5 Ways to Monetize Your Website and Boost Web Traffic

As a marketing services provider, GoingClear spends our days helping our clients to improve their business and marketing assets, not the least of which are their websites. We focus on the website for a number of reasons, and we could set about this discussion with some lofty platitudes about the role that your website plays in establishing and increasing your brand recognition, and how it’s essentially your organization’s digital lobby and the most important entry point for your brand across the entirety of your online real estate. We could wax poetic about sales conversions, search engine optimization, and many other digital strategies and tricks of the trade we have at GoingClear to make your website shine out and help monetize your website against the backdrop of the competition.

We could do those things. But that would take away from the most important tenant businesses operate by, and the primary purpose of your website: your website exists to help your team generate income and close sales. 

While this might seem obvious, many organizations only leverage their websites minimally in revenue generation, so today we’re going to cover various ways websites can be used to generate income beyond the sales of your core product or service. 

A Modern Take on Monetization

It’s a given that monetization of your website in the modern era requires a lot of hard work and effort, but what might not be so obvious to many is that it takes time and patience. We look at the digital landscape and it seems rife with overnight influencer marketing sensations, but the reality is that each of those blogs has put in a lot of work into the lead up in order to create their content, attract the audience necessary to reach critical mass, and ultimately reach a point where they could start being more creative in their approach. 

But no matter who they are, or where they came from, if you dig deep enough, every success story emerged from the use of powerful content. While the revenue channels we will discuss vary, the core process for successful monetization of your organization’s website is to take an active role in evolving it over time and to gradually build up an audience. The more eyes on the website, the more opportunities there will be for your various strategies to work to monetize your website. Once you’ve used content, SEO strategies, social media, and a cultivated readership through direct email marketing, you’re ready to start thinking outside of the box.  

Leverage Your Industry Expertise Into Coaching Services For Peers In Your Industry

Creating content designed to offer your readership coaching relevant to the product or service you provide is a powerful way to not only create a new revenue stream, but also helps to build brand recognition and establish authority, both important factors for helping your website to rank higher in search engine results. Further, clients from your core customer demographic might find value in your coaching services and increase the amount of money they spend on your services, while your sales team also gets an opportunity to cross-sell your coaching clients on your existing line of products or services. 

Create and Sell Educational Materials or Courses

Depending on your core brand, there might be an opportunity to convert your services into educational materials in order to monetize your website. Different from the coaching approach, your goal with educational content is to establish your team as experts and sell that expertise to those who might be looking to achieve the same success. For example, a digital content company might decide to launch a series of educational e-books on how to write effective online marketing content. This will generate traffic of not only potential clients for the product, but also show potential clients for your content creation services that you’re an authority in your field and will be more apt to hire you.   

Consider Affiliate Marketing

The goal of affiliate marketing is to find brands and services with which you can generate synergy in your marketing efforts. You’re not looking for directly competitive products, but rather products and services with whom you might share a client base. In this way, cross-marketing materials end up providing your customers with a “shortcut” to products they would already be shopping for, making your website a one-stop shopping experience for them. Affiliate marketing often comes in the form of product reviews, product tutorials and how-tos, and recommendations of relevant services or products. An example of this symbiotic marketing arrangement might be an IT managed services company creating blog content reviewing and suggesting favored modems, routers, branded components, and other tech devices, complete with links back to the company’s eCommerce platforms. Sales that tie back to the links on your website generate residual revenue for your organization, and you generate new readership and potential customers. 

Merchandise, Merchandise, Merchandise!

Depending on your brand and services or products, you might have a logo or icon made to be put on a t-shirt. Creating cleverly branded material targeted at your core audience can create real brand loyalty in an economic landscape where consumers are tied more to value than to a specific brand. And remember to offer a mix of pure branded novelty merchandise and branded products that provide your customers with valuable tools they will use in their day-to-day such as coffee mugs, notebooks, planners, and other work-related items. 

Create Exclusivity and Value By Placing Premium Content and Materials Behind a Paywall

Your viewers are already used to the value you have created with blog posts and other material on your website. Looking back to the idea of creating and selling educational materials, take a different approach and place similar content behind a paywall, and then charge a subscription fee to access premium branded content. Play off of your customer’s fear of missing out and wanting the prestige of being a premium member. By creating the perception of value and segmenting your content accordingly, you can increase your revenue streams with little additional effort. 

Want Some More Opportunities To Monetize Your Website?

We’ve covered five strategies in order to monetize your website, but there are many other approaches to monetization that you can pursue, and at GoingClear, we can help you execute them all. Our Boston-based team of marketing experts understands not only how powerful a properly leveraged website can be in building and supporting your brand, but just how much revenue can be generated with the right approach to content management. 

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