I‘m no Neil Patel, I can’t give you advice on how to make your website generate so much money until you, your children and your future grandchildren will never need to work for a living.
However, if you want simple honest advice that cost you nothing except for a few minutes to read the rest of this article, here goes..
It’s Not That Easy
If you read anywhere on the internet that says it is super easy to earn money from your website, it is bluffing you. Either that it is a scam and the writer probably wants you to buy something. If you think by setting up a beautifully made website that money is going to roll in while you sit back, relax on a beach, you are so wrong.
For a website to generate money, you need to put in hard work. I might say, the work is much harder than I was to report to work in an office job. You need a load full of determination to see this through as well. If you quit halfway, that’s time, effort and money you invested in making this beautiful website gone down the drain.
While I encourage folks to at least try something new, I don’t want you to start something with the illusion that it is an easy feat. But with the right mix and perseverance, you might just create yourself a little goldmine.
So without further ado, here is a simple guide to making money off your website.
Find A Niche
What is your website all about? Finding a niche is not just about following the latest trends or jumping the wagon blindly just because others are doing it. If you don’t know what you are talking about or you aren’t passionate about the subject on your website, you’ll come off as fake and insincere.
But there’s a balance to strike here, you can’t pick a niche that is so unique that it can’t give you any room to branch out ideas, attract collaboration or lure clients to advertise. You can’t be all over the place either. You’ll confuse your readers if you are writing about travel one day and next, you are talking about weaponry and after that, you hold a discussion on dogs.
Build Your Website
If you managed to survive finding the perfect niche, then it comes down to the perfect domain name. And deciding where to host. I’m not going to go into WordPress.org vs WordPress.com, you can find out by googling. But what I can advice you is that decide carefully because it is a pain in the arse to migrate one to another and you probably lose your readership by half when you do that.
It also helps to learn some coding before you start a website. You may hire a web designer to build you the website you envision however, there might be updates and tweaks in future that will be of a lesser headache (and less money too) to you if you know basic coding.
Finally, make sure your website is mobile friendly, particularly since nowadays, readers are reading off a mobile screen. I get turned off when a site is not mobile optimized and it gets crazy to scroll to read the next paragraph.
Write Fabulous Content
So you’ve got a fabulous website all done up nicely and while you got your friends, relatives and probably everyone you know from your high school teacher to your office janitor visiting your website.
But how do you attract new visitors? Most importantly, how do you make these visitors return to your website again and again and again? By providing valuable content that attracts those who are interested in your selected niche.
Don’t write about travelling to Mongolia when you are selling jewellery (not related!) but do write about versatile jewellery pieces that are easy to travel with or how to pack your jewellery when you are travelling.
See what I did there?
Writing fabulous content will pull new people in (SEO, Word Of mouth etc) and retain those who are truly interested in what you can provide.
Edit Your Content (SEO, Keywords, Readability)
With your fabulous content, comes to how you want it to rank in search engines. If you really want your website to start generating income quickly, you need to drive traffic. Like in huge quantity.
And if you want advertisers to pay you higher rates, your huge quantity will have to be of a good substantial quality. So bots and spammers will be discounted. SEO, Keywords (Short-tailed and Long-tailed), Title Design, Readability, Less Passive Sentencing are some of the criteria that will help to boost your page ranking.
Of course, on top of that, your content must be interesting. I’ve covered that importance in this article. Fortunately, we have online web tools that use algorithms to make sure reaching these criteria a breeze.
Set Your Rates & Services
As you anticipate your traffic to increase, give a thought on your rates and services. What and where would you allow advertisers on your website? Pop up windows, sponsored content, flashy banners, pay-per-click are some of the things you can consider on top of affiliate marketing.
So how much would you rate your services? It really depends. On a few factors. Like your niche, your website’s popularity, the size of the market you generate interest in and the exposure rate your website has.
Advertisement
So you have great irresistible content on one hand and number one page ranking in Google on the other hand.
What’s next?
You need to advertise your website to reach more people. No one is going know how awesome your website or the content it carries if you keep quiet about it. If you have spare cash, sure, you may want to pay to advertise on social media. But if you don’t, then you probably will need to troll the forums, blogs and business websites to gain attention.
Ultimately, it is hard work. And the above is just starting up a profitable website. You will still need to pump in more work to maintain your website (meaning more great content, great SEO, great advertising) to keep your advertisers happy enough to pay you on a regular basis.
Whoever tells you that having a profitable website is easy is spewing rubbish. Do you agree with me? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Parting thoughts: If you need any help, please feel free to drop me an email at Kally@MiddleMe.net. Always happy to help. 🙂 Just make sure you leave a comment below if you sent an email to me so I’ll make sure to check the spam inbox too!
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I completely agree that it takes a lot of hard work to run a successful website. Oh boy, I have learned that. lol. It’s not something that you can do whenever you feel like it.
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Thank you, Mary Elizabeth for sharing your thoughts. And welcome to MiddleMe! It’s true that it take much more hard work that others credit us for.
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You’re welcome, Kally!! And thanks for saying this. It looks like you put in some work yourself!! 😊👍🏻
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I agree so much with this topic, Kally. It’s not easy!!! Somewhere along the way, bloggers also get lost and just focus on the money rather than their actual content (I’m guilty). It’s hard but with the proper motivation and vision, it gets easier. 🙂
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And there are also bloggers who drop off making money and blogging altogether because it just so hard to keep it up. I have had to turn away advertisers and sponsors if their intent do not match with mine. For me, MiddleMe is my baby so I’ll make sure I nurture it with the right nutrition even those paid ones. Hahaha!
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I wish everyone had that mindset. Nowadays everyone has that get easy mindset!
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Such an informative article on how to build a successful website, Kally. There are so many things to consider when it comes to trying to connect with your audience and at the same time trying to get to them. SEO can make our content more readable: by putting in keywords in our blog, more likely someone might be more inclined to read it; commonly keywords and search-friendly terms are terms that readers might have in mind on the subject matter of your blog.
It is so true that your website might be hard to reach others if you keep quiet about it. It’s a two way street if we want to share our work – we have to stand up and put it out there, and then others are likely to interact with you 🙂
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Hey Mabel! How are you doing? Thank you for sharing your thoughts and advices with us. I’m still struggling with my content because each time it’s about balancing what I want to write and what my audience want to read. It’s a thin line to cross.
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I’ve been busy but not too bad, Kally. It doesn’t look like you are running out of content to write, though. But agree it can be tricky balancing what you want to write and what people want to read…sometimes it’s a guessing game as to what people want to read!
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Well, you just have to write with your guts then. It’s hard to please every reader out there but being true to yourself and you’ll find yourself on the right path.
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Reblogged this on IT Bez.
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Thank you for sharing this out
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My pleasure
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Thank you for shAring. I have to admit its more work then I expected trying to keep up with blogging. Hope this works for others.
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You’re most welcome! Yes, it is a lot of work than what most people will expect hence a lot of people drop off blogging after a year.
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My question is how to stay cuurent? I am very busy with school and have not posted in a few weeks.
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I subscribe to several news app online that send me daily summary of the current news around me plus I love talking to people any chance I get. That’s how I stay current 😊
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Thank you.
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You’re most welcome to ask me more questions if you need inspiration
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Great and very informative post. I’m just wondering…as a blogger, I love my followers and respond to them all. My content means the most to me, but I wouldn’t mind allowing advertisements on my blog to some extent. Have you found it’s possible to attract advertisers if you’re not focused on using Facebook or another form of social media? That stuff is not for me. 🙂
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Yes, it is actually possible to attract advertisers using your blog. The key is to match the right advertisers with the niche of your blog. The higher your daily viewership, the more advertisers will come a-knocking instead of you knocking at their doors.
As my post pointed out, you need to have a clear definition of your blog to attract the right advertisers – those who are willing to pay big bucks. For example, if you have a parenting blog, you should approach companies like formula milk makers, stroller companies, toy distributors etc. They’ll throw a lot of money to be featured in a blog.
Otherwise, join up Amazon Affiliate program where you get to earn money as your reader click into a product review written by you on your blog.
Opportunities are endless out there. But you need to put in a lot of hard work to make it work!!
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Thanks Kally! I really appreciate your response and will follow up. Cathi
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You’re most welcome! If you have more questions, please feel free to drop me an email at kally@MiddleMe.net. Always happy to help.
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Reblogging this to my sister site Success Inspirers World
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Finding a niche is of utmost importance and I lack there. I love so many things and want to write about the… 😀
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This is a great post, Kally! Very informative.
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Thanks a lot, Winnie!
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You’re welcome, Kally!
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This is a great inspiring post that gives you the reality of being successful! Thank you for the valuable advice.
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Thank you, Vina for your comment!
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Totally agree!
XxX
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Thanks a lot, Patty! Always good to hear from you.
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Greatly informative… I love it
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Thank you very much and welcome to MiddleMe.
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See that’s another one of my concern. You mentioned we only need to know basic coding. I only know very basic HTML and that’s it. Building a website from scratch will take some time before it gets ready to be shared to the world too.
On top of the expenses, you’d have to decide on a lot of things. Start with the free blog then upgrade or not? Do you use a WordPress theme or make your own theme? Which web hosting and domain name provider to use? Etc., etc. Just thinking about it now is giving me a headache. Haha.
One day I will get it all sorted out too but for now reading this blog is good enough for me.
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I totally feel you, Lucy!! It took me about a month of every single day creating this website. So many decisions to make! From little stuff like fonts and colors to big stuff like naming my blog and creating social media to promote my blog.
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Thank you kally for such an informative content.💐💐💐
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You’re most welcome, Prakaash.
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