There are many different ways of improving the revenues generated by your website or blog, some are more effective than others and some are completely useless. Here I have compiled a list of 5 simple steps you can take as a website/blog owner to improve your revenues, the methods are not listed in any particular order and I have tried and implemented all of them myself to confirm that they work and are effective. To benefit from this to full extent, try to implement all five steps and I guarantee that you will see results shortly after. It's not hard, nor time consuming and anyone can implement these methods easily if you wanted to. Here goes:
1. Evaluate where you place your ads:
Look over and evaluate the positioning of your ads as strategically positioned ones will generate you more revenues then ads appearing in random location on the page. For example: if you look at this blog you will notice that I use a number of different ads, but the one that works best is the 160x600 wide scyscraper, the one that you see on the right hand side of the page. These ads usually tend to work better than others but every website is individual to its own needs and you will have to experiment with this to determine which way works best for you. Most people think that because something has worked on another website, it will definately work on your own, WRONG! Most people don't realise that depending on what type of website you have and what topic its on, the methods of monetising it will work different according.
2. Increase the number of revenue streams:
The best and most obvious way of improving your revenues is by running multiple income streams on your website. This means that you should never rely on one method for generating income, but rather use as many as you can possibly fit and run on the website at the same time. An example is that people tend to use only one source of income such as Google Ad Sense on their websites/blogs, when in fact you have the possibility to run affiliate programs, Ad Brite, Text Link Ads, Chitika or sell private advertisement space to people, all at the same time. So instead of having money coming from just one source, you can have it coming from several, making your website or blog much more effective in terms of profits and competitive to others as you provide a better more-in-one service.
3. Drive more traffic to your website:
Promote your website, if it drives more traffic chances are that you will make more money on it and have more advertisers who are willing to advertise on it. If you are selling private ads, a website with higher levels of traffic can charge advertisers more for placing their ads on it, because the potential market for the business you are advertising is bigger.
You can use a number of methods to promote your blog/website and should not limit yourself to only one. An easy way to promote yourself and drive traffic to your website is by using social media and online communities such as http://www.facebook.com/, http://www.twitter.com/, http://www.linkedin.com/, http://www.stumbleupon.com/ and so on. The potential is huge because of the vast number of people that use online communities these days and it's easy to gain exposure by posting articles or uploading videos/photos/music and referring people back to your website or blog. I myself use all the above communities to promote myself and drive traffic to both my blog and my other websites.
4. Provide accurate and useful content that your readers/visitors can benefit from:
Nobody wants to read a whole load of bullshit for no reason so try to avoid writing pointless articles/posts on topics that noone really wants to know about. If you want to make money from your website/blog you're presence is merely to sell and this should be your only objective then; to sell you need to find topics that people are interested in, that will benefit them in some way. There's a higher chance of someone visiting/re-visiting your website/blog if it covers a topic that interests or will benefit them or that they can learn from, an example is that people would rather go to websites that teaches them how to earn money or improve their life than a website/blog that talks about the benefits of drinking milk. This is a simple and very logical equation, people are selfish and want to make money, they don't really care what is going on out there and if you provide them with what they need, they will come back for more. Because whilst you are attracting more visitors, you are also increasing your traffic and as a result potentially increasing your advertising revenues and making your website/blog more attractive to advertisers. Don't lie, people might be fooled once or twice but eventually they will catch on to you and either stop visiting your website/blog or even worse give you a bad reputation by spreading the fact that you have been telling lies. Try instead to provide accurate and realistic facts about whatever topic you are covering so that people get a feeling of you being genuine and knowledgeable, this way they will learn to trust you and guess where they will go next time they are looking for something that your website/blog covers? thats right, to you! Building a relationship between your reader/customer is crucial to any business, including any online business because in the end without them you won't really get anywhere.
5. Be sociable and customer/reader friendly:
It's not hard to figure out that people use the most effective and to them user friendly methods to achieve whatever it is that they are doing. Make your website/blog as user friendly as possible by writing in plain simple language with good grammar so that people understand your points easily. Try to avoid using nicknames and abreviations for things and use the real terms instead so that as many people as possible understand what you are saying, for example: write 'Facebook' instead of 'FB' or 'to be honest' instead of 'tbh'. Try to make your website/blog as user friendly as possible by creating a nice and neat navigation instead of a smudged page full of things spread around here and there. Let everything be accesible from the first page and preferably for websites so that the whole page fits into one screen without your visitors having to scroll (this is a very effective method to use for websites and most companies with decent websites will run the same principle, it's simple and looks very nice and gives the audience a sense of proffessionalism and believe it or not but most viewers will navigate away from the page straight away if it's too smudged and messy. Answer all questions that people send to you, whether it's critique or appraisals make sure that you answer it as soon as you can; fast responses and responding at all will make you seem more professional as a website owner and more socially interactable as a blogger. Whether you run a website or a blog (but particularly a blog) an effective way to please your visitors is by letting them participate and/or interact on the website in some way, this can be in the form of a forum, a page where viewers can post comments or simply asking visitors what they think about you and if they have any suggestions about the website or blog (this can be done in the form of a poll or even a competition where the best suggestion wins something). Engaging your visitors will make them feel like they are part of something and increase the chance of them coming back to you at another stage.
These are just some of the ways that can be used to improve the effectivness of a blog or website to increase the revenues generated. There are many other ways out there, both effective and ineffective ones and if you have any suggestions or recommendation please feel free to email me these at [email protected] and I will review them and possibly post them here.
1. Evaluate where you place your ads:
Look over and evaluate the positioning of your ads as strategically positioned ones will generate you more revenues then ads appearing in random location on the page. For example: if you look at this blog you will notice that I use a number of different ads, but the one that works best is the 160x600 wide scyscraper, the one that you see on the right hand side of the page. These ads usually tend to work better than others but every website is individual to its own needs and you will have to experiment with this to determine which way works best for you. Most people think that because something has worked on another website, it will definately work on your own, WRONG! Most people don't realise that depending on what type of website you have and what topic its on, the methods of monetising it will work different according.
2. Increase the number of revenue streams:
The best and most obvious way of improving your revenues is by running multiple income streams on your website. This means that you should never rely on one method for generating income, but rather use as many as you can possibly fit and run on the website at the same time. An example is that people tend to use only one source of income such as Google Ad Sense on their websites/blogs, when in fact you have the possibility to run affiliate programs, Ad Brite, Text Link Ads, Chitika or sell private advertisement space to people, all at the same time. So instead of having money coming from just one source, you can have it coming from several, making your website or blog much more effective in terms of profits and competitive to others as you provide a better more-in-one service.
3. Drive more traffic to your website:
Promote your website, if it drives more traffic chances are that you will make more money on it and have more advertisers who are willing to advertise on it. If you are selling private ads, a website with higher levels of traffic can charge advertisers more for placing their ads on it, because the potential market for the business you are advertising is bigger.
You can use a number of methods to promote your blog/website and should not limit yourself to only one. An easy way to promote yourself and drive traffic to your website is by using social media and online communities such as http://www.facebook.com/, http://www.twitter.com/, http://www.linkedin.com/, http://www.stumbleupon.com/ and so on. The potential is huge because of the vast number of people that use online communities these days and it's easy to gain exposure by posting articles or uploading videos/photos/music and referring people back to your website or blog. I myself use all the above communities to promote myself and drive traffic to both my blog and my other websites.
4. Provide accurate and useful content that your readers/visitors can benefit from:
Nobody wants to read a whole load of bullshit for no reason so try to avoid writing pointless articles/posts on topics that noone really wants to know about. If you want to make money from your website/blog you're presence is merely to sell and this should be your only objective then; to sell you need to find topics that people are interested in, that will benefit them in some way. There's a higher chance of someone visiting/re-visiting your website/blog if it covers a topic that interests or will benefit them or that they can learn from, an example is that people would rather go to websites that teaches them how to earn money or improve their life than a website/blog that talks about the benefits of drinking milk. This is a simple and very logical equation, people are selfish and want to make money, they don't really care what is going on out there and if you provide them with what they need, they will come back for more. Because whilst you are attracting more visitors, you are also increasing your traffic and as a result potentially increasing your advertising revenues and making your website/blog more attractive to advertisers. Don't lie, people might be fooled once or twice but eventually they will catch on to you and either stop visiting your website/blog or even worse give you a bad reputation by spreading the fact that you have been telling lies. Try instead to provide accurate and realistic facts about whatever topic you are covering so that people get a feeling of you being genuine and knowledgeable, this way they will learn to trust you and guess where they will go next time they are looking for something that your website/blog covers? thats right, to you! Building a relationship between your reader/customer is crucial to any business, including any online business because in the end without them you won't really get anywhere.
5. Be sociable and customer/reader friendly:
It's not hard to figure out that people use the most effective and to them user friendly methods to achieve whatever it is that they are doing. Make your website/blog as user friendly as possible by writing in plain simple language with good grammar so that people understand your points easily. Try to avoid using nicknames and abreviations for things and use the real terms instead so that as many people as possible understand what you are saying, for example: write 'Facebook' instead of 'FB' or 'to be honest' instead of 'tbh'. Try to make your website/blog as user friendly as possible by creating a nice and neat navigation instead of a smudged page full of things spread around here and there. Let everything be accesible from the first page and preferably for websites so that the whole page fits into one screen without your visitors having to scroll (this is a very effective method to use for websites and most companies with decent websites will run the same principle, it's simple and looks very nice and gives the audience a sense of proffessionalism and believe it or not but most viewers will navigate away from the page straight away if it's too smudged and messy. Answer all questions that people send to you, whether it's critique or appraisals make sure that you answer it as soon as you can; fast responses and responding at all will make you seem more professional as a website owner and more socially interactable as a blogger. Whether you run a website or a blog (but particularly a blog) an effective way to please your visitors is by letting them participate and/or interact on the website in some way, this can be in the form of a forum, a page where viewers can post comments or simply asking visitors what they think about you and if they have any suggestions about the website or blog (this can be done in the form of a poll or even a competition where the best suggestion wins something). Engaging your visitors will make them feel like they are part of something and increase the chance of them coming back to you at another stage.
These are just some of the ways that can be used to improve the effectivness of a blog or website to increase the revenues generated. There are many other ways out there, both effective and ineffective ones and if you have any suggestions or recommendation please feel free to email me these at [email protected] and I will review them and possibly post them here.
