Monetization

The purpose of internet marketing is to ensure the success of e-businesses. Success of any business whether online or a brick and mortar one translates to profit maximization. A business can only make profits through income generation; the process of generating money on the internet is called monetization. 

Monetization of e-businesses is carried out by converting their website traffic into cash inflows. This could be done in a number of ways: 

• Monetization through direct sales. 
• Generating income through internet marketing and online advertising programs like Google Adsense; and tools like banner advertisements, affiliate marketing, e-mail marketing, and the like. 
• Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. 
• Revenues through social media marketing. 

Successful monetization involves the following elements: 

• Research: 

You need to conduct a comprehensive research of programs, tools, and ways of monetizing your website. There are hundreds and hundreds of e-books, guides, websites that can help you but you need to cash in on the right one which can add value to your business and bring in profits. Research will help you decide on the right tools to set you on your way to successfully monetize your website. 

• Online Traffic: 

Your website might be generating a lot of traffic with visitors flocking in great numbers but that alone does not ensure profitability of your e-business. You will only be able to generate profits if you get the right type of online traffic. You need targeted traffic i.e. visitors who are looking for what you have to offer. 

• Trial and Error: 

Each website is different and each e-business is different too, with different objectives to be achieved. The success measures are also thus, different for different kinds of websites. You need to single out the tools that will help your online business grow. A particular monetization technique might work or for your website or it might not. You will have to implement a lot of these and see for yourself. 

• Search Engine Optimization: 

Monetization can only be carried after effective Search Engine Optimization of your website. For the reason that potential customers visit your website after searching for it, SEO is an integral part of internet marketing and the basis of monetization techniques. 

Ways to Monetize

Popular Ways of Monetizing Your Website: 

• Pay per Click Advertising: 

Through this you generate revenue every time a customer clicks through your ads. If your website gets a lot of incoming traffic PPC advertising can really help you by posting different ads on your website. Alternatively, you can also use it to generate traffic for your website via advertising on other web platforms. Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN), BidVertiser, Clicksor, etc. are a good place to start your PPC campaigns with. 

• Banner Advertising: 

You can sell your own website advertising space to other businesses and advertisers who will pay for putting up their ads on your website. 

• Affiliate Marketing: 

You can form a partnership with merchants whose products you will sell directly or indirectly sell their products, and advertise them on your website. Every time a customer clicks through to the merchant website you will earn money. 

• Monetization Widgets: 

Widgets like SmartLinks, ScarcthBack, and WidgetBucks allow you to plug them in on your website in order to monetize it. They may be based on affiliate marketing, PPC advertising, text link ads, or any other form of internet marketing. 

• Premium Content: 

You can sell the content of your website to make money form it. By allowing companies or individuals’ access to your premium content in the form of e-books, manuals or guide and charging them for it you generate revenues. 

• Private Forums: 

Websites like vBulletin, Simple Machines Forum, phpBB, and Vanilla are examples of private forums whereby the members pay a premium subscription or membership fee, in return for the premium services that they get from these. 

• Sponsored Reviews: 

It is a paid blogging method, whereby, you get paid for favorable post for a product or a service. PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews, ReviewMe, BlogVertise, and Smorty are examples of websites that pay you money for writing reviews about their offerings. Similarly, if your blog is very popular and gets a large amount of traffic you can sell it to some relevant company. 

Various other methods of monetization include: CPM advertising, Text Link Ads, RSS Feed ads, paid surveys and polls, marketplaces, selling or renting internal pages, pop-ups and pop-unders, in-text advertising, and creating and selling a newsletter.