Many people have asked the question, “How do I make money from my website or blog?”
There’s lots of different ways to make money with your website. Some people may not want to make money through/from their website but hey, running a good website takes a lot of time and in many cases it takes money to run (domain name purchase, hosting costs, code editors, and other tools). Below are a number of ways to make money from your site:
First and Foremost: Offer valuable and unique content. This is one of the most important things above all else you can do. If you don’t have the content people are looking for you’ll be hard-pressed to make much of an income online. With good traffic to your website, you’ll most likely have success by implementing the following suggestions:
Offer Products or Services Online: You can sell physical products, services, eBooks, etc. from your website. You can use a complex shopping cart system, or you can use a simple “Buy Now” button. Good resources to take a look at are Google Checkout and PayPal.
Google Adsense: Use Google Adsense to place advertisements on your site. Google Adsense can place ads that are related to the content of your site, so if you’re writing about gardening, the ads placed by Adsense will probably be related to gardening. You then are compensated as visitors click the advertisements. Since the advertisements are related automatically to the content of your site, you have a better chance of having visitors click the links.
Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs let you partner with other websites. You essentially place an advertisement (usually one they’ve created) on your website for a product, service or membership. When a visitor clicks on the advertisement (and purchases in most cases) you receive a commission for the referral. You could get started with Amazon.com which has a wide variety of products that you can promote on your own website and receive a commission when someone purchases.
Donations: Donations are a great way for visitors to show their support. Hosting a good website usually isn’t free. If a visitor really wants to send a message that they like what they see, sending a donation is a great way to do it. PayPal has a secure way to send donations by credit card or e-check. You can create a Donate button from their site and place it on your own site. Click here to visit PayPal.com.
There are, of course, numerous options out there, but whatever you do, don’t lose site of the fact that people are probably visiting your site to see your content. Keep the content coming and interesting, and the rest will fall into place if you take a few simple steps to get started.
Other Suggestions for Helping your Online Income
Analyze – Use Google Analytics for tracking the number of visitors to your site. Find out which pages are most popular. If you find that certain pages are more popular than others on your site, gear content and products towards the subject of those pages.