Your site has a lot of traffic, great! Now you can use it to make money. However, monetizing a website is not something limited. There are so many options available and you have to choose the correct after understanding each method and adequately weighing its pros and cons. In this blog post, we have compiled the two methods and listed pros and cons of each to help your reach a decision accordingly and earn huge sums of money.
Affiliate Marketing:
This method involved advertising a paid good/service on your website and earning a specific percentage of the amount the company makes from each sale made using your website. To simply put, you get a commission if a buyer has purchased something using the link on your website. Find affiliate programs that suit you and generate income.
Affiliate marketing is beneficial in the sense that it generates a sufficient income because regular and new visitors of your website might find the product or service interesting. It is also easy to join since nothing technical is involved. The income generated is stable, provided that the products/services are updates every once in a while and revolve around the same area as your website.
Affiliate marketing also comes with some cons, as do most other ways of monetizing websites. Firstly, some research is required as to which product or service goes along with your website. For example, you cannot advertise something about cars on your blog about books. A better option would be something like a book shop offering discounts or having new sales. Secondly, you might lose visitors on your website if people do not find the products interesting enough and consider it a nuisance. Thirdly, your website must have top quality traffic to be involved in affiliate marketing.
Membership Website:
This means you have to create a website that contains specialized content that can only be viewed by visitors who have a membership. Visitors that have not signed up for membership cannot view the content. While this method is one the best available out there, it involves a lot of time and effort.
The pros of building a membership website are that there is no intermediate aspect involved. You are free to set the annual or monthly membership rate as per your choices. You are also in direct cooperation and conversation with your visitors. The revenue collected by this method is far greater than any other provided that you have a good number of members subscribing for paid content. Moreover, members can get a suitable payment package.
Building a membership has a few but significant cons. There is a wide range of free content available on the internet. There’s nothing out there that is not on the internet. The question arises, then why should someone pay for your content? In this internet dominated world, theirs is a great pressure to produce content that stands out from the rest otherwise nobody would be convinced enough to sign up for membership. Only high quality content and efficient ways to gain customer’s trust can get you members. Additionally, you have to be prepared to deal with maintenance costs and invest a lot of time in your content.
