Monetization on websites is related to income thanks to its visitors. Most ways of traffic monetization are related to advertising. For example, you can place banners or publish articles from partners.
While you are developing your resource, you spend not only valuable time but also funds on the process of its creation, payments for a domain and hosting, and content. Therefore, proper monetization helps to return everything that was already spent and then gain an additional income. Let’s discuss the basics of this process.
What sites can bring you income?
Theoretically, any resource is prone to monetization: informational, news, or commercial. However, in practice, monetization will be successful only if there is sufficient traffic and the right method was chosen.
For example, with a small number of visitors, you are unlikely to get a good income from placing contextual advertising or banners. But if your small audience has value in the eyes of direct advertisers, then it is possible to make good money publishing promotional articles.
When is the best time to start?
You should not start monetizing immediately after the launch of the site. This will scare off visitors who are unlikely to agree to watch ads on an unfamiliar site. However, advertisers will be not very easy to find.
There are no hard and fast guidelines. Nevertheless, it is better to start when the site has stable traffic. The choice of method depends on the number of regular visitors and also on your expectations and needs related to your future income.
For example, with relatively little stable traffic, you can work with special networks. When the number of daily visitors is near thousands, you can think about cooperation with direct advertisers. The general rule is the more and better the traffic, the more you can earn.
How to prepare your resource before starting to earn?
We have already mentioned the need for stable traffic. However, for the site to be interesting to users and search engines, you need to take care of its quality. Therefore, preparing a site for monetization involves the following steps:
- Optimize the site according to the requirements of search engines.
- Fill the resource with interesting and useful content.
- Use SEO to promote your resource in search results.
- Attract targeted traffic to it (social media, contextual advertising, and guest blogging).
Ways for direct traffic monetization
There is a huge number of monetization strategies and options. Here, we present the two of them.
CPA networks
CPA (abbreviated from cost per action, that is, payment for action) are advertising networks in which the owner gets payment only if the user performs some targeted action (registers, fills out a form, or buys a product).
The work of the CPA system is based on attracting advertisers and site owners. The advertiser places an offer (advertising offer) on the site as text, link, banner, and description of their offer. Here, they also indicate the cost.
The site owner or webmaster chooses an offer that suits them and places ads on their site. When users perform a target action, the owner of the resource gets payment from the advertiser, except for the percentage of the CPA. Some networks have special programs where the owners get a percentage of the profits of advertisers.
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate programs are referral systems in which you can profit from the sale of a product or service that belongs to someone else.
Affiliates are similar in principle to CPA. The difference lies in the absence of an intermediary. Thus, in this case, site owners work directly with advertisers.
The essence of such marketing is that on your website, you advertise the partner’s product – place ads, distribute coupons, and publish links. If the user is interested in the offer, they will follow the affiliate link and buy the product, and you will receive a certain percentage of the transaction. The amount of remuneration from the actual sale of links depends on the agreement with the partner.
Altogether, monetization is not as challenging in implementation as it may seem. Learn the basics and try different strategies to find the one that will suit your best and cover your needs providing a decent income.
You may be interested in: Becoming a CPA: How to Choose the Right Program
