Cameron G Beck - Start Your Online Presence

Sending People Away from Your Website

Last week I wrote to you about a tool that costs $0 per month to use: Google Adwords. In last week’s newsletter were 3 exercises to complete which gave you a way to see how many people are

1. looking for the content already in your website
2. searching for Your Name
3. searching for a particular topic that you are already interested in.

The exercises that you completed last week gave you a small taste of something called “Keyword Research.” Keyword Research helps you discover how many people are ALREADY expressing an interest in a specific topic. Keyword Research can give you an idea of how much Traffic you could, theoretically, start to attract toward your online property. How to actually generate traffic to your online establishment is a GIGANTIC topic, and I will be covering some ideas in future newsletters.

Today, I want to talk to you about Monetizing your Website.

Watch this quick video clip, and imagine the online world as this city. Visitors come and go like the streaks of red tail lights you’ll seen in the video. In that blurry time-lapsed movie, it is impossible to completely comprehend what EVERY single person is doing as they drive their cars around. However, we can guess what some people doing:

Perhaps some are on their way to visit a library: they aren’t planning on buying anything; instead, they want to learn about something or be entertained.

Perhaps some are on their way to see a movie with their friends at a theater - they plan on spending a few bucks to be entertained.

Perhaps some are on their way to a supermarket - they need to buy some essentials.

Perhaps some are on their way to a furniture warehouse - they want to spend a few thousand dollars on something that will improve their life.

In the physical world, we can all relate to the idea of buying groceries at the supermarket. We can all relate to the idea of buying a piece of furniture from a store. We can all relate to the idea of paying a medical bill at the doctor’s office or buying an entrance ticket to a movie or theme park.

Open an Online Store or Online Office

Treating your website as a place that provides a Service or provides a Point of Sale for a product is a great way to engage in Online Business. 

When I work with my clients, some of them envision their online presence as a place that visitors “stop by” and buy something while there; this is great! However, owning a Point of Sale Website really is only 1 of several ways to make money online. You don’t have to have a website that acts like a store (a place where visitors pull out their credit card and make purchase from you directly) in order to “monetize” your website. 

An example of a website that is devoted to making a sale is my own http://camerongbeck.com - the whole purpose of the website is to give people an opportunity to purchase my service. My service is simple: I do the technical grunt-work of setting up a $0 per Month Online System on which to people can learn the basics of Existing Online without needing to worry about making monthly payments. If you’ve already bought my services - thank you: I hope that these newsletters are providing an opportunity to learn some new skills, apply them to your system, and just enjoy the learning process free from the stress of thinking “I’m paying money every single month for these tools! I HAVE TO GET THIS WORKING NOW!!”

I’ve experienced that stress in the past - I didn’t like it - Learning takes time, and I hope that your learning experience is a more pleasant one than mine was.

Selling Ad Space

A second way to monetize your website is to sell Advertising Space. You could turn your Destination into a nice “hang-out area” around which you install virtual Billboards. 

Some of the biggest “hang-outs” on the web are social media sites (like Facebook) and News Websites (like Wall Street Journal). As people spend time relaxing and enjoying the content on these websites, they will certainly see their billboards. 

These big sites aren’t the only ones that can put up advertisements: there will always be advertisers willing to pay you for displaying their advertisements on your billboards. Your website’s billboards could be like the Banner Ads that you see ALL OVER THE PLACE online today along the tops of webpages or along the right or left hand side of the page.

People are pretty used to seeing billboards as they commute along the highway and major city streets - but it is pretty easy to ignore them completely. The same trend has happened online: so websites which sell advertising space have taken things to a new level. 

Have you ever visited a site where you were barraged by pop-up advertisements when you are trying to read the page? These “pop-up” windows would be more like the people in Las Vegas who line the street, get in your face, and try to shove their advertisements in your face: the “in your face” factor can get a little more attention than a billboard- for better or for worse. If you want to catch attention with advertisements, you can do “fly across ads,” disappearing/reappearing ads, or even advertisements that follow the visitor every time they scroll down on the webpage.

If the purpose of your Online Property is to attract a large audience and then sell advertising space, the possibilities are endless for ways to display ads on your website. If this interests you, start analyzing the prime examples of websites that generate lots of Traffic and obviously sell their advertising space: Facebook, Blogs, and News Websites. You can learn from their example and attempt to create your own “hang-out” place - but it isn’t for the faint of heart! 

In order to make money selling advertising space, you need to have a plan to attract millions of visitors to your website in order to make money. Here’s why:

In online terms, you’ll see the word “CPM” which means “cost per thousand.” I have personally paid for online advertising in the past and I was easily able to contract 1,000 advertisement “impressions” for less than $0.05. My CPM - my cost per thousand impressions- was 5 cents.

On the flip side, anyone can easily negotiate with advertisers (all done electronically) a contract where you will charge the advertiser $0.05 for every 1,000 times that you display their ad to one of your visitors. In other words, if you get 1,000 visitors to look at your webpage where the advertisement is sitting - you will have earned 5 cents. This sounds fantastic, right? If this is catching your attention, don’t let me douse your flame…but understand from the beginning that in order for you to make your first $50 from “selling advertising space” at a CPM of 5 cents, you’d have to display an advertisement 1,000,000 times (yes that is 1 million).

Take this example as proof of concept

1. Suppose you make a website and I generate 1 million impressions in a month
2. An Impression occurs each time someone sees an advertisement
3. The advertiser pays for block units of 1,000 impressions: Divide 1 Million by 1,000
4. (1 Million Divided by 1 thousand is : 1,000 )
5. By generating 1 Million Impressions, you successfully delivered 1,000 units of ad space!
6. The advertiser now writes you a check because you delivered 1,000 units of ads
7. You both agreed upon a $0.05 CPM (5 cents for each 1,000 impressions)
8. Multiply $0.05 by the 1,000 Units Delivered
9. You get a paycheck of $50 for delivering 1 Million Advertisement Impressions.

If you were all excited before and the example popped your bubble: don’t be angry!  There are plenty of websites out there selling ad space - but before you dive into that world, prepare your mind and prepare a strategy for deciding how you will deliver several millions of impressions in order to earn more than $50. 

There are plenty of forum posts out there from disgruntled people who started their journey with the thought “I’m going to make money selling advertisements online,” but who didn’t prepare every needful thing… and they gave up before ever making their first $50 paycheck: 1 Million Visits is a REALLY BIG NUMBER for a small idea.

Facebook didn’t start out planning to sell advertising space - but with their 250 million daily visitors, Facebook is now in a position to generate enough impressions to pull in $4.4 Million in Advertising Revenue each day from advertisers. Facebook generates A LOT of Impressions - and Websites with a Lot of Visitors can pull this off - you can be a media company!  If this sounds appealing to you and you have an idea for a website that will naturally attract millions of visitors - I’ll be sending out a newsletter shortly showing you how to set up an account with the simplest and largest “display advertisement network” on the web.

You’ll notice on this Blog that I don’t display advertisements. Occasionally I put ads on the bottom to experiment with when I’m learning a new concept: but I don’t plan on my blog attracting millions of people to hang out - so I prefer to keep the distractions to a minimum.

Word of Mouth Advertising

Does Walmart pay a commission to you when you tell your friend “I bought this can of beans from Walmart” and then your friend goes and buys the can of beans?  

Does Nordstrom’s pay a commission to you when you tell your friend “I bought this pair of sunglasses from Nordstrom’s” and then your friend goes to Nordstrom’s 3 weeks later and buys a pair of sunglasses? 

Walmart and Nordstrom’s certainly do pay big-shot celebrities to do commercials or become pictures on billboards and magazine pages - and then these two big companies will pay for advertising space in magazines, billboards, and newspapers: but they aren’t paying you and me for our “word of mouth” advertising…

On the flip side, I can’t think of single brick and mortar business that makes money by educating people about beans or sunglasses and then tells them to go buy them at Walmart or Nordstrom’s. In the old movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” Santa Claus tells parents the best place to buy a toy- but Macy’s wasn’t earning a commission each time a customer left the store to buy the product down the street.

How would you like to get paid for being a “word of mouth” advertiser WITHOUT needing to display intrusive or distracting advertisements on your site? Online “Word of Mouth”  is called Affiliate Marketing. 

Affiliate Marketing is currently a $4 Billion per year industry. $4 Billion is a lot of money - and there is a lot more room to grow in the Affiliate marketing world.

How Affiliate Advertising works is like this: You set up a website talking about a product or service that you personally endorse. If you like cameras: you can set up a website devoted to reviewing cameras. If you like speedboats, you can set up a website devoted to reviewing speedboats. If you like hot tubs, you can set up a website devoted to analyzing hot tubs. Just about anything you can think of has a place online already set up to sell it! 

For the people who have set up a Point of Sales website, they are HUNGRY for interested buyers. So, on your website, you do your best to tell the visitor about a product or service and then provide a link to a place where they can learn more for themselves or make the purchase.

In the Affiliate world, the Seller of the Product or Service will provide you with a unique piece of computer code in the form of a hyperlink. When your visitor clicks on this special link, a “cookie” is placed in their browser which marks the visitor as being referred to the seller by You. The visitor, by clicking the link, is linked away from your website to the seller’s website -and then, based upon the agreement made between you and the seller, You Get Paid for Making the Referral! 

Is that awesome or what! With Affiliate Marketing, you tell your friends about how much you love a can of beans, how much it costs, why it is the best, and then provide a link to a website for them to buy the can of beans for themselves: and you get paid for simply telling the world about something that you already love. You can affiliate yourself  with shoes, dating sites, books, washing machines, software, and pretty much anything else that can be purchased!

Now that you have had the 3 big “making money online” options explained to you,  take a minute and write down your thoughts on the 3 basic ways for monetizing a website.

1. Do you want to sell something yourself?
2. Do you have an idea for a website that will attract millions of people?
3. Are there products out there that you simply LOVE to DEATH and think you could affiliate with?

Write your answers down and send them off in an email to me@camerongbeck.com I’d love to hear your answers!

Until Next Week,

Cameron G Beck