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“Monetizing” means, according to the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, to assign a value to a metal, i.e. we take copper discs and say they’re worth a penny. But in the world of websites, it’s come to mean making money from your website in every way possible. And far be it from me to slow the evolution of the English language, as much as I sometimes hate progress. (Just don’t ask me ever to accept double negatives)
But to the subject at hand – the easiest way to try to make some money from your website is to add sponsored ads to it. Google Adsense comes to mind. It’s easy to set up and, depending on your website, easy to insert.
Here’s how it works. You sign up for it: https://www.google.com/adsense and then fill in the blanks, like the URL of your site, the name of your site, your name, etc. You choose what format of ads you want:
- A column of ads (vertical banner)
- A row of ads (horizontal banner)
- Text links (like 4 or 5 links in an invisible box)
- Ads with graphics
- Search boxes
- various other formats they keep coming up with.
You can choose the color scheme of your ads so they blend with your website. Once you’ve done all that, they present you with some code that you or your webmaster copy and paste in the appropriate place on your website.
And, here’s what’s best: Google will place ads there that are relevant to the content on that page. So, you can put the exact same code snippet on 6 different pages and if those pages focus on different subjects, those ol’ smarties at Google will deliver different ads on each page.
I can hear you thinking – but hey, I don’t want to advertise my competitor’s goods on my website. And you don’t have to. They have a feature called the Competitive Ads Filter where you can specify websites whose ads you don’t wish to show. Cool!
And now I hear you thinking – but I want them to buy my products, not go off looking at someone else products and there’s the rub. If the competition is that steep for your product, such as gift baskets or flowers, I’d suggest you do one of 2 things:
- Use the ads only on your thank-you-for-buying(order confirmation) page and your links page, or
- Use only the Google search feature.
And the big question is – will I get rich from Adsense or a similar program? If you’re like me, the short answer is no. But will you make a little spending money? Yes. I think the success of your program is entirely dependent on the popularity of your website. If you’re visitors are the kind of folks who spend money and your website gets a lot of hits (think 10’s of thousands per month minimum), then you might make enough in a year to do all your Christmas shopping.
But if your average customer is someone on a budget and you don’t get at least 1000 visitors (not hits, but visitors) each month, I suspect it could be a year before you’d accumulate enough in “click-throughs” to even warrant a check.
Still, I don’t know too many folks who wouldn’t take $25 or $50 or $100/year for a few minutes work.
The other option is affiliate programs. I’ll try to write something this next week about that.
Check your antivirus program to be sure it’s actually running the scans that I’m sure you have scheduled to occur nightly.
I use Norton Internet Security and I decided to check the scan reports one day and found that my scheduled scans weren’t running. It seems the Windows’ scheduling program interferes on occasion with Norton’s scheduling and for a week Norton was running only the built-in Quick Scan. Yikes!
I immediately ran a full system scan and then started researching why this would happen. Norton, of course, blames Microsoft for the problem but whoever is at fault, the fix is to open the Windows Control Panel and then Scheduled Tasks and then delete the scheduled scan. Then open Norton and reschedule the scan.
Since I learned of this issue, it’s happened on my husband’s computer twice. It hasn’t happened to me again so who knows what triggers the situation.
Computers. Gotta hate ‘em.
Stay safe!
The following email came to me. How stupid are people that they would actually respond to something like this from someone they don’t know? I guess pretty stupid since this type of thing has been going around since the Internet started. This one made me laugh, though, since it’s not from the exiled prince of some African nation.
Hello,
How are you doing? I hope all is well with you. I know this might be a
surprise to you but I’m writing this email to you in an hurry and in a
confused state of mind. I want to say I’m really sorry that I didn’t inform
you about my traveling to Scotland for a Seminar. It was something urgent
and i didn’t even inform anyone about this traveling. But I just got myself
in serious mess here. I got my wallet misplaced on my way to the hotel and
all my money, phone, bank cards, diary, my return ticket and other vital
documents are all in the wallet.
(ALL HIS VITAL DOCUMENTS ARE IN THE WALLET -EXCEPT HIS PASSPORT??)
I’m so confused right now as I have lost all contacts.
(FUNNY HOW HE DIDN’T LOSE MINE SINCE HE NEVER HAD MINE TO BEGIN WITH)
I need to get out of this mess. Please I need $1,500 USD to sort myself out
and to pay for the hotel bills but I will appreciate any amount you could
afford. I will pay you back as soon as I get back home.
(IF HE HAS HIS PASSPORT, WHY NOT GO TO THE EMBASSY AND THEY’LL HELP HIM WIRE MONEY FROM HIS BANK TO HIMSELF??)
Let me know if you will be able to help me with any amount and you can help me send the money with my details below at any western union money transfer office and i will get the money over here within an hour.
*Name: Christian Entwistle
Address: 14 Porteous pend, Edinburgh, EH1 2HP Scotland
Country: United Kingdom*
Kindly help me to make the transfer as soon as you receive this email and
you should get back to me with the 10 Digit Money Transfer Control Number,
exact Amount sent with details used in sending it. I still have my passport
to prove my identity at Western union here when receiving the money, and I
will email you with the return flight details immediately I receive the
money.
Your reply will be appreciated.
Thanks so much
–
Christian Entwistle
(NOTE: No one in Winnsboro has ever heard of Christian Entwistle)
Winnsboro Area Chamber of Commerce
GNTX Gun Show & Outdoors EXPO
Marketing/Promotions Staff
(He gave some website addresses that are legit, but I’ve removed them)
So, the moral is – if you feel the urge to help anyone, help your webmaster (me). I’d love to go to Scotland and I promise not to lose my important documents.
If you receive an offer via email from someone claiming to need your help getting money out of Nigeria — or any other country, for that matter — forward it to the FTC at spam@uce.gov per the government’s website:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt117.shtm
Most of my customers only know me as a web host or the owner of Truly Texan, a juried directory of Texas companies and artisans. But my real expertise is in designing (or tweaking) websites to improve their ranking in Google and other search engines.
It kills me when I find that a client has been paying some SEO company to do what I do, but they’re charging them 5 or 6 times what I charge. It’s not that I’m cheap. It’s that these other companies are overpriced and/or charging for things that look like work but do you little or no real good.
I mean, will you really read a 20 page report each month that shows where you rank for every phrase remotely related to your website, even if no one would ever search for that phrase?
I don’t generate reports. If you want reports, I can certainly charge you an extra $150/month to produce them, but it won’t get your site any higher in the results.
My philosophy is that your money- and my time- is best spent trying to get you to #1 (a never-ending goal) for those phrases most likely to be searched for by people who actually want your type of service or product.
With that in mind, here’s what I sent my customers yesterday to illustrate the quality of my work.
On Jan 29, searching in Google for:
- Texas gifts - 4 of my clients are in top 7
- Paris tours small groups – my client is #1
- mesquite furniture – 2 of my clients are in top 3
- wedding keepsake gifts – my client is in top 3
- Texas gift baskets - my client is in top 10
- Texas speech writer - my client is #1
- gourmet cooking classes – my client is in top 10
- gourmet kitchen tools – my client is in top 5
- furniture restoration Texas – client is #1
- closet design Houston – my client is in top 10
- murphy beds San antonio – my client is #3
- custom closets Austin – my client is #1
- Austin wedding coordinator – my client is #2
- custom fireplace tools – my client is #1
- wildflower t-shirts – my client’s in top 5
- custom mesquite bed – my clients are #1, #2, #8 and #10
- custom children’s furniture – my client is #3
- top Austin realtors – my client is #2
- Austin interior designers – my client is #7
I could go on and on, but that should give you an idea. If you want to learn more, please visit my web design site for all the details and to sign up
The Homeowners Association: Run by real homeowners.
via Plum Creek – Home Owners Association.
“Run by the real homeowners” ???? Give me a break.
The developer runs the HOA. The developer and his employee are 2/3 of our 3 member board and they have 2 votes per platted home versus each homeowner’s one vote. (And the neighborhood isn’t nearly built out)
And last I heard neither the developer nor his employee actually lived in the homes they own in Plum Creek.
So until the whole subdivision is built out, the developer will continue to run the HOA however suits his plans best.
Sorry, off-topic I know, but I just saw that line and had to vent. I cannot stand misrepresentation.
If you sell a product, be sure to give a complete description of it on your website.
If it’s necklace, how long is it and what is it made of? Is it silver-plate, sterling silver, rhodium or whatever else necklaces might be made of?
People shop online for a variety of reasons, but a major one is convenience. It is not convenient for me to call a company to get a specification for a product when that spec should have been on the website.
Sometimes we’re just too close to our product to realize that what’s obvious to us isn’t obvious to everyone.
Consider this checklist of possible attributes for a product:
- Length
- Height
- Width
- Color choices
- Weight
- Sizes
- Uses (microwave safe? suitable for holding food?)
- Care (machine wash and dry? wipe clean with damp cloth?)
- Age restrictions if any (not suitable for children under 3?)
- Inclusions/Exclusions (mattress not included?)
- Warranty
- Customer Support
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. If you can suggest more, I’d love to hear from you so I can make this a fairly comprehensive list.
And, especially regarding size, a picture really is worth a thousand words so whenever possible show your product with something that will give some scale to it. If you’re selling a chest of drawer, show it next to a bed. If you’re selling gemstones, show them next to a dime or a pencil eraser (still on the pencil).
The internet is visual. Catch your customer with stunning and useful photographs, but then have all the information there that they need to make the purchase with confidence!
If you suddenly start seeing messages on your computer that you have various viruses and you need to buy something to get rid of them, don’t do it. Your computer has probably been infected with the Internet Security 2010 malware, which is a program that gets downloaded to your computer when you visit an unsafe site. How do you know if a site is unsafe?
I use Norton Internet Security and it has a “Norton Safe Search” feature that I can use and it will put a little green icon by sites that Norton found safe when it visited them.
But if it’s too late or you’re curious about this “virus/trojan/rogue program”, then visit this blog by a Symantec employee for more information and instructions on removing the fake program.
If you don’t use the Google Webmaster Tools, you (or your webmaster) should. Once you authenticate your site, you’ll find lots of good information about how often Google crawls your site and what pages might have problems and so forth.
The Google Group for webmasters (about search engine ranking) is also good, but use it with caution. There are a lot of people out there who know just enough to be dangerous. Or they give anecdotal evidence of how to fix something, instead of …hmm.. not sure what word I’m looking for… maybe factual or technical explanations of why something is wrong and how it should be fixed.
Kind of like saying, “If your foot hurts, you should do what I did to make my foot stop hurting…” As opposed to saying, “Here are the various reasons a foot might hurt and how to make the hurting stop for each reason.”
Also, just because someone who has posted a message in a Google Group includes a link in their posting, doesn’t mean you can safely click the link. There are bad people everywhere who use any means possible to get you to their site so they can install malware on your computer. Be cautious.
But I digress…
Visit the Google Webmaster Tools and take advantage.
And remember, content is king. Google loves real words on a page. Actual, useful information.
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