placed products which will bring in commissions for every sale made from your link to the merchant page and those reasonable expectations transfer to your site’s overall valuation as well!
2. Sponsored Content
Once your website grows in rank, it will be easier for you to accept payment for sponsored content on your site. Marketers are always looking for high ranking sites to post their clients’ articles on so you really can make a tidy profit off articles you post. Then, as they gain rank and bring even more traffic in, you will be able to continue accepting payment for posting content and throughout all of this, your site continues to grow in value as well.
3. On-Site E-commerce
Some blogs actually open an e-Commerce store on their sites as well. They can sell products made by the site owner or those bought in bulk and sold for a profit. This is different than affiliate marketing because there, nothing is sold on your site but rather you earn a commission for every item sold from a customer clicking on your link. Even so, both can provide a nice monthly income if done properly.
4. Offer Ad Space for Sale
This is a bit different than Google Ads, for example. Here you will offer space for sale directly from the company wishing to place an ad. The way in which you get paid is for the space rather than a commission for products being sold. Sometimes you will get an arrangement that offers both, but that is a separate strategy from selling ad space direct to a business.
5. PPC Ads
These have been mentioned briefly above and are one of the oldest ways of monetizing websites still in use today. It all centers, on the payment you receive every time a visitor clicks through to an ad posted on your site. You will get a commission for products sold and this is where a great number of businesses are willing to pay.
The one thing you will want to note is that there will be times when you must post a disclaimer regarding the fact that you will be accepting compensation for products sold or click-thru links. This is non-negotiable. If you don’t post the disclaimer, your site can be penalized and obviously the content removed. This will cost you in terms of residual income as well as valuation for your site, so don’t forget those disclaimers!
