Beyond Google Adsense: Monetizing Your Website
Many new internet marketers end up running Google AdSense ads on
their websites, and many are happy about their earnings. As time
wears on the tendency is for the website revenue stream to
stagnate, especially when it's the websites only one. If you
plan on making the most money from your websites, you usually
end up attempting to monetize as many revenue streams as
possible. The reasons are relatively obvious. First, it takes an
awful lot of trust for a website owner to put all of their faith
completely in the hands of one entity, no matter how much they
may respect or admire that corporation. Google is a company
that's in the business of making a profit, so giving them
exclusive rights to all of your website's traffic is naive and
short-sighted. There are several ways you can squeeze more money
out of the ad space on your website:
1) Sell ads directly to people who need your targeted traffic 2)
Start a newsletter to keep in touch with your visitors and sell
sponsorships of the newsletter to customers who need to speak
directly to your visitors
Let's face it: eliminating the middle man is no secret as a way
to increase your profits. Google takes a big cut of the money
paid by advertisers and pays you the rest. Any deal you can
negotiate that bypasses them could very well result in increased
profits. At the very least, you owe it to yourself to find out.
Never be afraid to experiment with your ad placements. Switch ad
sizes, ad types, and even ad networks when it suits you. Any
time you can squeeze more revenue out of existing page views,
you are that much more profitable.
The most money you can make is by directly selling a product or
service to the public. Affiliate marketing of all types and
Adsense or YPN pay well, but generally the highest eCPM can be
achieved by direct sales. This also means you'll have more
expenses in most cases, and a bit more work, but the profit is
great enough that you should take a look into it. Perhaps your
site is well-suited to selling an E-Book? And product that you
can personally produce will definitely pay well, but make sure
it's a quality product that people like, or you'll waste a lot
of time doing customer service for unhappy people.
That is not the type of activity you want to get into. But if
you can produce a highly profitable product like an E-book, your
CPM will soar. This also means you can make more money off the
targeted traffic already on your website, without hurting your
AdSense sales. Just replace one AdSense block with an Ad for
your Own E-Book. If you convert 1% of your existing customers,
you will almost assuredly have higher total revenue than with
AdSense alone.
A nice balance of website revenue might look like this:
1) Google Adsense 2) Newsletter income from sponsors 3) One ad
block sold to direct sponsors 4) One ad block that results in
direct sale
If you're only doing number one, you're leaving money on the
table. Think of the unserved customers who are visiting your
websites every day and not buying an ad or product from you for
the simple reason that you don't sell anything! This might just
indicate a lack of interest on your part so far, but if you
correct it now you'll open up doors to ever great revenue. Don't
be blinded by the first answer, just because it's the simplest.
Dig deep and build a diversified revenue stream that will have
you rolling in the dough and living the type of lifestyle you
plan on becoming accustomed to.