This is a dream for a lot of people. Having an online media in their field of expertise. Being it general news website, or a niche one, having an online media is one of the easiest and fastest ways for you get your voice out there.
To be heard.
To be listened to.
Say for instance you, like me, are uncommonly interested in the industry of technology, and you’ve created an online media website, so you can cover everything that is happening in that field. For your sole satisfaction, and nothing else. Time will pass, and your website, if promoted the right way, will receive an amount of traffic that will make you wonder.
And then you’ll come to a conclusion.
A conclusion that will raise questions.
Creating an online media is easy. The difficult part is being disciplined enough to keep it up to date, to write about everything that can possibly happen in the industry you are covering.
The difficult part is getting traffic to your website.
And monetizing that traffic, once you have it.
So, how to monetize your online media?
1. Common (Banner) Advertising
You can see ads on almost all of the websites you are visiting. Not having ads in your media, especially if you receive a significant amount of traffic is stupid.
Being webmaster all by yourself is hard.
Putting ads on some strategic places of your website is not wrong. Just the opposite. It is wrong not to do it.
Bear in mind that, except your website is receiving a really significant amount of visitors, daily, you won’t be able to pay the bills for this type of ads.
Yet, it is a good source of additional cash to your account. So, why not to take advantage of it?
There are a number of different payment methods of the common (banner) advertising.
PPC
Through the common banner ads, the PPC payment method is the most common.
PPC stands for pay-per-click. And as you can already foresee if you choose this payment method for the ads you put on your website, you will get paid every time someone clicks on a banner on your website.
CPA
CPA is one of the least used ways for banner advertising.
It stands for cost-per-acquisition (or cost-per-action).
CPA strongly resembles affiliate marketing (which we’ll cover in a minute), but it is slightly different. The main difference is that while in the affiliate marketing you’ll get paid only if someone buys a product, in the CPA type of common advertising, you could be paid for any type of action that the advertiser may want to get. Meaning, if the advertiser wants to pay for mail list submissions, you’ll receive a commission only if the people that clicked a banner on your website, did submit to his mail list.
CPM
CPM stands for cost-per-mille.
Meaning, the advertiser will pay for 1000 impressions. Thus, you’ll get paid if a banner is seen 1000 times. Simple as that.
Only the sense of the term “seen” differs from advertiser to advertiser. Some will want for the banner to be “visible on the screen” for 2 seconds. Thus, if the users scroll to the bottom of the page, it won’t count it as an impression.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Having a lot of traffic is always beneficial. Affiliate marketing is one of the top choices of media owners when it comes to traffic monetization.
Why?
Mainly because the commission is probably the highest. Yet, for you to get paid, the users on your website will have not only to click the banner but also to buy the recommended product/service.
3. PR Materials
PR specialists and journalists have always been connected. This could be expected because the PR’s need the publicity of the media, and the journalists need the latest news.
Thus, having a recognizable online media will put you in such a position that PR’s can and will be eager to pay for a place in your news.
And depending on your website’s size, this could get quite expensive for them, and, of course, profitable for you.
4. Product Placement
This one is similar to the previous. Yet, it is different. While a PR material is one that tries to put the product, service or brand in the news, the product placement method is more of a review-like method.
You know, product placement is your favorite YouTuber talking about a product, they received for free and/or got paid to review in front of their audience.
5. Reseller Hosting
Especially if your media is tech-oriented, reselling hosting is a perfect match. Of course, if you are into it, you can take advantage of any type of media that you own in any way that you wish.
Thus, you can simply create PR materials and Product Placing and common advertise your own Hosting Brand, and no one of your media’s customers won’t know that you are the owner of both sites.
It will be a strong leverage for your business.
There are way too many sides of this idea that make it a good choice, but here are two:
- Every user of your media site that lands on your Reseller Hosting site and buys, will make money for you.
- Starting a hosting company could be free.
