Setting up a website for many, is just a matter of fun; it is a place where family and friends exchange notes, information and niceties. However, with time, you the novice, would get bored with just playing post office and begin to think of how to use your website as a money making tool. This is when you would look for aspects that could improve the profitability of your website.
The profitability of your website depends upon two major aspects:
(1) visibility to the surfer and
(2) visibility to the search engines.
Below are ten tips that would help you in your endeavor.
1. Create an easily (user-friendly) website - anyone who lands at your web site should be able to find their way around without too much clicking of the mouse or re-directs. In most cases, if your visitor does not get what they want in three clicks, the fourth click will be out of the website.
2. Offer valuable and qualitative freebies at regular intervals - let people know your website by its high quality freebies. You could give up-to-date information, coupons, discounts, reports, free advice, etc which is highly valued by your customers.
3. Content is king, use it to your advantage. There is nothing that can beat good content yet. Write articles, newsletters, press releases, etc. and submit these at as man directories you can.
4. Provide updates on your products - most of your customers would love to hear about updates on the product or service they normally use. Ensure that they are informed about it. Alert them with an email, which will prompt them, visit your web site.
5. Have the right buttons where they are visible. The "buy it now", "contact us", "email us", "live chat", "ask a quote" buttons should be extremely visible, accessible and always linked well.
6. Have adequate information on each product or service you provide. This would prevent unnecessary doubts, and also convince the customer to buy faster.
7. Ensure high security for payment and other financial transactions. Your customer needs to feel secure when they make payment. Enlist with the best security certificates so your customer is protected from any type of fraud.
8. Use bright and descriptive images. A picture is indeed worth a 1000 words. Remember, you can score double by indexing your picture with keyword names so the engines would read them correctly and use this for ranking.
9. Collect respectable links. Search engines attribute great value to websites linked well. Initially, use reciprocal links until you build quality content so you could link with high-end websites.
10. Constantly work at improving visibility. Whether it is SEO, building links, submitting articles with search engines, advertising for free or payment, and so on, you need to keep at it 24x7. In order to build traffic, you need to work initially almost non-stop.
All this and a lot of hard work until you get your website ranked on the top two SERP (search engine result pages) and you have had it made. It is said that about 75-80% of people find websites trough organic searches. These tips, plus continuous SEO, would get you there and bring you enough traffic to make your website as profitable as it could be.
This article delves into the various ways to make money online. When I first started surfing around on the net 15 or so odd years ago I had no idea that I could actually make money online. But a few years ago as I read more and more stories about the dot com explosion, and eventual collapse, and heard stories about overnight millionaires and slow but steady millionaires I figured "hey if they can do it, why can't I"? And so began my quest into making money on the internet. Surprisingly enough I found that there were basically 3 ways to make money online.
1 ) Sell your own stuff
2 ) Sell other peoples stuff
3 ) Sell ads on your site
Now obviously there are many variations on the above 3 items...but those are basically the main ways to make money online. So if you break those 3 things down you come up with the following options.
1 ) Sell your own stuff.
This can be accomplished in quite a few ways. eBay is one way, cleaning out your attic or garage and putting your stuff up for sale. Purchasing discount or closeout items and selling them on eBay. Creating your own product, crafts, artwork, info products, the latest greatest mousetrap, etc., and then selling it on eBay. You can sell almost anything on eBay, ( I believe body parts are out of the question in case anyone's thinking about selling their extra kidney or anything like that). 8 ) But eBay is only one avenue to sell your stuff.
You can put up a website of your own, or utilize something like eBay stores or PayPal Shops, or any of a number of other storefront options available on the web for setting up shop and selling your stuff.
The main benefit to this option is you pretty much get to keep all the profits for yourself, (unless you are offering affiliate partners a share of the profits), so all the money make you get to keep yourself. And you have complete control of the product you are selling, no worries about whether or not the product is worthwhile or a some junk someone is trying to pawn off on unsuspecting customers.
The main drawback to this is more work. You have to create, buy, or find whatever it is you are going to sell. You have to ship it or make it available for download, or however it is you are going to get your stuff to the buyer. You have to set up a website or pay someone to create your site if you are selling from your own website. You have to deal with customer support, refunds, etc. So in a nutshell more work...but more $$$.
2) Sell other peoples stuff.
This is probably one of the easiest ways to make money online. You can become an affiliate marketer, you advertise somebody's product for them, direct customers to their site, the customer purchases said product, and you get paid a commission from the seller. You don't have to deal with product development, customer complaints, payment processing, etc. All you do is drive traffic to the vendors site and collect your share of the money when they buy.
This is probably the easiest way for newcomers to start out making money online. When you are first starting out you usually don't have a website, or a list to promote and sell to, or a product, or anything actually except a desire to figure out how the heck to make money online! So affiliate marketing is usually a good choice to "get your feet wet" so to speak and start generating an income online
3) Sell other peoples ads on your site.
This is probably one of the hardest ways to make money online in my opinion. At least initially. To be able to sell ad space on your own site you are going to need a pretty large traffic count coming to your site to be able to charge any kind of money for ad space. You are going to be hard pressed to convince anyone to pay any kind of real money to advertise on your website if you don't have a few thousand people dropping by your site on a regular basis.Ads and affiliate marketing are 2 ways to generate money on your blog, and if you can generate enough interest on a topic on your blog you could start getting a good base of traffic coming to your blog. But even with a good topic it's going take a while to generate enough traffic to start selling ad space on your blog.So there you have it. Now you just have to decide which way you want to go. Get out there and do some research into the different venues and see which one appeals to you. Ideally you would eventually branch out into all 3 ways. Remember multiple streams of income is the way to go. You don't want to rely on just one thing if you are looking to replace your daily 9-5 grind with an income from the internet.
If your dream is to build a sustainable business that just gives you an ever-increasing income every month, then read on. I'll make this article worth your while.
Personally, I know of 3 ways to generate a sustainable and growing Internet income. Thousands of entrepreneurs use these strategies to create Internet business empires that they can rely on for their rice bowl, and then some. Here are your 3 ways:
1. List Building
When you have a mailing list of subscribers, you have a dependable source of income right there. You can mail them relevant offers and information to build a relationship, and even offer coaching programs. Coaching programs are the ultimate because you can often command fees of up to a $1000 or more per client once you have built up a reputation.
2. Membership Sites
A membership site is always a great way to create residual income online. Instead of making one-time sales, now you are getting instant repeat customers. Your customers will get charged automatically monthly and this is hands-off money in your bank every month! You can easily create a membership payment plan in Paypal or even through Clickbank nowadays.
3. Ebook Publishing
Ebooks are awesome products to sell because you only need to create them one time and they are done! You can keep selling them over and over again and you don't even have to ship anything.
As you can see, the above business models concentrate on selling information. Simply because information is the hottest commodity to sell! There's tons of free information online, but believe it or not, people don't want to find all the answers the hard way, they want it all in a neat package they can devour in 30 minutes and get started.
How do you measure success?
Do you ever dream of being successful? What pictures come to mind when you see yourself as a successful person? How do you rate success? Individuals who are asked these questions will reply in different ways. They may consider success as being able to be your own boss? Perhaps you think of success as having plenty of money. Other individuals consider themselves successful when they can spend time with family doing fun activities. Maybe you prefer to work different hours than the corporate world provides. All of these measurements for success can be met when you make money online.
Be your own boss
Often a person who is dissatisfied with a job in the corporate world will blame their dissatisfaction on the actions and words of the supervisor, manager or owner of the business. For an individual who resents the attitude of the boss, the epitome of successful living may be not having to answer to an unpleasant or unreasonable boss. When you are successful in your efforts to make money online, you are the person in charge. You set your hours and work scope. You do the job site planning both physically and in terms of scheduling the tasks to be done.
Meet your financial goals
When you make money online, you may plan to work full time at a corporate job and supplement your income by working online. Or you may decide to cut all ties with your former workplace and rely totally on your online income. With planning and self-direction you can certainly achieve your financial goals without driving off to work each day. You may be able to reduce some regular expenses when you work online. Because you can work as much or as little as necessary to achieve your financial goals, you will be successful in your endeavors. Whether you are rich or just comfortable, is a picture of success that you determine.
Enjoy your family life
Many individuals regard being able to spend time with their family as being the measurement that they equate with a successful life. When you make money online, usually from a home office or workshop, you will certainly have more time at home. Even if you just spend the time that would have been spent commuting doing family based activities, you will typically gain several hours each week which can be put to better use. If you de-stress yourself you'll be a lot more fun to be around and your kids will consider you a successful parent.
Set your working schedule
The internet runs 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week, and you can set your working hours to suit your own internal time clock. If you make money online, your best customers may be half a world away and so, as a night owl, you can consider your schedule a sign of success. You can work the hours that best suit your lifestyle. Work online while your teenagers are off at school or sports practice. Maybe you are at your best first thing in the morning before the rest of the household is up and running.
