Reader Money Making Websites – How to Build One
Money Making Websites – How to Build One
In this article we will be covering topics such as how to find your target audience, which networks to choose, how to convert traffic on your website and how to get your visitors to come back again and again.
- First steps to Generating Revenue
- Common mistakes to avoid
- What’s in a domain name and its extension?
- How to get traffic for FREE?
- How to get repeat business (purchases)?
- Your comments
First steps to Generating Revenue
Ask yourself this, where am I going and how do I intend getting their?
The first decision required, is to decide which niche market to operate in. You need to find a niche market that has not been fully developed so allowing room to grow. Once a niche market has been selected check the trend for that market segment. Google Trends is an excellent way to track the current market trend and follow the life cycle of market products.
When deciding upon your niche market choose a market that pays good commissions. You’ll generally find that the work involved in earning a commission of 5% is just the same as that for earning 50%, so choose which products you promote with care.
When choosing which products to promote ensure you do your research. Find out what other affiliates are doing. Take note of the products being promoted by other affiliates. Check the products you are considering promoting carefully, there are probably several products you would not like to be associated with.
After you have decided upon your niche market and the products you would like to promote within the niche you need to plan your marketing and promotion methods. Product review sites work well as do articles for sites such as EzineArticles.
Common mistakes to avoid
Too much too soon
One of the biggest mistakes we all make is trying to do too much too soon. Ideas tend to arrive all at once and all demand attention. Too many ideas can have you constantly flitting from one idea to the next without really getting anything done. Lots of half finished projects are no good to anyone.
Consider your ideas. Make some notes. Take a step back. Prioritise.
Having a defined goal will make you a lot more money than jumping between ideas. Given all the electronic gadgets we have these days I still find a notepad, a pencil and a ToDo list works wonders. I would also recommend carrying a small notepad and pencil wherever you go. Ideas come at the strangest times.
North, East, South or West
Pick a goal and don’t get side-tracked. Each of your websites should have a definite theme within which you should work. Try to narrow the theme as much as possible. Why should you do this? Well, it’s very easy to have your website moving in a direction that was not intended and in so doing loose your intended audience.
Keep to the point
When building a website to generate revenue you need to gain the trust of your potential customer as quickly as possible. They are viewing your page for a reason. Don’t give them a reason to leave. Tell them what they need to know and get them to your conversion pages, the pages that convince them to buy, as quickly as possible.
The above having been said, don’t start with the hard sell, nobody likes a pushy salesman (or woman). It’s not so much pushing them towards a sale as coaxing them with patience and a careful balancing act.
Analysis, Analysis, Analysis
Not allowing time to analyse your website and the traffic generated will loose you sales. You need to know which pages generate the most traffic and the most profit. Tools like ClickTale and Google Analytics are excellent FREE tools for this task. Another advantage of both these tools is their integration with WordPress, both ClickTale and Google Analytics have plugins available.
How often should you check your statistics? For low volume sites once a month may be sufficient but I would recommend getting into the habit of checking your websites statistics at least once a week. Just set one hour aside one day a week, grab a cup of tea and a biscuit and ponder.
What’s in a domain name and its extension?
If you are going to make money at affiliate marketing you must have your own domain name and website.
How should you pick a domain name?
Try to get a domain name that does one of two things, either describes the product (fine-jewelry.com) or describes the brand (kingsolutions.com). When describing the product try to obtain a name that contains a couple of targeted keywords if possible. Above all make the domain name memorable.
How should you pick a domain name extension?
Which domain name extension should be chosen really depends upon your defined audience and which countries you are targeting. If you are only targeting a specific country such as the UK then a .co.uk extension makes sense as this will help you to rank in the country specific search engines. If you are targeting a worldwide audience then .com still predominates.
My preferred solution is to register both the country and .com extension where possible.
How to get traffic for FREE?
First a little clarification. When I say FREE I mean no money outlay and not no work. Getting traffic to your website for FREE will cost you time and effort.
Getting traffic is not as difficult as some would have you believe. Most websites I’ve visited promote SEO and META TAGs as the be-all and end-all of site promotion but search engines such as Google mostly ignore META TAGs. The one SEO item I would recommend is the meta-description tab which is used by Google in the information displayed on the results page.
So, what’s the easiest and best (in my opinion) way of getting traffic? My recommended methods are:
- Produce good content.
- Ping the top search engines and directories.
- Write articles (i.e. Ezine Articles).
- Try Free Press Release sites.
- Forum posting.
- Blog commenting.
- Video submissions.
- Social bookmarking.
My main advice is, find the money to get your own website built. You’ll need an ISP (as little as £35 per annum), a domain name (FREE with the right ISP) and a CMS such as WordPress (FREE). Write your content then start working your way through the above list.
How to get repeat business (purchases)?
How do you get repeat purchases, easy, offer something of value! If your customers feel they got a good deal and can trust you, why wouldn’t they return to your website?
A typical affiliate method of contacting (potential) customers is with the use of an email list. You can build an email list by offering something of value FREE of charge. All the customer has to do is register their email address. Don’t immediately try selling to them, but provide some good quality emails with no sales pitch. Over time you can start introducing items to purchase.
So, to get repeat business:
- Build trust with your customers.
- Be an authority.
- Offer good value.
- Offer a good service.
If you can do the above, not only will your customers return but they will tell their friends and then you have chain reaction. Personal recommendations are the thing of dreams, nurture them.
Your comments
Every one of us has our own way of looking at life. We all have our own way of seeing things. Do you have a view that others would like to hear? Lets have your view, just enter it below (each comment also gets a track-back for the search engines).
