By now, if you’ve followed this guide as suggested, you should have a nicely-designed website that’s filled with quality content, along with a Facebook page that’s also loaded with content that links to your website. You should also have a fan-base that’s constantly growing due to your paid “like” campaign as well as organic sharing and engagement. All of this should be resulting in traffic to your website with every new piece of content you share on your Facebook page.
After you’ve been doing this for a while (a couple weeks should be sufficient), you should have been able to establish trust with your readers. It is at this point where you begin monetizing your traffic.
Promoting Affiliate Links
As I stated earlier on, promoting products as an affiliate is a good option – especially for beginners. If you recall, I also mentioned something called the “soft sell”. The idea behind the “soft sell” is simple – instead of actively trying to convince your readers to buy something you are promoting, you subtly suggest the products you are promoting.
Throughout this guide, I’ve referenced your fictitious “fly-tying” hobby so we will run with that for our example. Let’s assume you’ve identified a great fly-tying book on Amazon that you’d like to promote. Instead of doing the “rah-rah, this book is awesome” thing, go ahead and purchase it yourself. When it arrives, go ahead and tie one of the flies following the instructions in it, document the process you followed (along with some photos of the fly you tied), and turn it into a 500-1000 word tutorial to be published on your website (and shared on your Facebook page).
To promote the book via an affiliate link, make a mention or two (don’t go overboard) of it in your tutorial and link out to it via an affiliate link. I guarantee that visitors who are intrigued by the fly you tied WILL go out and purchase the book you referenced in your tutorial. The response you get will be far better than had you just did the “rah-rah, buy this book” thing.
Repeat this process throughout every third or fourth piece of content you publish and you can be driving plenty of sales in no time. What you don’t want to do, though, is promote products in EVERY piece of content you publish. People will see through it and know you are just trying to sell to them. Not good.
Selling Your Own Stuff
Although selling your own stuff can be complex (inventory, shopping carts, etc.), it can be very lucrative. If you have access to products that would interest your visitors, go ahead and give it a shot – you can use PayPal’s shopping cart buttons to this rather easily.
Building upon the “affiliate” option above, let’s look at another option. I mentioned writing tutorials for tying flies based on the book you purchased. In addition to promoting the book you bought from Amazon, you can take your collection of fly-tying tutorials that you produced for your website and pull them together into a PDF eBook – and sell that – for far more than the commissions you’d be paid for the Amazon book you promote. You can even take an excerpt of the eBook you created and offer it as a freebie to build an email list.
See how easy this can be?
AdSense / Connexity
The easiest (but least lucrative) monetization options are AdSense and Connexity. For information-type sites, AdSense is a good option. For sites where visitors would be interested in purchasing products, Connexity is a better option. Both are programs that pay you whenever someone clicks an ad but Connexity gives you more control by allowing you to create ad pods that feature specific products.
Although easiest to implement, this option should probably be the last of the three to consider since it’s likely the one with the least earning potential. If anything, it can be a good option to fill in sidebar space – my only concern is that clicks to these ads can potentially take away affiliate link clicks or clicks to products of your own that you are selling.