Are you ready to monetize your website traffic? Get ready as that will be the focus on this blog post.

Happy Family Day Canada

Before I begin though I would like to wish my readers a Happy Family Day! Family day is observed in the following Canadian provinces: New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. It falls on the third Monday of February.

Your Business Plan

Now for today’s post. You’ve started a blog and paid careful attention to your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ve sent out press releases and let members of your forum know you’re up and running.

You’ve even taken what many consider to be the essential “first step” and created a free video or report, so that people can sign up to your list through your brand-new opt-in box.

However, simply getting people to sign up to your list is akin to just putting your foot in the door. You need to be aware of the myriad of ways to monetize your website traffic, in order to get the best return on all your hard work. (After all, why settle for just one stream of income when you could have several – all from the same site content?)

But before you rush to adopt new strategies to monetize your site, do yourself a favor and consider your overall business plan. Which strategy would be your perfect fit – and your target customer’s?

Would you just like a passive, “set-it-and-forget-it” type additional stream of income… or is there a more active one that can ignite your passion and keep you happily involved for years to come?

In the next few blog posts we’ll examine seven successful strategies to monetize your site – from the traditional tried-and-true to today’s current hot trends…

But there are two more essential steps to take before rushing off to monetize your site…

1. Develop high-value, original content
2. Build a community of loyal followers

You don’t have to wait years for your website to attain high page rank and thousands of followers before starting to monetize it. Everything begins with quality content at the site’s core.

As soon as you’ve got that, you can put any combination of the seven strategies we’re going to talk about in play to generate that community of loyal followers and drive dynamic traffic to your website.

Monetize Your Website Traffic

The seven successful strategies to monetize your website traffic are:

1. Selling Services or Products
2. CPC Networks and Pay Per Click Advertisers
3. Affiliate Marketing
4. Article Marketing
5. Ezine Promotion
6. Sponsored Blog Posts
7. Site Flipping and Domain Parking

Let’s begin with strategy number one to monetize your website traffic.

Selling Services or Products

The most obvious way to monetize your website traffic involves selling your services or products (either physical products or digital ones).

Both start with developing your USP (unique selling position), but there are two differences you need to observe.

If you’re promoting your services, traditionally you target by your geographic area.

If you’re direct-selling products, target by a broader geographic area, as well as your product’s category and keywords.

With both products, decide how far your reach ought to extend: Local? Continental? Global?

What’s New – Geo-Targeting: You may not think geo-targeting can help you sell more product. You also may not think it really matters if you focus on local businesses, when your clients so far range across all of North America… but a tactic as simple as:

1. Including your city in your keywords, meta tags and domain name.
2. Submitting your cite to local directories (up to state or province wide).

…can actually bring in extra clientele!

One other reason to include geo-targeting in your monetization SEO: Thanks to Facebook Places and the “social search” phenomenon, geo-targeting is currently a red hot trend proven to increase and maximize traffic.

CPC Networks and Pay Per Click Advertisers

CPC/CPM: Not so very long ago, Cost Per Click networks were heavily pushed as a passive stream of income, but now they’ve largely fallen out of favor to monetize your site.

Make no mistake, however: Savvy marketers still make additional income monetizing their sites by linking to CPPC networks. (It’s a form of affiliate marketing – you get a small commission, usually pennies, if someone clicks on the CPPC network’s link.)

Realistically speaking, with properly optimized sites and targeted content, the average marketer only makes between $16 and $60 monthly per site, once well established… but if you have several blogs, those small amounts do add up.

There are quite a variety of PPC networks you can sign up with. Some will pay you for CPA (cost per action – as in a purchase or opt-in) and some for CPM (cost per mille) – “Mille” in this case meaning “thousand”; as in “cost per thousand impressions”).

There are two drawbacks to allowing CPC networks access to your site:

1. There’s always the risk of heavy-duty malware being implanted, which can hurt your page rank and SEO
2. They’re really “small potatoes” considering the amount of work you may be doing, if you’re setting up blogs strictly to showcase those links or banner ads

However, if your site is already established and optimized, it’s not a bad idea to examine seven of the more reliable ones to see if they’re a good fit.

• Here is a directory of companies specializing in CPC.

Note that most CPC/CPM networks have a minimum monthly traffic requirement, but there’s quite a range (at 3,000, Value Click has the lowest).

You’ll hear that many companies are “picky” when it comes to accepting independent publishers, but don’t let that daunt you, if you have the number of monthly page views or unique visitors required.

The main selection criteria is that both you and your website behave in a business-like, professional manner. (In other words, don’t admit you’re a newbie, if in fact you are: it’s unnecessary. Focus on showing them you know what they want.)

Google AdSense and PPC Advertisers: For those whose traffic is more in the “hundreds” range than “thousands”, Google AdSense used to be the time-honored way of monetizing sites. With banner ads being “so yesterday’s news” now, AdSense returns are considered minimal.

However, one thing about AdSense: It’s easier to get accepted as an AdSense publisher showcasing their ads on your site – especially if your page view numbers haven’t reached anywhere near the thousands, yet. All you need is a blog theme that’s “AdSense Ready”; drop in your Google AdSense publisher number and you’re in business.

It’s especially well-suited to people who run multiple niche blogs. (Just make sure the AdSense ads don’t detract attention from products you’re promoting as an affiliate).

Text link Ads are another option. You’ve seen them… Blog posts with double-hyperlinked words within the body text.

When people click on the hyperlinked word, you’re paid a small amount. (Translation: The claim at the original TextLink site that you can make “thousands of dollars a month” should be taken with a shovel-full of salt.)

You really do have to consider your audience when deciding whether or not to institute them – “Will the ads annoy them?” being your biggest consideration.

Here are two of the current of the better-known or more reliable Text Link companies:

• TextLink Ads
• LinkWorth

Next Strategies to Monetize Your Website Traffic

In our next blog post we will cover the third and fourth strategy of affiliate and article marketing as two ways to monetize your website traffic.

Here are the four posts on the topic of How to Monetize Your Website Traffic.

1.
Monetize Your Website Traffic

2.
Monetize Your Site with Affiliate and Article Marketing

3.
Traffic Monetization Strategy

4.
Monetize Your Site and Advertising