Website Monetization

Monetizing your website means creating profit from your local Internet marketing campaign. Here are 8 proven ways to ensure that your website makes you money "around the world and around the block."

When considering how you will make money with your website, be sure to use several of the resources available today to check and double check your calculations. Making money online takes work and can be harder than it looks!

Some traffic estimates are overstated, and there is a lot of misinformation as to how much people earn on the Internet. Do your homework. And take advantage of the links and financial resources here at NetLocal. These are all "best practices" vendors and are here for your benefit. And, as you define how you will make money online, don't get stuck on just one income model. It is better to have many streams of revenue rather than put all your eggs in one basket!

1. Service Sellers

If you are in a service business, the obvious way you monetize your website is by attracting new customers (clients, patients, ...) and rendering your services to them, for which they pay you a fee. Your website will work for you in this regard if you set it up correctly.

The key is to optimize your website around a single theme, and to target your home page and subsequent pages around regionalized keywords.

(NOTE: There are many service sellers who can market there services more globally. Website consultants, for example, do this. For the purposes of NetLocal , we will focus on small service providers whose customers come from a geographic area with a radius of thirty miles or less).

What is a "regionalized keyword?"

Let's say you are a dentist, and want to increase the number of patients coming to your office in Pasadena, California. You may already have a website with the URL of your office name (for example, www.wilson.com). What you would do is keep this name, but change your title, first keyword, description, heading, body content, and links, all to include your city and your service.

Therefore, you website's main "keyword" would be "pasadena dentist." (without the quotation marks)

Your website homepage title might then be Pasadena dentist Dr. Lawrence Wilson - Cosmetic and Implant Dentistry.

The first keyword in your META keyword description would be "pasadena dentist" (without quotes). And so on...

You get the idea. The point is that you target your local Internet marketing campaign by including your city (and possibly state), along with the service you provide.

You could then market yourself in other ways, around other phrases such as pasadena implant dentist, pasadena cosmetic dentist, etc. These would become other pages, or could be part of an Adwords campaign. (See our Adwords page)

What if you do not have a website yet? No problem. Go to NetworkSolutions www.networksolutions.com , or Nameboy www.nameboy.com and see if a good name is available. Don't register it yet!! - Just check to see if you can get, "www.pasadena-dentist.com" for example. Even though this does not have your business name, it is actually better than the one that has your office name in it.

So how do you know what service word to use, after your city? Easy.

The secret is to research which keyword (phrases) people are using to seek the service you provide, and to then organize your local Internet marketing campaign around these words.

A great resource for keyword research is Wordtracker www.wordtracker.com. This tool lets you search for the popularity of a keyword or phrase, and then - and ONLY then, choose it as the focus for your website.

Another tool that can help in this matter is Overture's Search Term Selection Tool. You can use it to see what phrases people are entering to find services like the ones you deliver. You can also use it to see how much potential traffic you can "buy."

And, there is also a handy ROI calculator there, to help you decide how much you can afford to pay per click, based on your conversion ratio and revenue per visitor.

Finally, explore other pages at NetLocal www.netlocal.com . Our website is dedicated to providing resources, links, information and services to help make your local Internet marketing campaign a success!

2. Products

If you are trying to sell a product online, then your goals are different than service sellers.

In a service business, you target by region. In the world of direct product sales, you target by product category AND region.

The optimization principles behind the two campaigns are similar. The only difference are that, in a product-based business, you can monetize your website by marketing to both local and global prospects.

Let's look at each of these situations in turn.

First, for those buyers who live in your geographic region (within thirty miles), you want to satify their searching by including your city, just as with the service sellers. So, you may wish to create a separate website, and name it "www.yourproduct-yourcity.com".

Then, simply follow all the rules for construction and optimization as per the service sellers see other pages at NetLocal www.netlocal.com .

Now for the "other" part. Since you can sell around the world, you want to create a website with all your products presented, and available for purchase, and use the keyword selection tools mentioned above (WordTracker, Overture) to find a niche that has enough traffic to be worth you while, but not too much competition.

You are free from some of the constraints that are present in local Internet marketing. But you have a new parameter - product targeting. Investigate, learn, dig and discover all you can about the ways of building traffic and optimization of your website. Then, give it a rip! The beauty of the Internet is that you can usually correct any mistakes you might make.

3. Affiliate Programs

A third way to monetize your efforts online is to join and promote affiliate programs.

This might seem like an easy thing to do, and it really is - in theory. The hard part is making it pay.

Basically, there are hundreds (probably thousands) of affiliate programs to choose from. And many thousands of other web marketers promoting them, just like you. So how do you monetize your website as an affiliate?

The first thing to do is to learn from the masters. I recommend the following sources to get you started.

AffiliateMatch www.affiliatematch.com This website, owned by Chuck McCullough, is a very popular resource for those entering the affiliate arena. Chuck is a first-class guy, and provides lots of valuable information, links and suggestions in how to be successful with an affiliate campaign.

AffiliateMistakes www.affiliatemistakes.com At this website - also owned by Chuck McCullough - you will find his e-book called Affiliate Mistakes, describing the 15 things NOT to do if you want to monetize your website though an affiliate program. You can download it for $37.00 US.

AffiliateWorld www.affiliateworld.com At AffiliateWorld, you will be presented with a Top 10, Top 11-20, Elite Showcase, and Beginners Guide, among other things. I like the look and feel of the site, and the orientation toward articles and learning. They even have a "Voting Booth" that allows net surfers to rate various programs.

WebWorker www.referralincome.com Similar to the websites above, WebWorker offers lots of links, recommendations, and tips to help you make your affiliate program a winner. This site also has quite a few "tools" for the experienced affiliate. And, a list of "affiliate services" to use if need be. Quite impressive!

AffiliatePromote www.affiliatepromote.com I am including this website in the subject of local Internet marketing / website monetization because it show how creative people can get with the idea of using the web to make money.

What these guys offer is a way for YOU to be the affiliator, and get others to refer to your site for more traffic and profitability. Look into it. As the search engines continue to place value on link popularity in their ranking stragegies, the idea of creating an affiliate network linking IN to your site is very appealing.

Before I leave the subject of affiliates, I want to add that the use of an "affiliate program" is not the only way you can monetize your site with affiliate links. Another very successful way - and one Ken Evoy of SiteSell recommends - is to place "in context links" on your page, within the body copy of the page itself.

What this means is that the reader is able to click on a link that relates to the subject of the paragraph or page, and the link is embedded in the text. When the visitor "clicks through" to your merchant partner - and buys - you get paid.

All you have to do to make this work is establish the affiliate relationship in advance with the merchant partner. They will then send you the "a href" code specific to your account. You embed that code into the HTML of your page, and shazam! You have monetized the very information you are giving to your interested visitor.

And, quite often, the visitor is "pre-sold" on whatever you are writing about, so they arrive at the merchant site in a "ready-to-buy" state of mind. Very effective!

NOTE: If all that sounds like Greek to you, don't dispair. Send me an email at jburch12@msn.com. I will be glad to talk you through it.

4. SiteSell

You may be surprised to see that I give SiteSell a complete heading, all by itself.

The reason is that this company is so far ahead of the competition when it comes to the automation of the website design, optimization, promotion, tracking and monetization process, that I would be remiss if I didn't devote time to describe it here.

Basically, Ken Evoy, the President and Founder of SiteSell , is a local Internet marketing genius. What he has done is take almost all the stuff you will see on this entire website and automate it, so all you have to do is concentrate on content. SiteSell takes care of the rest!

To learn more, go to the SiteSell page on our website, or click here , and look into this fabulous company right now.

5. Google AdSense

Just recently, Google has launched AdSense . This program is new, and offers service and product site owners an additional way to monetize their internet presence.

What AdSense does is place context-relevant AdWord ads on your website, for visitors to see and click upon. They then pay you a portion of the cost per click that the advertiser pays for each and every click.

If you want to participate in this program, click here , and it will take you to their main AdSense page. You can find out even more by looking into our seperate page here at NetLocal on AdSense .

Also, at www.keyword-optimization-tools.com you will find a handy tool that lets you see what types of AdSense ads might run on your website.

6. GoogleCash

GoogleCash www.googlecash.com isn't really a way to make money from your existing website per se. The reason I am including it is because the site offers a nifty little e-book that shows you how to use Google AdWords to make money online.

Whether you do the GoogleCash thing, or just buy the book and learn about how it works, this will help you see how to monetize a web presence. And, if you do decide to invest in this system, you wil probably make enough money to make it well worth your while.

7. Newsletters

The production of a monthly or quarterly newsletter can be a really creative process. If you work at it, eventually you will get a subscription base.

From this, you can provide advertising space for others, and they will gladly pay you for the traffic.

Please see the Newsletter section of our website for more information. (Note, this page is still under construction...please allow a few more weeks).

In the mean time, you can find some useful resources at www.imakenews.com .