If your goal is to have an online business with passive income and residual earnings, it's important that you know how much effort will be required from the beginning before you can start making money today. If your site doesn't receive any traffic or gets only 1-3 unique visits per day, then you won't see any kind of return on investment (ROI) in time.
So what are some ways to increase website traffic so as to boost sales? In this article, we'll explore whether you can actually make money by getting more people to view your content without spending too much time promoting them. Let's find out...
Yes! You heard right. You don't have to spend hours writing articles just to gain one extra reader who might buy something once he/she finds your work interesting. It's not about quantity but quality. The best way to promote your niche product is to create high-quality informative posts which answer questions commonly asked by readers in your field. People tend to visit blogs based upon their curiosity about certain topics. When they click through links within your post, they end up at products' pages where they may choose to purchase items. This process is known as "the backlink effect" and it works like magic when done correctly.
You should also note that most successful websites generate around $1 million monthly revenue while having no advertising budget whatsoever. So if you want to maximize the ROI of your efforts, focus on building relationships instead of trying to sell things all the time.
Don't forget -- it's better to write 10 great articles each containing 2 links rather than 100 mediocre ones with 5 links each. That's because there are various factors affecting clicks such as bounce rate, page load speed, etc., which you must take into account before publishing anything new. And remember -- Google has already indexed billions of webpages so why waste time optimizing every single one? Instead, concentrate on creating good content first and worry about SEO later. Don't try to rank top 3 positions in search engines for keywords that bring very little traffic. Just optimize your own particular domain name and let other sites handle organic results.
No, unless you're using affiliate marketing programs. Affiliate marketers pay publishers for sending potential buyers to their offer pages. However, these commissions usually range between 0% and 20%. On average, affiliates pay roughly 6%, although some companies offer higher rates depending on performance criteria. But keep in mind that affiliate marketing requires lots of promotion activity.
But wait -- there's hope yet! There are several methods you could use to drive targeted traffic to your site and enhance its visibility. These include social media channels, video marketing, mobile marketing campaigns, direct emails, newsletters, press releases, and others. All of those require minimum amount of resources to launch and execute properly. Once your campaign starts gathering momentum, it becomes easier to scale up your reach considerably. After all, you wouldn't expect to run a marathon without training beforehand would you?
Another thing worth keeping in mind is that professional internet marketers use different tools to track conversions and analyze statistics. For example, Google Analytics allows you to monitor visitor behavior across multiple devices including desktop computers, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and so forth. It provides valuable information that helps improve future strategies. As far as I'm concerned, tracking analytics is absolutely critical since you never stop learning. Otherwise, you'd constantly repeat mistakes made earlier. Also, don't hesitate to ask help from experts whenever necessary. They've got tons of experience and data to guide you along the way.
That being said, here are three helpful tips to consider if you plan on starting blogging soon.
Tip #1: Start small. Focus on generating content consistently over a long period of time. Make sure your posts contain useful information that answers common queries, presents solutions to problems, offers practical advice, and entertains prospects. Be yourself and stay authentic throughout the journey. Always strive for excellence.
Tip #2: Share your knowledge via free digital assets. Remember, sharing brings happiness! Don't feel overwhelmed by the idea of producing hundreds of original pieces of content. Take advantage of free eBooks, case studies, infographics, videos, whitepapers, podcasts, interviews, etc. You can publish these on platforms such as Medium, LinkedIn Pulse, iTunes Podcasts, YouTube Live Stream Videos, Blubrry, Buzzle, EzineArticles, etc. Plus, you can easily repurpose them for distribution elsewhere.
Tip #3: Use compelling call-to-action buttons (CTAs). CTA stands for Call To Action. Ensure that your CTAs stand out above the crowd. A simple solution to achieve this is adding images next to them. Images draw attention faster than words alone. Keep your CTAs short and concise, relevant, and clear. Write a strong headline that speaks directly to the target audience. At last, ensure that your landing pages convert well. Test everything thoroughly until you get positive feedback from real users. Then continue improving your strategy accordingly.
There are two main ways to cash in on website traffic -- either selling ads or displaying sponsored promotions. Both options involve putting banners or text links alongside your articles. Nowadays, ad networks allow advertisers to display ads anywhere on the Internet except static image ads. Therefore, placing contextual links with relevant ads inside your articles is profitable.
It's important to understand that banner advertisements aren't going away anytime soon. Banner impressions are still crucial to measure success and determine appropriate budgets.
On the contrary, promoted posts are becoming increasingly popular among savvy entrepreneurs due to the following reasons:
They are cheaper compared to traditional PPC campaigns.
The cost is divided equally amongst numerous viewers unlike PPC.
Traffic isn't restricted to specific demographics.
More importantly, both types of advertisement provide financial incentives. Hence, you should evaluate alternatives and decide which method suits your goals.
Nowadays, it's easy enough to set up your own WordPress blog. With the vast majority of themes offering customization features, you can add promotional snippets to your sidebar widget area. Alternatively, you could also opt for plugins that automatically insert ads into your posts.
However, it's worth mentioning that it takes a lot of planning, creativity, persistence, patience, honesty, and expertise to succeed in the world of online entrepreneurship. Most people fail simply because they lack the proper guidance and support system available in our modern times.
Nevertheless, if you follow the aforementioned guidelines, you'll surely be able to build a successful lifestyle. Good luck!
If your website gets 500 hits per day and makes $1 in ad revenues (based on Google's data) then it will take 3 years of continuous passive income before you can quit working full-time at that job! This post explains how long it takes for someone who earns $1000/month with an investment of just $100.
With these figures in mind I took my own experience as an example. Based on what I've learned so far about making money online, I have put together some tips which should help new bloggers achieve similar results. For simplicity I'll refer to this person as "A" throughout.
For those readers who are not familiar with blogging, let me first explain why we use such simplistic calculations. The reason is simple - because they work well enough. If they don't hold true sometimes, there must be something wrong with our analysis somewhere. In other words, these numbers provide us with a general idea of when one can break free from their 9-to-5 jobs.
Now let's see how A can make his or her dreams come true using the same principles discussed above.
To start off, we assume that A has a very small budget ($100), but still wants to make more money. So he decides to try out different methods of getting traffic onto his site. He tries social media marketing, article submission, paid advertising etc.
The question now becomes how much A needs to invest to generate $1 in monthly earnings via AdSense ads. To answer this we look at the maths behind CPCs (cost per click). Let's say A spends $300/mo on all sources of traffic except AdSense. This means that he invests $250 every month into generating leads. Now consider each lead as equivalent to a single view. That's where A's math starts going awry.
Let's simplify things by assuming that only 2% of the people viewing A's content end up clicking on any given advertisement placed on his page. Of course, it would be better if this number was higher. But since we're trying to figure out whether A could leave his current job, let's keep things simple.
2% conversion rate would mean that A attracts 100 unique visitors per day and converts 0.02 percent of them into subscribers.
So if all of these clicks were followed through to signups, A would earn approximately $0.01/click. And since there are 60,000 total clicks per month (500 x 30 days = 15,000), A would receive around $6/month.
This calculation assumes that an advertiser pays exactly 50 cents per subscriber over a period of 12 months. Which isn't always possible due to various factors like competition, audience quality etc. However, this way of calculating CPCs provides a fair estimate for purposes of comparison.
It also shows that it would take quite a bit of time to reach profitability with AdSense after investing just $100. You may argue that advertisers pay significantly more per view than Google. True, but remember that advertisers place banners across multiple websites while A's site is limited to displaying only one banner unit every week.
And even if A places another bid elsewhere, chances are that the cost of acquiring a customer will remain roughly the same. It doesn't matter how large the market is -- unless you sell unique products -- everyone competes against everyone else.
Also note that the above calculation applies to A's case even though most blogs don't hit anywhere close to 500 unique visitors per day. Consider the following scenario:
Assume that A's blog receives 10,000 visits per month and that 5% of these people convert into paying customers. Then it turns out that A achieves $50/day in ad revenues based on the above formula.
In contrast, if A had invested $5000 instead of $100, he'd probably earn $3000/year without doing anything extra. And he wouldn't even need to wait until his next birthday to celebrate it either.
I said earlier that it's important to note that A's profit margin remains constant no matter what level of traffic she receives. This holds true especially when considering the effect of high bounce rates. Even if A manages to attract 400 unique viewers per day, it won't result in increased profits overall if half of them exit the site immediately.
Therefore, we recommend setting realistic goals rather than aiming for massive traffic influx. If you want to become successful at blogging, aim for 5000 views per month initially instead of 40,000.
But once you cross that milestone, you can increase your traffic further depending upon the type of posts you write. There is nothing wrong with posting great content and waiting patiently for organic growth.
There is no standard figure indicating how many views a typical blog garners. All we know is that the average web property gets fewer than 20 million pageviews per month. Some popular destinations pull down hundreds of millions of eyeballs every year.
We decided to find out how many unique views A's hypothetical blog would likely garner based on the assumption that it received 200k unique views per month from non-advertisers. These figures are taken from SimilarWeb data covering January 2014 to December 2015.
Here are the stats:
Monthly Unique Visitors : 200k
Revenue From Referrals & Social Media Sharing : $15
Monetized With Ads & Affiliates : $0
Ad Revenue Per View : $0.0025
Total Monthly Profit : $14.75
Note that this amount includes Adsense revenue earned directly from traffic driven exclusively by search engines. Other forms of revenue like referral fees from social sharing sites are excluded here. Also note that this calculation considers only direct AdSense revenue generated from referrals and affiliate links.
Based on the above findings, we conclude that it would take A almost 4 years to turn a decent chunk of change from his blog using AdSense alone. Once again, this is assuming that A uses only Google Search to drive traffic to his site.
Of course, a savvy blogger knows that there are ways to improve his odds of success. By taking advantage of SEO techniques, creating compelling headlines, writing interesting articles, leveraging backlinks etc., A can boost his monthly visitor count substantially.
However, it's best to avoid competing solely on popularity metrics alone. Just focus on providing valuable information and services. Build relationships with others and watch your business grow naturally.
Have you tried driving traffic to your site using AdSense? What did you learn along the way? Share your thoughts below...
When it comes to blogging and making money online, there are two popular methods of getting paid: running ads or affiliate marketing. If your website gets more than 5-10 thousand visits a month (which is not uncommon), then the best way to generate income would be by using ad networks like Google AdWords or Chikita instead. You don't have to worry about conversions and clicks since they handle this part automatically. However, most websites that fall below those numbers will struggle to break even without any additional effort on their side.
In order to understand how things work in practice, here's an example based on what we've done on our own blogs over time. Let's say you start out with 10,000 monthly impressions but only manage 500 unique users during the same period. That means you'll lose $5/day after paying your hosting fees ($250). So let's see how far we can go before breaking even...
If you're lucky enough to hit one million pageviews in a year, just think of all the potential opportunities you could miss out on! Imagine being able to sponsor someone who has never heard of Wikipedia before - that's a huge opportunity right there. The point is that it won't happen overnight so keep focusing on building up your audience first. When you eventually grow big enough, you may find yourself sponsored by some really cool companies.
So now that you know how easy it is to make money at high traffic sites, let's take a look at how often people actually click on advertisements these days. According to research conducted by ClickZ Media Group last year, fewer than 2% of all web surfers clicked on banner advertising as a primary source of information. In other words, the vast majority of clicks come from organic search results, social media referrals and email newsletters. Obviously, this number depends heavily on where exactly you place your advertisement but it still puts into perspective how difficult it is to make any real money via banners.
On top of that, another study commissioned by Yahoo revealed that 70% of internet users consider "viewed content" to be irrelevant. They might use them once in awhile or occasionally, but it doesn't count towards boosting your ranking. It also shows that people aren't interested in clicking ads unless they feel compelled to do so either due to lack of choice or because they want to support a particular product or service. Ultimately, you should focus on building trust and providing valuable resources rather than trying to sell something directly.
That said, if you were planning to run banners anyway, we suggest looking at contextual links which allow advertisers to target specific audiences while still appearing alongside relevant posts. This type of link placement allows both parties to benefit greatly regardless of whether someone ends up buying anything through the site.
The average amount of money earned per impression varies depending on several factors including location and type of campaign (i.e., non-search vs. search engine optimization campaigns) but generally speaking, it goes anywhere between 0$-$0.25. Here's a breakdown of rates according to CPC values calculated by PriceGrabber:
Advertiser | Campaign Type | Average CPM Value
Google Ads | Search Engine Optimization | $1.22
Yahoo Sponsored Search Listings | Search Engine Optimization | $2.00
Facebook | Social Networking | $0.65
Twitter # Promoted Tweets | Twitter | $0.14
LinkedIn | Link Sharing | $0.12
As you can see, the value of each click differs significantly across platforms. While Facebook and LinkedIn offer decent payout figures, the rest tend to reward you relatively little. For comparison purposes, let's assume you made 100$ today selling digital downloads of your latest song. How long would it take until you'd finally stop working altogether?
Assuming no new sales whatsoever, it takes around 6 years and 3 months until you will earn back every single penny spent promoting products. On the other hand, if you had managed to bring in 400$ from selling eBooks, it would take you roughly 4 years and 8 months to recover your investment. Of course, everything changes depending on your current situation, goals and expectations. But it's important to remember that generating passive income requires consistent efforts over time.
Now let's put together all these pieces and figure out how much money you can potentially earn from a very small audience.
Let's assume you've been managing a WordPress blog for almost a year and you currently receive 2000 hits per week. At first glance, that seems like nothing. After all, most bloggers write articles with hopes of turning readers into loyal followers -- yet it took us literally hundreds of hours of writing, researching and editing to build such a platform. Now imagine what kind of impact you could have with proper promotion and SEO techniques. With a bit of luck, you might end up reaching the next level sooner than expected. Before we wrap up this post, let me outline the main steps required to achieve success in this scenario:
Start off slow, invest your energy wisely and pick one niche to master
Create interesting content that attracts attention and offers solutions to common problems
Build links within your domain, utilize social networking tools and create engaging user profiles
Utilize targeted keywords carefully and consistently promote quality content
Keep track of analytics and improve your keyword performance based on feedback
Find ways to increase your visibility, engagement and conversion rate
Become known among your community and attract higher authority partners
It shouldn't surprise anyone that it typically takes a lot longer than a few weeks to turn a hobby into full-time job. As soon as you learn something new, apply it and repeat the process again, you'll gradually progress toward accomplishing bigger milestones along the way. Just remember that you don't necessarily need thousands of fans to become successful -- sometimes, the smallest step forward counts too.
Have you ever tried to make money online? What was your experience? Share your thoughts down in the comments section below!
Just follow our battle-tested guidelines and rake in the profits.