How to Make Money with Websites (Page 2)
Blifaloo’s guide to building income generating websites ———————————————————
5. Generating Income from your web site
Huh? Once you have the content in place, you can start incorporating Advertising and Affiliate links into your site to create revenue.
How to : You’ll need to sign up for these programs. For content based sites I recommend going with a text link contextual advertiser such as Google Adsense. Contextual means that the ads displayed on your site will automatically match your content. So if you have a site about dogs, the ad code you place on your site will automatically display ads based on dogs.
Important!Make your website first… then apply for Google Adsense, Amazon Associates, and other affiliate programs. Otherwise you probaly won’t be accepted into their programs.
I also recommend signing up with Amazon.com’s Affiliate program. They provide many ways of letting you (the website publisher) incorporate affiliate links to their products into your site. Each time a visitor on your site clicks an affiliate link to an Amazon.com product and makes a purchase you receive a commission. Groovy.
There are many more advertisers and affiliate programs to use. Some will work better than others depending on the subject matter of your site. See our Advertiser and Affiliate list for more info.
Other Income Ideas:Another way to generate income is to sell your own products on your site. You already have visitors interested in your website’s subject… can you think of something they might be interested in buying that you can sell? This could be a physical product that requires shipping: How about you kid’s/nephew’s/sister-in-laws hand-made bejeweled dog-collars for your dog site?
Even better, in my opinion is a digital product that requires no shipping or inventory. How about creating an in depth ebook about dog obedience and selling it for $10? You only have to write it once, but can sell it over and over again. To sell a product and create a delivery service online I suggest getting a PayPal account if you don’t already have one, and use there free merchant tools to automate your sales.
6. Getting Traffic / Search engine optimization crash course
Huh? Just cause you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come… visitors that is. And just because you made the best website in the world doesn’t mean the search engines will treat it appropriately.. if they find it at all.
How to : You have good content and lots of it right?Here are the most important tips for Search Engine Optimization: 1. Each page title should state what that page is about. In about 8-10 words usually works. It’s the Title tag- remember that and use it appropriately, and you’ll be good. 2. Heading tags – just like newspapers and magazines, your page’s information is divided into different sections or main ideas, right?
Use Heading tags (H1 for main title, H2’s for secondary titles, H3’s for subsections of the H2’s). Confused? Just look at this page – the H2’s are the big red text that are numbered. Not only do these tags help search engines understand what this page is all about… it also helps you, the reader.
Things to Remember about SEO: Search engines try to give the best results possible, that is always going to be their goal. So create the best possible sites and pages with your visitors in mind, and you will do well in the search engines. Avoid “schemes” to get good rankings, even if they work this moment, they won’t always as the search engines evolve.
Time: Unfortunately, it is generally difficult to get a lot, if much traffic from search engines within the first few months after launching your website. Use this time to keep adding new content, and more importantly gaining backlinks.
Backlinks (super important – please read): A backlink refers to some other web page on the internet linking to a page on your website.
This is one of the most critical factors that search engines use to calculate how high or low you rank in the SERPs (search engine results page). The amount, quality of, and text in these backlinks effects how well your pages do in the SERPs. Without going to far into this (because it’s a complex subject), the idea is simply to get as many quality backlinks as possible with the link text incorporating your keywords. So if you had a page about dog training, you would want to get a backlink preferably from a page about dogs, with a link something like: Dog Training – yoursitename.com.
Banklinks are not particularly easy to get naturally when your site is new. Who is going to link to your site if they can’t find it in the SERPs, and how can search engines find your site if no one is linking to it? Bit of a catch22… and a lot of websites die because of this. Here are a few ways to obtain backlinks: 1. Submit to directories. (see our list of directories). 2. Trade links with other sites on the same subject matter. 3. Create a viral marketing campaign to get backlinks. (read blifaloo’s guide to creating a viral marketing campaign).
After 2-3 months, you should start seeing a steady increase in your traffic from search engines. Keep them and your visitors happy by adding fresh content regularly.
7. Further Information and Resources
Huh? You thought this was all you needed to know about creating website that generate revenue? Not a chance. Web publishing is a subject that is changing on a daily basis. Though this information is a good starting point (and even has some unique advanced tips and ideas) , you will need to keep up on latest developments in the web world.
How to : Books can be a good starting point, but for up-to-the date information and resources you will need a current news source for your web mastering info. My favorite way is just by skimming a few webmaster forums a day, and maybe reading an article or two. Here are my two favorite resources for webmaster news: SitePoint.com , and Digital Point Forums. They are both good places to ask questions if you have any as well.
Other links:For Hosting: HostRocket.com For Domain Names: Namecheap.com
Keep learning, and keep creating new content!
Hope you found at least a few helpful pieces of information in this article. Thanks for stopping by Blifaloo.com, and don’t forget to check out some of the other stuff on the site.
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