9 Monetize
There are two kinds of website builders — those who already have something to sell, and those looking for something to sell.
If you’ve already had a book published, or if you’re a freelancer with services to offer, you’re in category #1, and you can probably skip most of this chapter. But what you may need help with is the perennial problem of how to collect money from your customers in a transaction that is as secure and painless as possible for both parties.
Will that be Cash or Chargex?
If you’re doing thousands of dollars in sales per week, then you should be signing up with Moneris and handling the VISA, MasterCard and American Express charges yourself — or rather, having one of your people do it. But most small entrepreneurs need a simpler solution. I’ve found PayPal to be the answer. I sell a few back issues of my magazines, a few dog training DVDs, and a few assorted eBooks a month through PayPal, and my customers and I are satisfied. Not that I haven’t heard people curse PayPal up and down. It does have its detractors. But I’ve never had any problems with them, and that’s why I’m recommending you get an account with them. It really makes it easy when you need to add funds to your NameCheap account. Mind you, they will ding you a bit when you’re converting US dollars to Canadian and then transferring them to your bank account. Chalk it up to the cost of doing business.
When your website starts attracting significant numbers of visitors, then you may want to think about selling advertising space on it. Depending on how small and obscure your niche is, I’d say about 200 unique visitors per day would be the minimum threshold for being an attractive medium for potential advertisers. You’d have to set a reasonable rate, decide whether to accept banner graphics or text only ads, and work out several other different logistics. It’s definitely do-able. I know, because I’ve been doing it for several years.
There’s also a much easier way to do almost the same thing. That’s to put up Google AdSense ads. There is no minimum requirement for the number of visitors you get, but Google does insist that you have a website up and running before you can sign apply. If you do, I highly recommend that you take time and carefully read their terms and conditions. Because it’s easy to violate them, and if you do, Google can express its displeasure by canceling your account and making it difficult for you to get another one.
I have found Google Adsense to be a good source of on-going monthly income. You can sign up for it, or get more details here: https://www.google.com/adsense/g-app-single-1
Before we move to other affiliate programs, I want to let you know about the ability to have people compose messages and send them to you from one of the pages on your website. Here are a few suggestions for how you could use this feature…
- For freelance writers to invite potential customers to request a quote on a job
- For people who have purchased advertising to send you the text of their ad and other details
- For readers to subscribe to your free newsletter
There may be several different WordPress plugins that will let you set up an interactive form, but the one I’ve used most successfully is the Secure Form Mailer Plugin from Dagon Design. Here is the link: http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/secure-form-mailer-plugin-for-wordpress/
It takes a bit of fiddling around with before you get the hang of it, but if you can invest an hour or two to understand how it works, I think you’ll be happy with the results.
Affiliate programs
There is serious money to be made using affiliate programs. One of my websites was built for the sole purpose of selling a micro-niche product that has a price tag of $250 and a commission rate of 20%. I built the site last year, and so far I’ve sold $7,178.85 worth of products, earning $1,376.82 in commissions. Not too shabby a return for an investment of $8.41 and about 8 hours of work.
The product is very, very strange and obscure. Truly “off the radar” and if you want to know more, well, my lips are sealed. I will say, though, that the best niches are little-known ones in which the buyers are passionate about their hobby or interest. Some of the best known niches are golf, bodybuilding, weight loss and pets — areas about which the enthusiasts are more enthusiastic than frugal. In other words, shoppers who are eager to buy — even over the internet.
Here is a list of some of the most popular companies where you can apply to become an affiliate to collect commissions from sales: eBay.com, Amazon.com, Commission Junction, ShareASale, and ClickBank.
I have had a good deal of success with several of the hundreds of different affiliate sponsors ShareASale.com has available. Some of them automatically approve publishers (webmasters) while others require passing the merchant’s scrutiny.
Another affiliate program I have had reasonable success promoting is MyHelpHub.com. They have a fairly wide range of downloadable products in several strong niches, including computer security, self-growth, anti-aging, and creative writing. Several of their promotions involve giving away thousands of dollars worth of software free, a good way to attract people’s attention. Here is a link to MyHelpHub.com.
The degree of success you have with affiliate sales is very likely proportionate to the number of visitors who come to your site. If 5% of your visitors click on your Google Adsense ads, you’re doing pretty well. If 5% to 10% of the people who click on your affiliate ads actually buy the product, you’re doing about average. Click-through rates and conversion rates, of course, have many variables. Where is the ad placed on the page? How compelling is the affiliate’s sales pitch? etc. etc.
Whatever the goal is you have set for your website to achieve, the number one most important thing you need to do for success is to attract new visitors and convince previous ones to come back again and again. You may be able to get them through your door once by the skillful use of keywords and search engine marketing, but to get them to want to bookmark your page and keep returning, you’ll need to keep providing content that is meaningful to them. And that leads us to the final chapter in this website building tutorial…