More ways to monetise your website

your location and means of system payments, some may not be feasible yet others will make you profiteer. Like any other business, your website should be able to generate funds for you.
It is not a static billboard displaying information “about us”, gone are such days! Users need to learn more new things while they peruse your website. Entice them to click around for some goodies and before they even buy anything online, let me show you how to start counting profits from these simple clicks.
Pay Per Click (PPC), is one popular direct way to earn money online.
Simply said, you are paid per every click made to certain content hosted on your site. Google Ad sense uses such technology to monetise your clicks. All you need to do is sign up with the network and paste a certain code on your website.
The network will then start to push contextual adverts to your website, be it text or image based which suits your site. You will be paid on the number of clicks per advert hence Pay Per Click concept Click Through Rate (CTR) is the actual rate the advert is opened.
This is automatically recorded against every advert pushed though your website and is tagged at a certain price per click commonly referred to as Cost Per Click (CPC). The cost price of a click varies across websites, if you have a very popular website or one that has potential to sell the adverts then your might bargain for a much higher Cost Per Click.
The same advert may be tagged at a different CPC depending with the website pushing it. Political, finance and educational websites carry a higher CPC because of their market niche. Promoters are serious about product marketing and the more visible it gets, the more they get inclined to you.
Although this sounds really interesting, the Cost Per Click does not come with quite an attractive price tag. It is the number of these clicks that can directly bring you revenues so the more you get the higher the returns. CPC could be a few dollars or cents per clicks but good traffic can turn them to profits.
If you get to know of a product or website through a Google Search, it’s termed organic traffic. This traffic usually brings higher CTR since the person was already searching for a certain known product is interested in clicking more details about it and eventually might buy the product hence chances of sale are high.
Unfortunately for most Zimbabweans online, all they want is Facebook and they careless about clicking these adverts, hence CPM may be viable for these types of online visitors CPM is Cost Per Mile which is defined as cost per every 1 000 views.
If you are on this advert scheme, you will be paid up for every 1 000 people who just browse through your website even without clicking the website. If you believe your website has such a capacity you should vie for such plans and start to cash in from your online visitors.
Suppose your website is viewed by an average 10 000 people with a price tag of US$10 CPM you will get US$100 monthly from people simply visiting your site. CPM rates will vary with the type of website you have and where you plan to display your adverts, the much clearer it is the higher CPM price tag it carries. Websites like advertising.com and burst media are popular CPM international advertising networks.
I’m yet to come across a Zimbabwean-based CPM but these are opportunities that can be harnessed locally. And the distributing company will have the leverage to name the price tag to the hosting website yet at the same time it charges the advert owner for such a service.
A potential sponsor or advertiser will want to see some returns for the money he will be spending on your site, and this can be seen as visibility (impressions) and leads (clicks and possible sales). Instead of approaching other companies for adverts, you can maximise by direct advertising where you will have much more control over where and how the ads will be displayed.
Google Adsense is nice, but unless you blend it with the content — annoying some of the readers — you will get terribly low click-through rates. Pop-ups will give you good visibility and charged much more but will annoy your viewers or get blocked by any good web browsers.
Pay Per Post (PPP) is another viable method. This is where you review a certain product on your website and you are paid for such reviews. These are well paying sponsored reviews. A company may bring in a new product and ask your website to review it or recommend it. The market prices for these are unknown as they may be done privately and in some cases the writer may not be aligned to such products.
The Internet becomes full of unreliable or incorrect information if we have companies bribing for reviews as many people rely ultimately on sources online but the authenticity or integrity of websites are based on such. Today many websites claim a certain product is the best yet the other source contradicts recommending a bad product or misleading your readers has serious repercussions to your image, once the users find you unreliable your website will face serious credibility and image damage.
RSS feeds is a technology that sends you continuous emails with updates of relevant information requested, these can then be turned into money via cost per mile or click through rate. Dedicated advertising software can track clicks all the way. Audio files can also be used to push adverts with 100 percent conversion chances of reaching the web viewer. These can be used right at the beginning or opening of a website where a user cannot stop the commercial advert.
Premium content techniques let you give away just part of your online content, tips, advice or trade secrets, to get access to the full document, your readers would be required register for paid membership to view the full story. If you really think your data is worth the price, you can create private a forum where only registered members can log in to access your forums on monthly subscriptions.
Online market places are now very popular, eBay and Amazon have become the world’s most popular websites to buy and sale various goods yet in Zimbabwe, we now have very serious contenders like classified.co.zw, Deep league, and tengesa.co.zw. For a small charge you pay, you get your wares sold on the online market place.
Zimleague has been doing the same at absolutely no cost at all, seriously trending on Twitter and Facebook. Building and selling websites can also be profitable, once a successful website goes under the hammer it’s a win-win situation.
Africom Zimbabwe is currently selling its domain name, but the writer is not sure if they are using this technique also to make a little more money.