You saw the money tree analogy coming—after all, money is usually the end goal of a startup company. This got me to thinking about the many ways a company can try to yield a profit. I found that people are constantly discussing the importance of content on a company website, but what people are not constantly discussing is the idea that this content does not always equal revenue.
I will admit that I frequent many company websites simply to read their blog, yet I have no intention of ever buying their product. The point is, you first want to drive traffic to your webpage, but you cannot stop there. There are many things you can do to make sure that when people are visiting your website, they are tempted to buy.
Consider a few of the things your startup company can do to make sure you are attracting the right kinds of visitors and keeping them interested:
How to Bring in the Bacon without Losing the Pigs
Variety of Advertisements
One of the most common ways to market your product or service is to place your own advertisements on your website. This may sound obvious, but there are various types of online advertising that can be placed on a website, which is often confusing to many startup companies. Text, graphic, video and wallpaper ads are just a few of the many examples of ads seen today. Ideally, you want to use all different types of advertisements on your website to keep visitors interested.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing deals with placing your ads on other sites in order to bring in potential customers. Website owners can choose to become affiliates by partnering with an affiliate network and placing various types of ads on their site. Now here is the key: One of the advantages of affiliate marketing is that you can choose to place specialized ads according to the websites’ areas of interest, increasing the chances that a visitor will click through the advertisements. In other words, affiliate marketing ensures that the people who are visiting your website are people interested in buying; not just people who want to read your blog for their own purposes.
Sell Your Content
Revenue doesn’t have to come simply from advertisers: if your site or blog produces quality content, then you can choose to sell it. Depending on the type of site, you can sell a variety of products, including digital goods such as e-books, music, videos, or software. One of the benefits of selling digital goods is the relatively low external costs, owing to the absence of the need for storage, shipping, or maintaining inventory.
Create a Customized Service
Your site generates traffic, attracting thousands of visitors that come to your site for a purpose. Does your site provide a service that people would pay to hear or read? If so, then you can offer a specialized or personalized version of your content for a fee. For example, if you own a site that specializes in career advice, perhaps you can create a career-building seminar that visitors can subscribe to. This will help get people involved in your website. Another way to monetize is to offer premium content that can be only subscribed by paying members.
These monetization strategies are examples of the many ways to increase revenue of your website. It will take time and patience before you see results, but with luck, you will soon possess a profitable, popular website, and hopefully the proud owner of a money tree.
About the author: Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to commercial vehicle insurance. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including auto insurance to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading B2B Directory, Business.com. (Photo Credit infobarrel.com)