Your website shouldn’t just be sitting there. It shouldn’t just be this passive billboard-like object that people stop by occasionally, with the sole purpose of it making people aware that your business exists. No, your website should be lively, active – and money-making.
Even if your website isn’t where you plan to make money primarily, it should still work towards earning you a bit of extra income. This is important for small businesses and solo freelancers. Play your cards right and you could be earning a good amount of money from it!
Try out some of these suggestions. Do them properly and you could see some serious improvement in revenue.
Selling Your Website
We may as well put this one first because it’s probably the last thing you were thinking of. But you may not actually be aware of how much your website is worth!
Your website doesn’t necessarily have to be integral to your main business venture in order to be something you could sell for impressive sums of money. Even something as simple as the domain itself could really be worth something. Think about the photographer who created the website “kanyewest.com” upon hearing one of Kanye West’s first demos. When Kanye hit it big, his record label offered that photographer a lot of money to buy that domain. Perhaps it’s time you reviewed your website value.
Going Premium
I’m guessing your website is free to use. Even an e-commerce website probably won’t charge someone for browsing! But a lot of websites are now looking into premium content that users would be willing to pay small monthly fees for. This is becoming especially prevalent in the age of Ad Block!
It’s possible for pretty much any kind of website to introduce some form of premium content or serve. E-commerce sites have special memberships that offer free and fast delivery – Amazon is a ‘prime’ example! (Ho ho.) And loads of blogs and gaming sites feature exclusive content for paying members.
Mailing List
Are you one of those business owners who thinking mailing lists are just a relic from the 90’s that should have disappeared by now? It sounds like you’re severely underestimating the power of mailing services to boost your website revenue.
There are a couple of ways in which this is achieved. The first is that mailing lists give you marketing techniques a massive boost. After all, you have a direct line to your visitors if they’ve given you their email address! Some other businesses may also sell that data to other companies – although they can only do this if the user gives them permission to do so upon signing up.
Cross-Sales
It’s probably safe for me to assume that you’ve visited Amazon at some point in your life. You may have noticed that Amazon is always trying to sell you more and more products. Right up until the moment you give them you’re money, they’re making suggestions for other products you could add to your basket.
This is called cross-selling. The website sees what the user is looking at and what they’ve looked at in the past and uses an algorithm to generate suggestions of products they’re likely to be interested in. It’s a very effective way of boosting sales!
Donations
Not everyone is going to be comfortable asking for donations for their web business. But people may be more willing to help you out than you think! If you have a website that is dedicated to quite a niche fan-base, then you may have a website that holds a lot of value for your readers, much more so than other websites. And if you use social media, chances are your fans will feel that they know you quite well.
With this in mind, donating becomes quite an obvious way for fans of your content to actually support you. Websites may use PayPal donation buttons that can be added to your website quite easily. Others may want to sign up for Patreon and suggest that fans of their work support them using that platform.
Stronger Marketing
At the end of the day, your website is probably not going to earn that much money if it doesn’t have many visitors. So don’t make the mistake of focusing on the other money-making schemes before you’ve actually acquired an impressive user base.
It’s important that you look into all the marketing options that are available to you. A lot of people make the mistake of investing way too much into whatever marketing options sounds the most attractive and end up getting nowhere near enough return on investment.
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