Online Marketing Strategies - Money Journal

Choosing the Right way to Monetize a Website using Market Samurai (Part 4/6)

By now, you should know more than just using Market Samurai as a keyword research tool. In my last video, we barely touched the Market Samurai software, but found out how to find a niche using an unconventional method that I use.

I also uncovered five common monetization methods to make a niche profitable and not the other way around.

In this video, we’ll explore how to choose the right monetization methods to monetize a website or blog. By knowing the ways you will monetize your blog or website, you’ll ensure that you have proper goals set in place as well as to have a proper monetization strategy from the beginning.

There’s a full transcript below as well as a list of resources that are used in this vode.

Resources Mentioned

Market Samurai

Free trial

Full version with $52 discount

Bonus Templates Required for Part 5 and 6

Market Samurai Templates for Part 5 and 6

Website Examples

Moneyjournal.com

Donatefurniturepickup.org

Review of Part 3 and What to Expect in Part 4

If you’ve joined me for the first 3 videos, you should know what keyword research does for Search engine optimization, you should have chosen a profitable niche that you love and know your way around Market Samurai like a Ninja. We’re finally on to the fourth part of this series, and probably what you’re most interested in. How am I going to make money using this keyword research tool?

If you’re ready to find out, then we’ll dig deep into exactly how you can choose the ways to make money with your website!

In part 3, we discussed different income streams using a diagram and I gave you a bit of information on what kind of sites use these particular income streams.

There is no set rule as to how many you can use or which ones you should use to be the most profitable, but I want to show you how I choose my revenue streams for different niches and more importantly, why I choose them.

I think the best way to show you this is to show you a few example sites, some that I own, and others that I do not. I’ll leave links for each of these sites in the description so you can refer to it in a new window or tab.

Examples of Different Monetization Methods and Why

The first one is: My site – www.moneyjournal.com

From the last video, you should have seen the example where I showed you how much I could potentially make if my website was ranked as the number one Google ranking for the keyword phrase “How to Make a website”. So the question now is, why am I not placing Google ads on my website?

Most people would shy away from the competition, but I love to play games, and SEO to me is kind of like a game that I try harder and harder to get better at.

My reasoning behind not placing Google ads on my website is because I don’t want to distract my readers from other websites that are going to rip them off! I have a tutorial on my site that shows you how you to make a $30,000 looking website for less than $60. Most people don’t have $30,000 lying around to spend on web development, so I thought it would be a better idea to show people how to do it and build a connection with my audience where I can help you save money and gain the satisfaction in knowing that you can make your own website!

I do provide affiliate links on my website where I get paid a commission if a user clicks through and happens to buy something. I’m pretty transparent about my affiliate links and it’s because I don’t want anyone to feel “tricked” into buying something. I only promote products and services that I personally use or have tested out myself. I don’t go by word of mouth because I don’t think it’s fair for me to tell someone to sign up for something when I won’t do it myself. Also, www.moneyjournal.com isn’t all about affiliate links. I’m not going to go searching for 100 different affiliate networks so that I can have a diversity of affiliate products to sell. I’ll be posting a lot of free information with free tools like Google Analytics, SEO strategies and conversion optimization methods I’ve used to make some of my sites more successful. A lot of this information isn’t posted and I send it out in my newsletter to those who have subscribed.

My point is, I don’t know a single person who doesn’t appreciate honesty, and if I’m providing valuable content to them, most people have been happy to click through the affiliate link so that I can get paid a commission for it. It doesn’t come at an extra cost to them, in fact, a lot of my affiliate links actually include discounts that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise! Some people have gone as far as e-mailing me to thank me for the content saying, “Hey Sam! I just wanted to let you know that I bought (X) product through your affiliate link”. These kinds of things are what keep me going, wanting to pump out amazing content because I know what I’m producing is helping someone else.

Drop shipping doesn’t really make sense in this model, so veto.

I have no intentions of integrating ads on my site, as my blog and newsletter are my way to communicate personal information and secrets that I’ve never shared before with people who want to start online businesses. Talking business and money can be a sensitive topic, so I’ll keep it intimate on www.moneyjournal.com

I could also sell consulting services, but the principle behind MoneyJournal is to teach people how to do it themselves so I vetoed that for now.

A premium product, service or membership site are always possible, but it’s not something that I’m focusing on now as I’d rather get people started with making money first with their website.

From the last minute of talking, you can see that I’ve gone through the different methods of monetizing and ruled out ones that don’t make sense like drop shipping, and weeded out ones that I don’t think would help with my overall vision of my site like advertisements.

From here, I know exactly how I want to make money and what kind of audience I want to attract. People who are interested in starting an online business, people who are teachable and willing to take things in stride, people who understand that money doesn’t come flying through your window and people who are open to an initial phase of hard work which will hopefully lead to a more comfortable style of life with the people they care about.

And because I understand the audience I want to engage with, I can target them using Market Samurai to find the kinds of keyword phrases they are searching for in Google’s search engine. Generally speaking, people who are willing to put in a little bit of hard work might look for “how to build a website”. They understand that web design can be expensive, or maybe they have a hard time trusting that a company will care about their vision as much as they do.

I can target people who are looking for Market Samurai Tutorials because they want to learn how to do keyword research effectively and efficiently. A mix of people who have bought the product or people who have never even heard of it will find these videos and my blog posts. If people are searching for it, they’re likely passionate about learning about starting up an online business.

Market Samurai basically simplifies my life so I can find what people are searching for, taking the guess work out of what to write about in my posts.

My second site is an adsense site called donatefurniturepickup.org

This is a site I made back in 2012. The site itself is pretty damn ugly, but it was never intended to be pretty. It was a site that I created to test out some adsense strategies after I had sold off my other company and had some time to play golf over the summer.

The last time this site was updated was November 26, 2012 and I stopped marketing the site around January or February of 2013. The reason why I stopped is because I just didn’t have enough drive to write about donating furniture.

Because of some solid keyword research, link building and good content, I was outranking websites that actually accept donations like Goodwill and the Salvation Army, and was getting some great traffic as well. I outsourced some writing with specific guidelines as to what needed to be written, and how it should be written. It picked up some steam and is now at a low steady amount of traffic. I’ve made almost $10,000 from this site alone without having to update it so it shows some serious potential in what it can make if it were maintained and taken care of. In total, I may have put in about 5 hours of my own time with the site. It might sound nice to make $10,000 for 5 hours of work, but this would have been a great site to have offered sponsored ads or posts when the traffic was much higher.

Also, selling a more comprehensive eBook as to where or how to donate the furniture would have been beneficial as well.

I could have gone even as far as running a drop ship program for buying furniture as a good chunk of people getting rid of furniture would want to replace it.

This is a prime example of why I keep talking about writing about something you are interested in.

My final example is on the market samurai website. It isn’t the most modern or latest design, but it’s easy to use.

As you can see, it’s a pretty straightforward site where they want you to try the product first before you buy it. This boasts confidence! You’re not going to find ads on this site because they will essentially be leading you to other keyword research tools when you could likely become one of their customers.

They are selling a product and they are staying focused on that product and only that product. The content that they have produced is based on keyword research that will target people who are looking to make their keyword research efforts easier with an increase in quality.

Since they’re selling a software, the delivery of the item is digital and so it is essentially automated. Their job now is to maintain the software, keep it up to date and to provide support. Most importantly, with their strong keyword research for their on page SEO, they can focus their attention on building other products and marketing their current ones. A site like this doesn’t need to look for other methods of monetization as I personally think that it may take away from their sales on their own software.

Use Process of Elimination and Tie it in With your Vision

As you can see, choosing the way to monetize is a vital part of your strategy. Your strategy doesn’t need to be rushed! Think through the different methods of monetization that I mentioned and see which ones are the right fit for your larger vision. Sometimes you’ll find that it makes more sense to weed out certain monetization methods even when it makes sense! It all comes down to what your goals for your site are and how you want to engage with your audience.

User experience is key if you intend to interact with your visitors. The best step is to write it down and to even talk out loud to yourself. I know it sounds crazy, but I find that hearing myself say it out loud has a different effect sometimes.

For part 5 and 6, we’re going to get technical again! We’ll take a step back from intuition, reasoning and deduction and dive back to the grind in using Market Samurai. I also want to share some bonus templates with you that will help you in your overall strategy. I’ll talk more about that in Part 5!

Author: Sam Oh
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