If there is one question every webmaster would like to ask, it will most likely be, “How can I monetize my website?” Starting a personal website, forum, or blog can be a lot of fun, especially if you do it for just a hobby. But when you decide you want to actually begin to make money off of it, that is when things get tricky. If you simply have a personal website, forum, or blog just “for fun” then you will not be bothered as much if the webpages receives little to no traffic. I have heard horror stories from webmasters who assume that just because they have a personal website, forum, or blog that everyone will want to visit and join as regular members. That is not always the case though, and the majority of the time when you first begin to advertise your personal website, forum, or blog on the internet, you will only be attracting “first timers.” It takes time to attract and keep regular members visiting your webpages. Monetizing a personal website, forum, or blog can be an extremely rewarding experience. There are instances where individuals can simply live off of the income generated by the traffic on their personal website, forum, or blog without needing to have an outside career of any kind. By having a personal website, forum, or blog that is being monetized by yourself, you are your own boss. You are able to begin and end the work day whenever you want. There will be no one there to tell you that you forgot to clock in on time, or that you took to long of a break. Being able to blend your web developing skills with your content creation abilities can lead to a personal website, forum, or blog having an enormous amount of organic traffic being drawn to your webpages from listings in search results from search engines. Try and keep your content as on topic as you can without straying away from your general theme discussion that your personal website, forum, or blog is about. We will be discussing various methods for monetizing your personal website, forum, or blog in a way to help provide possible income alternatives than a typical eight to five full time office job.
The first method involves the webmaster paying their users to create content on various webpages that are in the personal website, forum, or blog. If you go to a website and someone is offering their posting service relating to gardening, then you can pay that person to create a few articles in the gardening section of your personal website, forum, or blog, that is if your webpages are even about gardening in the first place. Which brings me to my next point. Try to keep your personal website, forum, or blog covering as few subjects as possible. You wouldn’t want to overwhelm first time users when they begin to visit your webpages and do not know where to begin creating topics and responding with posts. By sticking with a subject that interests you, you will be able to not only create content easier since you already know more about the subject, but you will be able to attract and possibly keep first time users as regular members once the register. Paying users to create content on your personal website, forum, or blog usually involves online payment transfer processors, such as Paypal using real money, or Bitcoin, or even your personal website, forum, or blog that has “in-site” points. In-site points can be used as another means of electronic currency, though odds are it is not recognized as an actual world wide monetary currency. By having a points system enable on your personal website, forum, or blog you are giving your users the opportunity to buy, sell, or trade those points via electronic transfer in exchange for a particular service that is being offered.
The second method of monetizing your personal website, forum, or blog is through the use of advertisements that are place throughout your webpages. Advertisements, also known simply as “Ads,” come in many shapes and colors. Some of the most popular advertisements include something called “Banner Advertisements.” These banners, are large graphical representations of the particular product that is being promoted. Some webmasters who place their own banner advertisements on other websites to help promote their own personal website, forum, or blog will sometimes design the banner advertisement in a graphics program such as Photoshop, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), or Paint.net. These graphics programs allow the user to create highly detailed images to be used as graphics when designing a banner advertisement to be used to promote a personal website, forum, or blog. Some graphics programs are free and open source, while others require either a subscription or a one time purchase of the product which usually comes with a license of some kind that enable the user to use the product accordingly.
Another form of advertisements is what are commonly referred to as contextual link units. These contextual link units usually are related to keywords that are being displayed on the particular webpage of your personal website, forum, or blog. These contextual link units help to offer the reader of the content on the webpage, additional reading material or product that relates to the content on that particular webpage. Placing contextual link units and banner advertisements in strategic locations around your webpage could possibly drive traffic to that product if that banner advertisement or contextual link unit is located in a highly noticeable spot and high traffic area on the webpage. Just placing banner advertisements and contextual links units in random places on your personal website, forum, or blogs webpages may do more harm than good by driving people away from a webpage that is full of advertisements, and the user will not be able tell where the content on the webpage ends and an advertisement begins. A webmaster needs to design their webpages around not only the content but also around the areas where banner advertisements and contextual link units are placed.
Discussion Topic: How to Monetize your Website
