Opportunities for new income sources

This topic was already discussed a little bit in the “income sources” section of this module, but it needs an entire section of its own because it’s one of the easiest, quickest wins that you can have for a website!

What we want to do here is find all of the income sources that a website has and identify other sources that we can quickly add. You’ll find some websites that have done a very good job maximizing their income sources, but these tend to be more on the expensive side — websites worth $30,000+. For the cheaper sites, there’s typically at least one win you can make.

There are actually two ways to look at new income sources for a website. First would be upgrading existing income sources, and second would be adding entirely new sources.

To begin with, let’s consider upgrading existing income sources. This is where a website is making money from one method, but the service or strategy that they’re using isn’t fully optimized. What we’ll do is simply replace the ineffective source with a better one!

One common example I love to see has to do with display ads. Uneducated website owners will often throw the most common display ad network on their site and call it a day — Google Adwords. Media.net is another very common one.

While these ad networks do earn money, they tend to have a much lower RPM than other any other ad network out there. This is because their barrier to entry is virtually non-existent, so they’re not much of a premium ad network.

Other ad networks, like Ezoic, on the other hand, have access to the Google Ad Exchange, top header bidding partners, and exclusive private marketplace deals. Essentially, there’s more companies bidding to place ads on your site, driving up prices and your revenue!

Finding a website that’s using Adsense or Media.net is like finding a goldmine. In as little as 15 minutes, you can switch the website over to a premium ad network like Ezoic, Mediavine, or Adthrive and, in my experience, quadruple display ad earnings.

Another fairly common income source that can be improved upon is affiliate marketing. Many websites will have Amazon Affiliate offers throughout their website, which are definitely effective, but there’s two ways we can improve upon them.

First, many people don’t make the offers look appealing or clickable enough! Using a plugin like AAWP allows you to create attractive product boxes that will entice more clicks and conversions.

Second, Amazon Affiliate isn’t always the best affiliate program to use! Commission percentages have been dropping over the years, and for many products, there are higher commission potentials with other companies. If a website is making most of its revenue from Amazon Affiliate products, spend the time to see if there’s other websites that offer better commissions on the same or similar products.

Next up, we’ll look at adding more revenue sources. Obviously if a website is missing display ads or affiliate marketing, add those things immediately. It’s not uncommon for affiliate marketing websites to forego ads, so keep your eyes open for these opportunities.

I would say that my secret sauce for additional revenue sources is video ads. You’ve probably been on a website where a video plays in the corner, and that video has ads throughout it — that’s what we want. These minimally-invasive ads essentially stack with your display ads and can easily increase revenue by 50-100%.

EX.CO is the best company for this. There are others out there, but they have fairly high traffic requirements and ad rates are about the same.

You simply place a piece of code at the bottom of your blog posts and the video ads will display in the corner of the page. Very unobtrusive and an easy way to make more money.

The second biggest mover is through other affiliate programs. Depending on your niche, there are many different affiliate programs that you can choose from.

These can be found through Clickbank or other sites, or they can be negotiated directly with another product/service provider. Direct negotiation typically results in bigger paydays, but it is more work.

Just doing a bit of initial research and determining that there are several options for your prospective website to utilize is a great step and lets me know that I can get creative with the ways my website makes money.

In short, if a website has bad or very few revenue sources, it’s typically a sign I can do a lot better in very little time!