How Do I Monetize A Traditional Site?

An interesting question was posed this week in an email that I received from a reader. She asked, “How can I make money online if my site isn’t a blog?”. There are of course a lot of different answers to this question. Instead of throwing out every possible method, I’m going to focus on the areas I consider to be the most important, easy to use, and profitable.

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is going to be a very important monetization method in the beginning stages of your site. It can be used from day one, when other methods won’t yet be available.

Strengths:

• You can use Adsense from day one.
• Adsense is very easy to implement.
• Advertisers are already there and available.

Weaknesses

• Adsense likely won’t make much for you if your site doesn’t get much traffic yet.
• Adsense may not pay out well for you, depending on your niche.
• If a person clicks on an ad, they are taken away from your site.

Overall

If you’re just starting out, Adsense may be your only option. For this reason, I would recommend signing up for it, and implementing in on your site.

Kontera

Kontera can also be a good money making program if you don’t have any other options. They create ad links within the text of your site that display as small boxes when hovered. You get paid when a user of your site clicks on one of the links or boxes. Kontera will let anyone sign up that has a decent amount of content on their site. It doesn’t matter if you’re a blog, so Kontera can be a good option for those with traditional sites.

Strengths

• You can likely use Kontera in the beginning stages of your site.
• Easy to implement.
• You don’t have to make any ad sales, it’s already done for you.

Weaknesses

• The payouts will be quite small in the beginning.
• The Kontera links may be invasive for your readers.
• Your niche may not work well with Kontera.
• If a person clicks on an ad, they are taken away from your site.

Overall

With Kontera, you won’t know until you try. With some sites, Kontera doesn’t hardly pay anything. It pays quite well with other sites.

Direct Ad Sales

Direct ad sales is the option that will likely provide the most income to a traditional website that doesn’t sell products. If you have a site that already gets a decent amount of traffic, this is the way to go.

Strengths

• Higher payouts than Adsense and Kontera.
• Many advertisers will subscribe monthly, creating a residual income.

Weaknesses

• Advertisers have to be sold.
• Harder to implement than Adsense and Kontera.

Overall

Direct ad sales is probably going to be the way to go if you’re serious about making money with the internet. In order to sell direct ads, you will want to create an ‘Advertise’ page that shows your traffic levels and prices. You may also want to stalk some of the advertisers that advertise on sites similar to yours.

Text Link Ads

Selling text link ads is another option that can easily be used to create some additional income with a traditional site.

Strengths

• Can pay more than Adsense and Kontera.
• Easy to implement.
• Text-Link-Ads.com will sell the links for you.

Weaknesses

• You will probably have to have and PageRank of at least 4 and good traffic levels to get accepted.
• You will be giving away site-wide links, which could have some disadvantages for SEO.
• You run the risk of being penalized for selling links.

Overall

This might be a pretty good option for many sites out there, but will be hard to do for newer sites. You probably won’t be able to use it in the beginning, but will be able to after about a year. With this option, you run the risk of being penalized for selling links.

Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon’s affiliate program may be a great option if your site is designed around products. For example, a site that reviews books could use the Amazon affiliate program to sell a lot of books. A site that reviews movies could use the program to sell a lot of DVDs.

Strengths

• Amazon will accept almost anyone.
• Gives you access to millions of products you can sell.
• You don’t need to ship any of the products, Amazon takes care of that.

Weaknesses

• Can be hard to implement, depending on your level of HTML knowledge.

Overall

Amazon is going to be a great option if you have established traffic and can recommend products to your site’s visitors. Since Amazon sells almost everything, you have a lot of different options for products to sell.

Shopping.com Affiliate Program

Shopping.com’s affiliate program is pretty similar to Amazon’s. It would have the same basic strengths and weaknesses.

My Thoughts

As you can see, there are a lot of options out there to monetize a traditional site. The options you should choose will depend on your level of programming expertise and your site’s traffic levels. I would recommend starting with Adsense, and experimenting with the other methods. Making the switch to direct ad sales will likely produce the biggest payouts when the timing is right.

If anyone has any questions about monetizing a site, please let me know in the comments!