We all may have dreamt of having a venture of our own at one point in time. Be it a mid-life crisis or a beginner’s dream, we may aspire to break the shackles of a mundane 9 to 5 job, build a startup from scratch and work to make it a success. Regardless of what your passion and venture is, it’s important to monetize your startup so that you can remain invested in it long term and give you job-replacing income.
Today, any individual who has a computer and a knack for technology can utilize their skills to start a business and earn money. The comfort of doing business from anywhere at any time and being able to follow your dreams since you have the gift of time and flexibility is certainly an added perk.
If you have ventured into the digital world with the intent of increasing your wealth, whether you have established a website or a blog, you will find this article very useful. We will provide you with a useful insight into various means through which you can monetize your startup and turn it into a profitable venture.
Lay The Groundwork For Monetizing Your Startup Venture
Before you begin exploring various means of monetizing your startup, here are a few tips that will prove to be effective in terms of aiding you in making your website profitable.
Driving Traffic to Your Website
The traffic on your website will be the driving force behind the effectiveness of any monetization strategy that you implement. Therefore, it is only fair that you devise means to analyze the potential visitors to your website to assess your target market. Google Analytics is an instrumental tool that can aid you by providing important statistics regarding the number of people that visit your site, the pages they visit or, the search words they may have used. This can help you in creating relevant content that will draw more traffic to your website
Creating Engaging Content
Once you have gained useful insight into your target audience’s behavior, you can use that information to create unique and engaging content that will appeal to potential customers. Make the content informative and useful and keep it interesting by using captivating phrases and titles.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You may have come across this term many times. It is an important tool for increasing your website or blog’s visibility in search engines. The key to optimizing your content is to identify and use meaningful keywords and use hyperlinks while building the content for your site.
Methods For Monetizing Your Startup
Once you have laid the groundwork for your website in terms of devising means to enhance your website’s visibility and attract more traffic; the next step is to figure out ways that can help you generate money through your website.
In this article, we have discussed a few methods. Let’s look at them one by one
Affiliate Marketing
The hip trend of affiliate marketing is a great tool to earn passive income. It is estimated that affiliate marketing accounts for around 15% of total digital media revenue, while the spending on affiliate marketing is projected to increase by 10% in the coming years.
As an affiliate marketer, when you promote a business’s product or service on your website, you will earn a commission for it. For instance, if you are running a fashion blog and promote a certain outfit or accessory from Amazon for instance if individuals follow your link to make the purchase, you will get a certain percentage from the sale.
As an affiliate marketer, you can provide product reviews, or product details, tutorials about gadgets or book recommendations, etc. Choose to promote platforms that complement the essence of your venture. When you incorporate affiliate links to your site, you need to be upfront about it so that individuals are aware of your endorsement agreement.
Pay-Per-Click and Advertising Space
Pay-per-click or PPC advertising can be a great income source for new startups. If you have just started your website or blog, you can enable PPC advertising on your site to monetize it. Google AdSense is a popular PPC advertising method through which ads may be generated in relevance to the content of your website. When a visitor on your site clicks on that ad, you will get a small commission for it.
Alternatively, if you are getting a considerable amount of views on your site, your platform may be an attractive place for sponsors to post their advertisements. While choosing to sell ad space, assess the overall outlook and layout of your site and consider what kind of ads you can have on your site. Also, consider how you want to feature the ads; whether you want banners or sidebars or even pop-up ads. Whatever you choose must complement the content and overall look of your website.
Sponsored Posts
Similarly, if you have managed to garner substantial traffic for your site, you can invite businesses to use your platform for publishing content that will enable them to promote their business. You can post about a topic relevant to the business or post a product review and add a link to the sponsor’s website. Alternatively, if you have a social media handle, you can promote the sponsoring business there as well, for instance, highlight a certain product or provide information about any promotion or deal they may be offering.
Just like affiliate marketing, you need to disclose your endorsement agreement with the sponsor and label the content as sponsored so that there are no ambiguities and you can avoid penalties for SEO violations. For any sponsored content or advertisement you can use rel=sponsored as per Google guidelines.
Offer Memberships
You can create membership programs for monetizing purposes once you have managed to capture your target market’s interest. Many websites provide membership packages to customers which come with the provision of certain perks along with access to premium content. While some of your content or service may be accessible to all, you can lock some of it and tie it with a membership condition. You can offer monthly or yearly subscription packages for users. Since the visitors will be paying a price for the content and services, make it worth their while and focus your time and energy on it to make it interesting and meaningful to maintain their interest.
Sell a Product or Service
Online platforms are a great means of selling products or services. You don’t have to invest in a physical setup and you also have access to a wide market. Some product or service ideas that you can sell on your site are
- Sell merchandise in relevance to your business
- Make and sell e-books or audiobooks
- Develop a course about any skill set or knowledge area you have expertise in and sell it for a certain price
- Sell templates or illustrations if you have graphic designing skills
Sell Your Expertise
Your website can be an excellent platform to showcase your skills, build a profile and offer your services to visitors. Mention your skills, be it content writing, graphic designing, illustration, etc., and create a proper hire me page for yourself.
Newsletter Subscriptions
Moreover, if you put effort into making a newsletter for your subscribers, you can also charge a small fee for it. If your content is interesting and informative, people may not mind paying a price for it.
Conclusion
These few methods can help you earn decent profits from your venture. However, creating a website or a blog and maintaining consistency in quality is no easy feat. If you are interested in creating a successful venture out of this undertaking, you need to stay committed to it and stay on top of things at all times. It will require a lot of hard work and investment in terms of time and energy. So, you must start mentally prepared for what lies ahead.