Carrying on from the previous post 3 Ways to Make Money from Your Website here are another 4 popular ways to generate income from your website…

Affiliate/ Referral Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the practice of paying commission for sales generated when a website owner recommends a 3^rd party product. In simple terms, if you sell someone else’s product via your website, they pay you a commission.

Affiliate programs give commissions ranging from 10%-90% depending on the arrangement and type of product. Affiliate marketing can be a good source of income for online marketers.  Aim to recommend only quality products.  If you have a loyal database, email them a good review of the product that you’ve written personally. If you offer several affiliate products, keep measuring the sales of each, removing those that don’t generate income.

Clickbank offer affiliate programs en mass, you will also find that many businesses with e-products have an independent affiliate programs.

Donations

If you are giving value (such as information, music, widgets or apps) you may offer users the option to ‘make a donation’ or ‘buy me a beer’

This is done particularly well if the user needs to download your product, as you can then space the download with the request for donation, and is common for developers who create small useful apps.

We haven’t used this means before so if you have used requests for donations before please note your experience in the comments below!

Membership

As membership implies, members pay an ongoing fee to get access to content or services not available to the general public. Having a successful membership website relates directly to the value of the information or services you have to give. If you plan to offer membership, make sure that the content and offers available in the paid area is much more valuable than anything you offer freely.

Offering free trial or limited membership for a limited time is a good way to build your database and have people evaluate the benefits of becoming a member.

Examples of membership websites:

• Rain Today
• Marketing Sherpa

Sponsorship

Sponsorship can be anything from in-kind products or services to cash.  Sponsors are looking for brand association with your consumers, so do your research and understand who your website will reach and the benefits you can offer a sponsor. Look for companies that have the same target audience as your website.

With this and the previous post we have now given you 7 of the top ways that people generate revenue from their websites. Explore these options with your website plans and consider options that will be acceptable to your target visitors, whilst giving you maximum opportunities for revenue generation.

Happy Hunting!

Serena “Social” Star