If you own a website, you own digital real estate, which is even more valuable than physical real estate. Are you maximizing your return on investment for the asset in your possession? You may be able to make more money off of your site than you ever imagined you could. Featured below are four of the most popular and proven ways to increase revenue from your website.
1) Work On Increasing Your Conversion Rate
It’s best to start with a look at what you’re currently doing before moving on to new things. Chances are, you’re already using your website to sell products or services. You know your market well and you’re an expert in what you deliver. It’ll be much easier for you to drive more sales for what you’re already doing than to start new ventures with your existing site.
Hopefully you’ve set up Google Analytics on your website. If so, you can take a look at your conversion rate by going to the conversions tab and selecting the goals overview. If you’re running an ecommerce site, it’s actually more valuable to view the ecommerce overview tab. Google Analytics will provide you with a conversion rate by dividing the number of visitors that take a desired action with the total number of visitors to the site.
Conversions rates will vary by industry, but as a general goal, shooting for a conversion rate of 11% or higher is worth aspiring to. There are a few easy things you can do to try to lift your conversion rate up. Actions that typically increase conversion rates include:
- Revising and strengthening your call to action
- Adding live chat to your site
- Removing unnecessary form fields from forms
- Adding an exit pop-up to try to capture visitors on the verge of leaving the site
- Making sure trust signals are prominently displayed (reviews, testimonials, awards, and badges)
- Test various offers and deals
- Testing different colors for your call to action buttons
- Make site speed tweaks to decrease the load time (minify code, compress files, and implement a CDN)
If you’ve made all of these changes and conversion rate is still stagnate, tweaks will likely need to be made that are unique to your site. A UI/UX professional or experienced digital marketer can help you audit your site and implement changes to push your conversion rate higher.
2) Sell Ad Space Or Sponsored Posts
Companies are always looking for ways to expand their brand reach and many are willing to pay good money for ad space or a sponsored post on your site.
If you’re interested in selling ad space, you can apply for Google Adsense to become a network partner. Google has strict terms of service, so it’s not easy to become a partner. However, once you become a partner, you can earn anywhere from $0.5 to $5 per click.
Sponsored posts can be even more lucrative than selling display ads. You can earn anywhere from $50 to $400 per post. Prices are generally based on domain authority. Companies are actively searching for sites they think are authoritative in Google’s eyes to get a link from. The idea is that a link from an authority site will help them rank higher in the search results. So, you may have to do some work before charging the big bucks for sponsored posts, but after you put in a little labor, your hard work will pay off tenfold.
3) Sell Your Own Digital Product
Everyone is an expert in something. You’ve dedicated your life to your career or a certain set of skills. You can make more money selling your knowledge by offering a video course or digital book that users have to pay to access. The selling price on digital products can vary greatly. Some courses go for $50 while others are upwards of $500. The price will ultimately depend on the value of what you’re teaching and the quality of the product (video, book, etc.) that you’re providing.
If you’re not experienced with video production, editing, or writing, you may have to collaborate with other professionals to get your digital product created. Creating digital assets can be quite expensive and time consuming, but you should be able to cover your costs and then some with the revenue earned over the lifetime of the asset.
4) Engage In Affiliate Marketing
Last but not least is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of the quickest and most popular ways to make extra money off of a website. With affiliate marketing, you endorse other companies’ products and services on your website and try to drive visitors to purchase them. If someone buys from your personal affiliate link, you get a percentage of the sale. Commission on affiliate sales can be anywhere from 30-70%.
It’s in your best interest to choose companies to work with that offer the most lucrative affiliate deals. Here is a list of over 42 of the best affiliate programs on the web. You can become an affiliate partner for multiple programs and earn even more money from your content.
Looking To Take Your Site To The Next Level?
My name is David Kranker and I’ve worked in digital marketing for over half a decade. In that time, I’ve helped hundreds of site owners across the country in a number of different markets and industries increase their online revenue. I can turn your website into an asset that consistently delivers you money month over month. Request a free site audit to have me analyze your website and find opportunities for growth today.
