While Adsense is surely an excellent way to earn passive income, (and one I highly recommend using) it is not your only option. Now in case you are not familiar, Adsense is a program run by the search engine giant Google, where they display ‘relevant’ ads on your content pages and pay you every time your site visitors ‘click’ one of the ads.
They don’t have to buy anything – there is no ‘memberships’ they have to join. All they have to do is click the ad and you get paid. You can imagine, Adsense has become wildly popular with Webmasters who run niches sites, not only because of the huge profit potential, but also because of how easy it is to get started.
You sign up for free at http://google.com/adsense, carve out some spaces on your pages for the ads, paste a few lines of code from Google into the HTML for your site and Google automatically fills in your pages with colour-coordinated text/image ads.
It is that easy. In fact it might be too easy, because I see a lot of Webmasters who have chosen to monetize their web pages with this one source of income, which is a huge mistake.
I know this may come as a shock, but it is true. There are other (more lucrative) ways to monetize your website besides Adsense and if you are not implementing them, then you are leaving loads of money on the table. Look, if you wanna double, or even triple your income from multiple revenue sources, then you need to take advantage of all your virtual real estate by placing ads and links on your sites for related products you can promote as an “affiliate marketer”
In case you are not familiar, an affiliate role is to refer visitors to the “sales page” or website of the product using your “personalized” affiliate link that is provided to you. Each order that is placed through your link earns you a commission.
Affiliate programs are attractive because you don’t have to concern yourself with product development, processing payments, handling customer services issues, etc., and most often times you can even get started for free.
Where to find quality affiliate products to promote:
You can find affiliate program directories (where you can browse through various affiliate programs) by doing a search for “affiliate program directory”, “associate program directory” etc. on Google.
A good directory to start with is the one at:
http://associateprograms.com/directory
Another great resource for finding products to promote is at:
http://clickbank.com
Clickbank is one of the oldest, most trusted affiliate marketing networks available, providing a hassle-free way to monetize your sites with little effort. If you are not familiar with this service, you can sign up as an affiliate for free and promote thousands of digital products in just about every niche you can imagine (just do a search in the Clickbank marketplace for your keywords to narrow it down – i.e. health, fitness, dog care, golf, internet marketing, etc.).
With bi-weekly commission payouts as high as 75%, it really a much better opportunity than just getting paid a few cents per click.
An excellent opportunity for affiliates is the program offered through Amazon.com at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
With their array of products and trusted brand, this one is sure to be a winner in any Webmaster’s arsenal.
What I like most about this program is how you can feature any Amazon products are a self contained online store embedded directly within your website. I also recommend that you should include individual product photos and “buy now” buttons embedded in your website as well.
The percentages you earn with Amazon are far less than with Clickbank, but the chances of making multiple sales from the same customer are far greater, meaning the commissions can really add up.
You have also got to consider the fact that commission percentages will be higher for “digital” products (like those offered with Clickbank) than with physical ones because the product owner doesn’t have any inventory costs, shipping expenses, etc.
Ideally you want to feature all of the above mentioned income streams on your websites.
• Google Adsense
• Clickbank products
• Amazon products
But researching individual products, then manually adding them to all your web pages can become a real burden, consuming the vast majority of your time and effort. Plus when it comes to proper “placement” of Adsense ads, testing and tweaking can drive you nuts.
Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just click a few buttons and have profit-pulling ads placed on your web pages in premium positions, all in a matter of minutes?
Final Thoughts:
Building websites with numerous money-making features is a great strategy in its own right. But unless people stay at your site long enough to see what you have to offer, it doesn’t matter one bit.
What I am referring to is known as the “Click Back Factor” and unfortunately many sites suffer from it. Meaning just because someone clicks to visit your site, unless what they see is immediately relevant to their search, they simply “click away” taking with them your chances for making profits. So build your sites with meaningful contents to keep your visitors longer in your site.
