How to monetize a news website?
Creating a news website is relatively easy, thanks to WordPress, but many people still struggle to wonder “how to monetize a news website?”
With thousands of news websites out there, you must reflect on new and unique features you might offer to stand out from other sites. How? Well, there are two significant factors that you need the most-adequate traffic to your website and knowing the right monetization techniques.
We have got you covered, and in this article, we will precisely guide you on how to monetize a news website.
Banner Ads
Banner ads are one of the traditional ways to make money using your website. Banner ads make use of rectangular images that you can display at the top, sides and bottom of a website. They are also one of the most popular means of advertising. You can try vertical banners are called a skyscraper on the sidebars or the horizontal banner advertisement known as leaderboards at the top. These work very well if you manage to choose the most relevant deals for your target audience.
Some audience finds the ads annoying. So, you can offer them a premium ad-free access to your site for a negligible fee. You can provide an ad-free experience for a specific time or even a lifetime upgrade.
Next thing you need to worry about is the anti-advertising software. It would help if you found an effective solution to deal with several anti-advertising Softwares available in the market.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing refers to the promotion of other products on your website. It is, in fact, one of the quickest and most popular means to monetize from your website.
You need to focus more on audience interest and build the audience trust rather than the audience’s number in this strategy.
You can begin by testing a product you like and a product that your audience might be interested in. You can then recommend the product to your visitors, endorse and promote it on your website, and email subscribers.
If the product or service reverberates with these visitors, they will click on your affiliate link to purchase the product, and there you are! You can quickly get a commission on the sale price.
You can expect an amount ranging from 30% to up to as high as 70% of the product or service price.
For instance, if the split is 30% and you promote an e-book that costs $100, you will earn $30. So that is a pretty incredible amount you can earn passively for only referring the buyer.
Top online marketers such as Darren Rowse, Pat Flynn and John Chow could make millions of dollars using affiliate marketing strategy.
Participate in pay-per-click networks
Google Adsense is one of themost simple and popular forms of partnership with trustworthy advertisement companies. It utilizes Google’s immense advertising network to make money and increase reliability. The technique is straightforward, and you must apply for Google Adsense. Next, Google will place a simple code on your website to identify your website’s content. It will automatically start displaying advertisements that are most relevant to your content regarding its topic and media type.
Google Adsense offers around51% to 68% revenue share. Every time a visitor clicks on the ad, you can earn an amount ranging from $0.50 to $5 per click. When your site has enough traffic, you can make hundreds and thousands of dollars every month.
How to apply for Google Adsense?
Apply for AdSense – Make sure you keep up with their latest Terms Of Service before applying. Google has stringent rules, so getting approved is not an easy task.
Besides AdSense, several other PPC networks are available, such as Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, Bidvertiser, and AdRolls.
Sponsored Links And Paid Articles
Paid articles are the core method used for link building and a comprehensive SEO optimization technique and website promotion technique. Many companies go out of their way to look for news portals and blogs that will feature their sponsored content. You can make money by publishing paid articles on related topics that contain links to other websites. It would help if you had a team of content writers and SEO experts with high writing skills so that the content doesn’t look like a mere infomercial.
However, since journalism cannot be biased and cannot sell expert advice, many visitors will not be pleased. So we recommend marking paid articles with tags such as “sponsored content”, “advertisement”, “news from our partners” to avoid risking your new website’s reputation.
Sell Your Own Digital Product (say Ebook )
If you are looking for monetizing initially and do not have such high traffic, this monetization strategy is suitable. You can utilize the potential to sell your products and make decent money on a per-sale basis.
The best part is that there is s no middle-man between you and the buyer so there is no cut and you can earn money.
You must, however, make compelling content with good appealing designs that readers may find worth buying.
It would help if you did not forget that selling your products on your site also brings up a few challenges in payment gateways, shipping, and taxes.
Over to You!
We hope our article helped you to find out the best ways on how to monetize a news website. It would help if you decided which strategy is going to work best for your website.
If you are a beginner and still searching for unique WordPress themes to design a news site, check out “The News Times WordPress theme“. You can also check out our guide on how to choose a WordPress theme for building a news website.
