There is no debate about the necessity of having an online presence, for businesses of all sizes, small or large. While it’s almost impossible to find any big business without a website, small businesses are still hesitant to develop/own a website. Small businesses more often than not, wants a brochure website or informational website. They simply want to display their product & services and attract customers. Although websites can lead to exponential growth in business, their impact is intangible and accrue in the long term. Thus, to a small business, the cost of a website seems unnecessary and often exorbitant. This phenomenon has kept small businesses away from the digital domain and is limited to their brick-and-mortar existence. If you are a business which owns a website, or if you are looking to develop a website but are concerned about the development costs, we have got you covered. In the following article, we will discuss the means by which you can recover your website development costs effectively and even start earning directly via your website.
10 Ways to Monetise a website in Order to recover website development costs
1. You can display Ads
Displaying ads for the product and services of other’s businesses is a legacy means of earning money via a website. Every time somebody clicks on the ads on your website, you get paid.
Now, display ads work best if you engage with businesses which sell products which are related to your business, as your customers may be interested in these products too.
The best thing about display ads is you get to decide the cost-per-click. If your website is new, you can set a minimum price, but with the increase in traffic on your website, you can demand higher rates.
Other businesses can easily verify the impact of your website on their business, and if favourable, it can make your website indispensable for the success of their business.
2. Host webinars/ Digital forums
All the activities that grab attention must be hosted on your website. Free educational webinars, digital fairs/Mahotsav etc can go a long way in driving organic traffic to your website.
Any opportunity to get attention must be utilised. Webinars should be held for educational purposes and should ideally be free, but if you think you can charge the participants, you must do so.
The focus should be on educating the participants instead of promoting your own products, services or business. If the participants are interested in your webinar, they are a lot more likely to visit and go through your website and become your regular customer. You should only motivate them to visit your website indirectly.
3. Content Writing/ Guest blogging
Another way of getting paid via your website is to simply invite guest bloggers to write on your website. Additionally, you can publish sponsored posts.
But for getting guest bloggers and sponsored posts, you must first need to establish a robust content writing network well integrated with several social media platforms.
The first step in inviting guest posts is to publish high-quality content on your own. If your content is technical and based on original research, you can even charge a premium for your content.
Content writing, guest blogging and sponsored posts may take some time. But if they are well integrated, they can start a perpetual means of cash inflow via your website.
4. Affiliate marketing/ Outreach marketing
Affiliate or outreach marketing broadly means collaborating with players within your industry to earn commissions/kickbacks by promoting their products on your website. These collaborations are for mutual benefit and seldom involve up-front costs. Besides generating revenue, affiliate marketing can go a long way in enhancing your business networks.
You can create your own affiliate programme or reach out to others hosting an affiliate programme either way. It is a win-win situation for both parties. Affiliation marketing provides ample opportunity for organic backlinks, and in this way, it also ensures a continuous organic flow of traffic towards your website.
5. Membership forum
If you provide a specialised service, you can always create an exclusive members forum and charge a membership fee. Only the people who have subscribed to this forum may receive the service provided. For example, financial YouTubers often create a separate members’ community where they give exclusive stock tips. These are not shared with other subscribers of the channel.
Now, make no mistakes. The amount you earn is directly proportional to the quality of service provided by you. Moreover, if your service doesn’t match the expectations of the subscribers, they are more likely to feel cheated and may never visit your website ever again.
6. Add a Business Directory to your website
As the name suggests, you can add a page about various products and services provided by various websites on a separate page on your own website. If you are a high domain authority website, you can even charge other websites for adding their business to your directory. But if you are a new/small business, you can do it on a reciprocal basis.
Additionally, you can even review these websites. An honest review of a website will enhance the confidence of a potential customer in your website. Similarly, a directory also has huge potential for backlinking.
7. Social Media linking
The importance of linking social media to your business can not be emphasised enough in the digital world of the 21st century. Linking your website to social media may not start generating revenue the next day. But if done properly, there is no greater weapon in the digital marketing arsenal than social media marketing.
Social media allows interaction with customers, feedback, a free medium to market your products and an all-important link to your website.
With the help of social media, you can target both existing and potential customers. Moreover, various social media algorithms will ensure that your products and services are displayed to anyone looking for them.
8. Google Adsense
Google Adsense is one of the preferred platforms through which you can capitalise your website development efforts. It allows you to monetise your website and run advertisements on your website. This way, you can directly generate revenue on your website by publishing content online and attracting advertisers.
9. Email marketing
Almost everything, most of all a website, needs a dedicated marketing campaign. Now we are trying to keep your website development cost as low as possible and thus email marketing may be the best option. Email marketing doesn’t require a sophisticated strategy and can be conducted with minimum fuss.
You can identify a list of clients, potential customers etc. and send them regular newsletters. These emails must be accompanied by the option of ‘unsubscribe’ so as to not spam your potential customers.
Additionally, the emails should be integrated with organic links to your website. As a result, the traffic on your website is bound to increase. Finally, if you use a signature while sending an email it will act as a business card.
10. Usability testing to find if your website is working
If you didn’t already know, I am glad to inform you that you can easily sell your website. By some estimates, if your business has potential, your website can go for as much as twice or thrice your annual profit. But any decision vi-a-vis selling a website must be made after a robust usability survey.
A usability survey essentially means finding out if your website is serving its core purpose or not. There are a large number of tools that you can utilise to find if your customers are able to achieve what they intended while visiting your website. The result of a usability survey should decide if you should keep or sell your website.
Not just this, there is always a demand for your domain name, and you just have to wait for the right time for someone to approach you to buy your domain. This is especially true in the present age when the need for more and more domains is rising with the rising need for web development. Hence you can sell your domain and make a return on it.
Key takeaways
The above points can go a long way in monetising your website. Furthermore, it goes without saying that they will most certainly recover all the costs incurred by you while developing your website. Any business, small or big, must include some and not all of the above-mentioned tools, tricks, methods or means to monetise its website. It’s not recommended to use all the methods, and only you can decide which method best suit your need.
Moreover, you must be careful while executing these methods, as almost all of them are spammy by nature. A website laden with display ads is increasingly likely to irk customers. Similarly, continuous emails may lead to irritation of your clients. A successful website can potentially increase your revenue manyfold, and thus it’s always worth a shot.
Finally, If you are indeed ready to take your business online, reach out to us at EMB. Our experts will take care of all your website development needs while ensuring minimum costs and absolutely no concerns.
