B3-CH39 – The Most Popular Ways To Monetize Your Site

Now that you have your product and have created a plan for your sales “funnel” (i.e. the “sales flow”), it’s time to connect it all up to your website.

One of the simplest business models is using so-called “affiliate codes”. These are just personalized links you get which are unique to you, and when someone clicks on them, YOU get the credit for whatever purchases they make through that link.

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Most affiliate links have a “shelf life”. Some are valid for only a few days, others are good for a few months. You can always find that out when you look through “affiliate terms” on your chosen product’s home site. The reason for this shelf life is that some people who wouldn’t have found the product without your help to begin with, do not buy right away but decide to come back a few weeks later. This time even if they don’t use your affiliate code – but as long as they’re surfing from the same computer they originally used – any purchases they make will still be credited to you! As long as the link is still valid (also known as “cookie life”). Amazon, for example, expires after 24 hours. So if they clicked through to a particular product and buy 2 days later – you do NOT get credit for that sale. Others like, say, MyHabit.com last for 30 days, other still like ClickBank.com last for 60 days.

So, using an affiliate code is one of the most popular ways to make money online, and the way it works is generally something like this:

1. Pick a product you LOVE (of course!) and go to its owners’ affiliate page, where you will be able to register and pick up your “affiliate code”. That’s just a URL which you can hyperlink to a text or a graphic, and whenever someone clicks on that, YOU will be credited with the sale (providing they buy). Typically a “cookie” will be placed on the prospect’s computer for a specified number of days afterwards. There are also special product sites such as Amazon, Clickbank or DigitalPoint which have thousands of products you can choose from.
2. You can decide to send your visits directly to the product-owner’s sales page – or you can send them to your added value page first (which I would recommend, because it allows you to build your own list). Such a page, also known as a “Squeeze Page” will usually offer something for free to the visitor in exchange for signing up to your list. This is usually done BEFORE you let the visitor enter the actual sales page. If you do decide to have a squeeze page, then you will also need to connect it to an Autoresponder (so that a thank-you mail can be sent along with a download link). I generally recommend aWeber for that. You can also set up additional follow-up messages in there as well, in order to keep in touch with your prospect on autopilot.
3. If you have any other affiliate products further down in your sales funnel, you connect them up in the same manner as above.

Another monetization method is to serve ads for other websites or products. The most popular such method involves Google AdSense, but it’s also possible to assign areas on your site to large ad networks, or indeed even to personally sell ads to those who apply. Have a look at the enclosed AdSense Mastery course to learn more this more in-depth.

Once your music site gets over 10,000 visits per month you will start receiving emails from marketers asking you to place their ads on your site.

There are many sites which don’t sell anything themselves, but due to their high traffic they attract tons of advertisers and charge them for targeted exposure. Tens of thousands of dollars – millions even – can be made by the most popular sites which realize this. This was one of my MAJOR mistakes when running Fame Games back in the day. I was unaware of all this and our multi-million-level traffic was never monetized. I even refused some ad offers, believing it would “cheapen” our site…! You live and you learn.

Anyway, if you use the ad hosting mode, all you’ll need to do is to place the seller’s ad code (or, his ad with a hyperlink, depending on how you do it), and – that’s about it. If you’re dealing with an ad network, they will take care of all the ad rotations and accounting to you. If you do this off your own back, it helps to have an ad management plugin installed (there are plenty of those available for WordPress).

If you’re selling products from your catalogue – such as your albums, merchandise or if you’re selling multiple affiliate offers – it is often a very good idea to set up an “e-shop” or a shopping cart site.

With WordPress, this is easily accomplished using any of the multitude of tools ranging from the very simple to the truly awesome. Some are WordPress-based plugins, or even simple payment-processor-autoresponder combos, others include more general services which you can plug into any type of site.

In the first group, you have plugins such as 1ShoppingCart, Digital Product Delivery, or Tips&Tricks eStore (which I use on the MMI site), while in the second group you can go for the likes of Clickbank (yes it’s not merely a product marketplace, but also a fully-fledged payment processor), DigiResults, JVZoo, InfusionSoft or Nanacast.

It is also possible to set up payment processing using your PayPal account (under Merchant Tools). The vast majority of people use this system because it’s very simple to do for one-off products. But once things start getting more complex, you’ll find PayPal on its own can be rather limited.

All of these tools integrate with major autoresponders, chief among them being aWeber. At this point, I would suggest that you check out the attached Affiliate Marketing Course.

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