1. You Don’t Have a Reliable Traffic Funnel
Email is a great tool for setting up a traffic funnel.
Not only can you use a list to notify your subscribers of new content (I use AWeber’s Blog Broadcast feature for that), but you can also setup traffic funnels to other products, affiliate links, etc.
You may have already noticed that I have an email opt-in form here on this blog.
Here are ways this email list creates income & traffic for me…
- When people sign up, AWeber let’s me use a custom thank you page. This page has a coupon to my affiliate marketing course.
- There’s also an autoresponder message that is sent where I often include coupons, affiliate links, etc.
- Since my email list is setup to auto notify subscribers of new posts, I can continually drive traffic back to my new content here without relying on Google
This post I wrote on Visual Composer instantly generated affiliate sales the day the post launched because of my traffic funnel that was all setup with my email list.
If you aren’t collecting email addresses, it’s a big mistake.
With all the changes to SEO, social media (algorithm filters that limit your post visibility, etc.), you need reliable traffic sources.
Ways to Use Your Email List
- Use the broadcast feature to auto notify of new posts
- Send occasional promotional emails (affiliate links, products, etc.)
- Inform your subscribers of big news and updates
- Stay in touch with your biggest fans
Sign up with AWeber here. All you do is copy and paste to insert a sign-up form into your site.
NOTE: I am an affiliate for AWeber. That means I earn a commission if you sign up.
2. Not Enough Targeted Traffic
Not all traffic is created equal.
So while you might think announcing your site to your Facebook friends will instantly catapult your business to the next level…
Think again.
Targeted traffic means people are genuinely interested in the topic and are actively seeking info.
Your Facebook friends will give you a few courtesy visits at best.
And unfortunately, courtesy visits don’t earn a lot of money, but targeted traffic — the kind you get from Google certainly can.
There’s one problem though…
If you’ve started a website in the last few years, you have probably realized by now (if not, you will soon) that you won’t be able to rely on Google traffic if you want to make serious money.
What’s interesting is SEO (search engine optimization) works the complete opposite of how it used to work.
Back in the day, you had more control over what keywords you ranked for by…
- using those phrases on your pages
- registering a domain with the targeted keywords
- creating backlinks to your site manually
Today, Google makes you PROVE your site is worthy of a ranking for those desired keywords by generating external signals such as organic links back to your site and social media shares.
What Does That Mean?
Let’s say you have a blog targeted to people who want to learn how to play tennis.
Under the old “system”, you would register a domain name like “HowToPlayTennis.com” and put out as much keyword-focused content on playing tennis that you could.
It really was more about quantity over quality.
As a result of that, your site would eventually rank for various tennis-related keywords and you’d drive free, targeted search traffic to your site day after day after day.
Today, you have to use other methods of getting exposure such as YouTube and social media. Establish a presence on these platforms first, and then use them to direct traffic to your site.
As a result of your unique and awesome content, different site owners will share your content on social media or even link to your content.
Stand out. Be unique! Approach your niche with a fresh perspective that no one else is using.
Best way to stand out is to study what everyone is doing, and do something different.
— Luke Guy (@imlukeguy) March 17, 2016
Now, you have to EARN your rank. Yes, that makes it more challenging, but it’s one way Google can gauge how authentically popular a website is.
I say “authentic popularity” because under the old system, people would create artificial popularity by generating links to their sites through blog comments and other linking schemes (link exchanges, blog farms, etc.)
Many times websites would rank on top only because the owner knew how to play the Google game. Today, websites on tops typically have a lot of links and social media shares.
That’s why you see so many well-known brands up top when you search. They naturally have more links across the web.
So if a relevant, popular blog links to your website, Google views it as an “authentic vote” because a high-profile website is not just going to dole out links to other sites for no reason.
Content still matters, but external shares and linking matter more. And the more popular the site is, the more power that link/share has in terms of impacting where you could rank.
These links and shares are signals that Google looks for to gauge the authentic popularity of a website.
For example, if I contact a blogger and ask for a link exchange, Google may ignore the “link juice” each blog is bringing to the other — especially if the blogs do not have a lot of popularity themselves.
This tactic was often used to artificially inflate the popularity of a website, and it helped with rankings for a long time.
Not anymore!
Why Did Google Do This?
Two main reasons…
- Google realizes they can make more money by making it difficult to rank so people will buy ads (AdWords is how Google makes most of its money.)
- It also prevents low quality sites from being able to “game” the system by just putting out a bunch of low-quality, keyword-rich content.
Before 2013, the search results were flooded with low-quality sites because rankings depended more on on-page factors that site owners could control.
What Are Other Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic?
- Start a YouTube channel
- Begin broadcasting live on Periscope weekly
- Create a podcast
- Use social media
Start out by keeping your content centered around a specific topic/niche so you attract a more targeted following.
The next one is huge…
Always make sure you drive people back to your own site where you can collect their email addresses!!
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Periscope, you name it — they may be hot today but gone tomorrow. At least when you collect email addresses, you can always reach out to your biggest fans and not rely on traffic sources that can be temporary.
This blog gets 85% of its traffic from social media and my email list (most from my list). It doesn’t rank for many worthwhile keywords on Google. So if social media and Google died today, I’d still have an audience because of my list.
This is what you should strive for.
Sign up for my email list here!
3. You Have No Trust
One of the best ways to earn trust with a website is to appear authentic.
Do this is by showing proof.
In other words, if you want to sell a book about “how to build traffic”, show exactly how you are building traffic and display your numbers.
If you have a website about how to get more YouTube subscribers, you should have a channel with a growing number of subscribers as proof that you are walking the walk.
This tip may sound like a no-brainer to you, but you would be surprised at how many people have sites about “how to start an online business” when they aren’t earning a dime!
Then they wonder why no one is signing up for their “Get Rich Program” they are marketing.
Just because you WANT to make money online doesn’t mean you should be blogging about that…
Yet!
Most people who are successful in the “make money online” or “online business” space are successful because they made money FIRST and then teach on their experience.
4. You Won’t Invest In Your Site’s Future
I’m going to go there.
If you won’t invest $5-$10/month in your website (yes, that’s all they cost today on average), then I seriously question how serious this venture is for you.
Compare the cost of starting a website with the cost of starting a brick and mortar business.
The cost difference is so extreme, it’s almost laughable.
You will never, ever find a more affordable way to start a business than online, and there are ALWAYS limitations with free hosts. Not to mention, you don’t even own your site.
In March 2016, Weebly announced that you have to upgrade in order to get any search engine visibility for your site.
So does that mean anyone who is on the free plan will have their site de-indexed and lose any traffic they earned? Their website is not clear on this, but that is something that would never happen if you buy hosting for your site.
Not to mention, I can’t tell you the last time I Googled something and saw a website hosted on a free platform ranking for any worthwhile keywords.
Let me take that one step further…
Have you ever read a success story and the owner had a Blogger or Weebly website?
That’s not a coincidence!
It’s not that search engines don’t rank sites hosted on a free platform. It’s just that the owners usually abandon them quickly and/or they never generate enough authority (links) to rank for anything worthwhile.
Often times the site owner and the rest of the web don’t take free-hosted sites seriously.
It’s easier to abandon something you haven’t invested money into. I believe people work harder at projects when there is a financial investment.
That means always buy a domain name and use paid hosting. Your site needs a home that you own. Here’s a tutorial here.
What About Starting Free and Moving to Paid Later?
I’m still not a fan. Moving a site can be a royal pain. I’ve been there when I moved this site from Blogger to WordPress back in 2007. Ugh!
Not to mention, the links on your site may change with the upgrade, so that means you’d have to setup redirects to the new content.
And not all free hosting platforms allow you to do this.
If you need to wait and save money, then do that instead.
It’s better than starting with free and going through the hassle of moving your site later.
Aigbedo @ daily computers says
good questions, my blog makes money from affiliate marketing and adsense
with the effort of providing traffics daily, new visitors come in and the blog is growing by the day.
with time, i will start selling ads on it
Chitra@SocialVani says
My blog makes money through writing. As a professional content writer, I use my blog as a means to gain clients. I have added affiliate links too but as of now, I haven’t made any sales. I have applied for AdSense and I hope to get the account.
Moreover, I am writing an eBook too…I guess that will help me to earn money as well.
Alex Taal says
Hello Lisa
I have a blog, website and social blogs that I put up that is 2 1/2 months old and I get no visitors on it. I don’t have any Adsense on my site because it seems my site was design to build for no visitors but I have patience. What I now have earned is min $ 1300 and hosting costs, so it goes down like a spiral.
Frank says
I would appreciate any critique of my site. I am still averaging only 100 visits a day after 3 months. Am I being impatient? Is the way I monetized the site wrong? I am trying to be very selective about the sites I exchange links with, maybe too selective?
tom buck@payday loan says
100 people per day isn’t huge but it should be enough to make money from. Affiliate deals might be better for you than adsense, especially as all your adsense ads are right down the bottom of the page (except that banner right at the top of course, but I think that’s just too easy to ignore). Try at least putting adsense banners in the post rather than top and tail. But better still would be to get some affiliate ads from people selling something that’s a really good match to the content of the post. Maybe Amazon Kindle books affiliate deal, or different ereaders, and put those ads right in the post, if you’ve got a post ‘best ereaders’ link out from that post to places where people can buy them from. your ads are too easy to ignore, that’s not that they don’t stand out enough they just aren’t in places that I have to read.
tom buck@payday loan says
sorry when I say put ads in your post, I don’t just mean banner ads, they can be simple text links too, so if you review a reader, have a ‘buy our favourite reader here’ link.
Also you should add some control to your adsense account, I’m seeing a lot of forex ads, don’t know if that’s a good match to your audience?
Frank says
Thank you Tom for taking the time to review my site AND for the suggestions. I am updating the posts as I have time and I can see how much better the ads should work. I was concerned about the posts looking too much like one big ad but with just using text links along with a couple of banners the posts look fine. Let me know what you think.
tom buck@instant payday loans says
hey Frank, yeah that looks cool. I would even go one further. Where you have
“Visit The [link to island book store]Island Book Store[/link]
It is a known fact that sales of electronic books, such as erotic eBooks written by independent authors, are up everywhere.
”
I would simply put something like
“It is a known fact that sales of [link to island book store]electronic books[/link], such as erotic eBooks written by independent authors, are up everywhere.
”
or
“It is a known fact that sales of electronic books, such as [link to island book store]erotic eBooks[/link] written by independent authors, are up everywhere.
”
Have an article specifically about the Island Book store, then you can tell the user all about it and link out to it throughout your copy. You can mix this up with a banner or two. Some people will come to the page and be engaged by a banner and click straight through, some will want to read the article so you want them to find something in the article that makes them want to investigate further.
Mike@ExerciseandNutriton says
I have been using adsense to make some money on my site. Links to affiliate products also has brought me some income.
Didi says
Earned from ads and adsense. Direct advertisers pay a lot for high page rank.
Pankaj says
Adsense is best service to make money from your site so go with adsense and thanks for great post
Michael Belk says
I do not make a lot of money right now, but like most people Adsense is big for me and CJ, now Kontera. I am monitoring who makes the most.
VALVEN says
to make money from blogs, I followed Id Blog Netowrk…
Frank says
List building I hear about all the time. I was wondering if a list from Net Max was a good way to jump start the traffic and list building. After 3 months I only average 90 visits a day and VERY few people have signed up to the site.
Places to visit says
The twitter box didn’t work so feel free to follow us @100places2visit
Places to visit says
Some great comments here, we find that Adsense is ok for a steady stream of income but the real money is with the affiliate sales, one sale can make you the same in one day that Adsense makes for the whole month. We are trying to cut down on the banners and give useful travel ralated information and relevant products via affiliate links which is far more effective.
Keep up the good work everyone.
Juli darma Putra says
I use my blog for Adsense and affiliate marketing purpose.
Cactus Facts says
Lisa,
Thank you so much for this useful information. I really do enjoy reading the informative articles on your sight. I have booked marked you and will be sharing your information with others.
Thanks again!
Jazz Website says
I still have a ways to go but I focus on organic traffic through backlinks. I sell my own published ebooks and I sell other people’s products. I expect my website to continue growing.
Jonny says
Lisa… The information you have on here is fantastic. I started blogging a few years ago and I have a modest following. I have noticed that recently many people have been emailing me asking me what I charge per day to advertise on my blog. You bring up some great points. Most notably… That every site is different and although I would love to charge a certain amount..I may either be charging to high or charging to low. I definetly want to communicate smartly when I delve into this area. In addition to earning money from the site I would also like to test products and blog about them.
Andrea says
Adsense is the best way but right now I’m not making any money from it. I will make money shortly and thanks for the article.
Couponsdunia says
i think affiliate marketing is much more better than adsense!
Josh says
It’s great to read all of the success stories in the comments section here. I’m new to blogging and have been focusing on Amazon because that seems like the easiest way for a beginner like myself. I constantly see people advertising that they are making 6 figures from Amazon, yet none of them ever want to share any detailed information about their sites so it’s frustrating.
Ashish says
I make maximum of my income from Adsense…
Guest says
Okay. .. I am a new blogger. I am trying to focus on building my site and content. I’m wondering if people can show how they sell what they sell. How do you make the conversion? It’s one thing to slap ads up but how do you promote other people’s products? can we have people link their top sellers so we can analyze what they did? It’s one thing to list ways to monetize but unless you know how to present it, it’s just another program with potential. It’s giving someone a tool set but they don’t know how to use the tools.
Manuel Marino says
right, let’s say that ads are not seen as “good things” by common web surfer and it’s reasonable.
We are overwhelmed by ads, just anywhere, from TVs and radios to web.
about the widget, since it’s a comparison tool, it’s not considered an ad. And this makes me think that “comparisons” in general are a very good way to show products. The idea could be extended from widgets to full articles.
Svetlana says
Hi Lisa,
My site is pretty new (SBIer here), and I average only about 100-200 visitors a day. I understand that it takes more traffic to see money from adsense, but so far I noticed that people avoid clicking on ads but willingly use widgets. I believe they think that “ads” are somehow bad (my own husband told me he would NEVER click on an ad because they are not “real”), bud widgets are “the real thing”. So far my insurance comparison widgets on 4 or 5 pages bring me 10 times more money than adsense on all 90 pages together!
hozzy says
hi lisa
thanks for bringing this topic up.actually i really thought adsense wasnt gona work out for me but now i make thousands per week
Manuel Marino says
well, what niches are not super competitive, today? I remember I passed days to find suitable names for my new websites.
If there are so many domains registered and so many online businesses I doubt there are not competitive niches. It’s hard, at last until the economical crisis will not change into an economical expansion.
John@EzineTrafficFormula says
Anybody can make money online. The key is to not start with a super competitive niche. I would start out offering services on forums. Simply look in the forums and find a service or job that no one wants to do. You can easily earn money in your first month. It may not be allot but it will seed your business operating funds.
Manuel Marino says
I think that very few websites are able to earn a living just with ads or similar.
With my websites I’m able to pay my internet bills only, and this is good, anyway. It’s enough, for me.
I’m a blogger for passion, but my main job is music composition and production. And when I don’t have music projects I focus on my websites. So, it’s ok for me.
Ti Roberts says
Hey Lisa!
This is a great blog post, thanks for bringing it up. Currently my top earner is a blogging affiliate program. It’s actually a blogging/marketing training system and platform. Next in line would be my consulting services.
Thanks.
Ti
ketoles says
I Have Problem with My google adsense, My account blocked because of language in my blog not support google adsense!! Help Me
maslakon says
I am a novice blogger. actually i already have a personal blog. but I am still confused how to learn to optimize my blog. I plan to create a blog that can provide income. so my blog can be beneficial for me and everyone who followed my blog.
I want to get help from you information on how to make my blog can be optimized. thanks ….
Arfan@Power of Attorney says
I can relate to the loads of traffic bad monetisation point. I have 3 sites at the moment, 1 which is my personal blog so not aiming to monetise, 1 “business” blog which is monetised by leads for work and lastly an experiment site.
This gets the most traffic (8k or so a month from SE / FB etc) it makes about….0.02 a day via adsense!
Some interesting points above I may try and experiment with.
Tera Patrick Official says
make money online is not easy,now i struggling to start earn money with adult blog ,wish i could earn money from this blog 🙂
Free Download says
My google adsense has been banned,it’s make me frustated and now i started make another account.
Graham Matthews says
The best part of blogging for me is to give people what they want.. which is the same that I want… to learn “how to”
Nearly everytime I do a search on Google, I’m searching for an answer to something… and I have no trouble finding it!
I’m an professional artist with a blog, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m giving my fellow artists tips and advice that I have learned to promote their art on the internet.
That’s what it’s all about.. helping others and giving… you see all the successful bloggers doing it.
Graham
diane says
you can make money online, but it is not easy. It will require effort on your part. Look at blogging, affiliate sales, or even writing online content through web content mills. Any way you go, you have to give it time and provide a good service. The money isn’t going to start rolling in overnight. Patience and persistence is the key to success
Codarz360 says
I find market samurai very helpful when it comes to analyising keywords for your website and it can come in handy. I think think adsense is one of the best ways to make money when you are just starting off because it can help bring visitors to your website.
Real Estate UAE says
There are lot of ways to generate money from your blog, if you have a massive amount of traffic then you can opt of paid ad placements. Absence doesn’t pay you well as compared with those ads that you’ll offer.
Ryan says
Hi Lisa,
This is a question I had to really dig deep and think about before I started blogging and creating niche sites. What’s really helped me is Market Samurai in determining how to circulate useful information into a steady income stream. So far, Adsense and selling digital products like e-books have been pretty good so far!
I haven’t dug into e-mail marketing due to the blog and niche sites being quite new and fresh but that’s an outlook for the future!
Until next time, all the best!
richard says
Im struggling with grasping the concept, i earn very little from adsnense and nothing through affiliates so far. Even my other ads arent getting clicks… 🙁
Avi Chhetri says
I have Gadgets Reviews site and i’m using adsense on it and also i have given some space for other advertiser so they can promote there site through my site. I think it is the best way to earn money with blogging.
Ankit says
My main earning source is adsense and never tried affiliate marketing.Thanks Lisa for tip.
Worli says
I always see people complaining about adsense in forums and blog that they not making any money out of it. The only key is traffic! proper ad placement and format.
Miguel says
For me it’s YouTube ad-sense revenues. My site gets very little traffic compared to my youtube channel.I decided to create a video tutorial website all my videos are hosted in youtube.
Robert says
For me it’s really just adsense revenues and then some private advert sales that I use to generate my income. Every so often I’ll sell on a site but that’s it really. I’ve been trying out Amazon affiliate recently, but it hasn’t really worked for me
Tim Barton says
Well one thing one of my friends has advised me is if your making a blog just for the purpose of making money you doing it wrong. You first have to bring good content to the table that your followers can relate to. After you have accomplished that he says people will come to you looking to advertise because they see your website is new and promising. And this information comes from someone who’s making over a thousand dollars a month just running his simple blog.
Money Saving Enthusiast says
I completely agree. I think people see through blogs like that. It also distracts from the most important purpose — the content and the writing. It always gets back to that.
Farrell John says
I have never been that successful in my online site. I have tried many things but i guess the reason that it wasn’t that successful is because i haven’t spend enough time for it.
mazhai says
intresting…my adsense disapproved bcoz of unsupported language really sad abt it anyway thanks for sharing
Freebie Hunter says
I can say that i have started making good money.
and if possible, will continue till blogging becomes my sole earning way!
yulia says
Yup, monetizing blog is attractive but creating an excellent blog to have self branding and get relationship (building list) is more important and more effective for our internet marketing development. Nice posting!
Yusuf @ Yusuf Blog says
Yes, the main trouble is traffic. >_< i also got it. i wanna to increase my blog traffic. Thanks for your article , 🙂