If you want to earn money with your own homepage you have to work hard for it. So if you are looking for the ultimate recipe to make money quickly on the Internet, I have to disappoint you. Get rich quick, that’s what lotto is for.
If you want to build up a homepage, it makes sense to think at least roughly about how it could be monetized right from the start. It is not so much about detailed sales planning, which advertising banners or partner programs are now exactly to be used. But rather about the basic possibility of monetizing the planned project at all, which earning opportunities and sources of income there are.
At the end you will also find some possibilities to earn money on the internet, without having your own homepage. But again, let’s be clear: no pain, no gain.
Earn money with advertising on your homepage
Also I wish myself sometimes an advertising-free Internet, straight if constantly any advertisement pops up. But advertising can also be suitably integrated into a homepage. This can be even more successful if visitors and advertising are a good match, i.e. if the interests of your readers coincide with the ads that are placed. And this is then present enough, but not too intrusive.
Ideally, advertising is not perceived as such, but rather as a recommendation. "Buy this, I’ve had good experience with it". Such statements should of course be true – at least I think so. Because credibility is a high commodity when recommending a product. If I thus express a purchase recommendation, then I know the appropriate product. If this is ever not the case, I will write it that way as well.
Some advertising partners like Google Adsense are already quite good at automatically displaying ads that match content and users. Scripts scan the context, cookies know about the preferences of the visitors. Other advertisements such as affiliate banners/links, on the other hand, are placed by hand by the website operator, matching the target group and the page. At least ideally. Because advertising links that are thematically inappropriate simply don’t work well.
The following are some advertising networks and information on how you could make money, especially by including ads on your own website. This list is aimed at beginners, which is why not all possible niche providers are listed, but only the most important ones.
Affiliate Marketing: Compensation per Lead / Sale
If an Internet side, a Onlineshop or similar would like to win other web page operators for it for their product to recruit they use gladly Affiliate marketing. You place banner ads, comparison calculators, scripts etc. through an affiliate network. and reward the mediation of visitors (clicks), inquiries (leads) or sales (sales). Pure click remunerations are rather rare in the Affiliate, mostly it concerns Lead and Saleprovisionen. These can be a fixed amount or revenue based.
- affiliate networks: The largest and most relevant network in Germany is probably awin.com (which in recent years has added other networks such as zanox and affili.net bought out). Here are mainly larger companies present.
- In-house affiliate solutions: especially in the financial and insurance industry there are some interesting possibilities. How comparison calculators, which are seamlessly integrated into a page, can be adapted visually as well as in terms of content. Established are in particular Tarifcheck24 with the partner program for financial products (primarily insurance, accounts + loans) and finanzen.en/partnerprogram (primarily insurances).
- Online shopping networks: Amazon and Ebay. Germans like to buy from Amazon and Ebay. For website operators who want to recommend individual products, this circumstance is attractive. Because via the Amazon Partner Network, for example, numerous products can be included. Remunerated then a turnover-oriented commission.
- Selling digital products from others: Here we have a big network, Digistore24. Over this also I sell my book, a travel guide for Portugal.
Advertising banners for the website: payment per impressions / click / ..
Here are now seemingly unlimited possibilities. In my opinion, however, there are few that beginners should bother with (with the exception of Adsense, perhaps). Because it takes quite a bit of visitors to generate significant revenue here. Also, access is sometimes only possible from a certain size.
- Adsense advertising network: between 3 cents and 3 euros per click. There may be some alternatives to Adsense, but the top dog is simply Google. How much money you can earn with Adsense? It all depends on the topic. In the financial sector, for example, click prices are quite high. In the entertainment sector, however, rather low. Once it makes the mass of clicks, once it is worthwhile to focus on a highly competitive segment. The general rule is: where there are high margins, where the competition is strong, there are also high click prices to be expected.
- Bannermarketplaces: make a little money for a change. On this range I would like to deal only briefly, because so correctly money cannot be earned in my opinion with it. I’ve been watching marketplaces for a few years now – although it feels like there are fewer and fewer of them. Tried it on several sites, without significant success. Too low prices, too low utilization. This could work however with a side with very many visitors and without special adjustment, then also the low TKP prices (TKP = thousandKontaktPreis = remuneration per 1.000 impressions) add up.
- Premium marketer: weigh the chance and the risk. Better CPM prices are usually available from premium marketers. These are (more or less) exclusive advertising networks, sometimes specializing in a particular segment or. with channels (e.g.B. Men, car, health, travel etc.) . I’ll only touch on this one briefly, too, because on the one hand, there are hurdles to getting in: several 100.000 visitors / month are helpful. Good premium marketers offer the chance to earn a lot of money with a homepage – if they have good campaigns. Depending on the agreement, however, there are also risks for the website operator, especially in the case of an exclusive cooperation. Then you are not allowed to include any other advertising, your income might even be 100% dependent on this one marketer.
- Direct marketing: full control and direct contact. Especially an established site can bypass all the intermediaries and networks, address possible advertising partners directly, offer them a fixed placement. Usually these are smaller banners in header or sidebar (i.e. top or right), for which the advertiser pays a fixed amount per month, quarter or year. Billing and communication is direct, which has several advantages. Individual customization of the advertising message and saving intermediary commissions for marketplaces / marketers are certainly part of it. Also, large companies tend not to do this. You work according to a certain scheme and usually only with agencies, less with (smaller sites) directly.
Premium content, own products
Let third party advertise on your own homepage, earn money with it, in whatever form – the common way to monetize your project. The royal class, however, is the direct sale of self-produced products. There are virtually no limits to the imagination here: e-book, podcast, photos, a membership area for premium content, your own small online shop.
The technology for distribution on the Internet is available, for example, for WordPress in the form of plugins, many of them also free of charge. It is therefore not witchcraft to market your own products yourself. But they should be very good, please.
Special income sources for bloggers
Especially in the blogging world, there are several options for monetization that have not been addressed yet. Bloggers regularly publish new content, build a page of regular visitors, keep their readership happy, optimally rank in search engines, are also happy to be active in social networks.
- VG Wort you should know as a blogger. Is something like the Gema for the written word. A tracking pixel is built into a written article. If certain conditions are fulfilled (minimum text length, minimum accesses in the calendar year) one gets money of VG word paid out. It’s worth it, especially for hard-working bloggers.
- Sell articleAlso something to consider at a later time, when the blog is already a bit stronger. Advertisers and search engine optimizers pay a premium for linking to their site from an article. Can be done if it really fits, however, I would be careful. Because this link buying is not at all well regarded by Google. And it is punished, one can be caught thereby. Well-ranking websites are sometimes approached directly, in the form of tens of emails per day. The better you rank, the more these emails will increase.
- Product testing / product placement: a wonderfully broad field. Mountaineers test sleeping bags, judge about it in their blog. Travel bloggers get invited to a trip by a tour operator, then write about it. Established bloggers with a corresponding soft site are provided with products to be tested. Influencer / blogger marketplaces for cooperations are the networks for this. This is where bloggers showcase their sites and channels, and companies showcase their campaigns. Sometimes you find together. SeedingUp or ReachHero could be mentioned here.
Gathering experience and combining it cleverly
Some things work better than others. Depending on the topic, form of presentation and audience of the homepage, money can be earned in many different ways. Testing is important. What works surprisingly well or badly? How can I monetize my homepage, best without bothering my readers too obtrusively with advertising?? It also has to be weighed up. Because the more intrusive an advertisement (e.g.B. popups), the more lucrative it often is.
Avoid beginner mistakes as a beginner
- If you can’t think of anything you could earn money with your homepage, you should change the topic. Monetizing do-gooder-knitting-instructions-cooking-recipes websites is going to be difficult.
- The same goes for subject areas with very high earning potential and therefore also strong competition. This includes, for example, financial and insurance topics. A great many website operators want to be at the top of the list with the search term checking account.
- Stay independent and flexible: long-term exclusive contracts or relying on only one source of income, this would be rather unwise. Don’t fall for unrealistic promises. The Internet is extremely resourceful in this. Consider everything with common sense.
Earn money without your own homepage
Earn money on the internet, of course you don’t need your own website to do this. For this purpose, platforms can be used to show what one is capable of. Of course, your own homepage can also be combined with an external platform. This part I treat nevertheless only briefly, simply in order to point general options out.
- Youtube: The television of the future is called Youtube, of it I am convinced in the meantime. Money can be earned relatively "easily" in the meantime. This means that you can earn money from the advertising you place. Considerable money however naturally only if the range is appropriate. Informative tutorials, travel reports, comedy, videogames – it’s amazing what people watch… Yes, there are other video platforms and social networks, but currently only Youtube offers a good earning opportunity.
- Writing texts: Scribblers and translators can offer themselves online, for contract work. Textbroker is probably one of the more established intermediaries. But also SEO forums, platforms for freelancers etc. can be sources of orders. And if you are able to write really good, journalistic and maybe even SEO-optimized texts, you can get interesting jobs here.
- Sell pictures: Good photographers can offer their images as stock photos. There are international platforms, in this country is especially known Fotolia. Earning opportunities are based on quality and motif. Generally, however, it is rather a hard bread.
- Publish Ebook: Turning knowledge into money, for which the e-book is the classic medium. But in the meantime, print books can also be published online, for example directly on Amazon. I sell my ebook and also the printed version through the service provider Digistore. (self-publishing, self-mailing)
- Apps, themes, plugins etc. programming: If you can program and also have great ideas, you can of course also sell your works.
- Less stuff worth mentioning: Survey participation, paidmails etc. there is somehow still. Amazingly. This is of course useless, but is only mentioned here for the sake of completeness.
In the first part we found out that it is possible to earn money with your own travel blog or homepage. In the second part the search for a suitable topic followed and the question, which search terms come into question for the new project at all. If you now realize that you could earn money on the Internet with this, then we are already on the right track. Part 4 then gets down to the nitty gritty, the project starts to take shape.