423 – BCS Part 6 of 6 – Webmaster Monetization Tips

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Earn more with your site

01:20 – A review of the entire series
05:35 – Monetizing your site with AdSense
07:17 – What exactly is AdSense?
08:32 – Has remarketing affected AdSense?
11:45 – Optimal ad sizes
13:31 – Are there restrictions?
15:17 – How not to get in trouble with AdSense
18:32 – The affiliate path
25:56 – First steps as an affiliate
28:56 – Promoting with integrity
32:57 – A starting action for you

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Part 1 of the series
Part 2 of the series
Part 3 of the series
Part 4 of the series
Part 5 of the series

Tweetables:

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Transcription:

James: James Schramko here. Welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. For the final bonus round, part 6 of a 6-part business case study series. It’s not just me in this series. It’s also with my good friend, Matthew Paulson. Welcome.

Matthew: Hey James.

James: Having fun?

Matthew: I am. This has been a great 5 episodes, and hopefully we will keep delivering the goods in the sixth.

James: I’m sure we will. We like to deliver the goods. That’s something great about this business case study series. We don’t really have a huge agenda. It’s just to get some good ideas out there, stimulate some discussion. Sure, a couple of people might find their way to your site and to my offers, and that’s great. However, I know the vast majority of listeners are taking notes and implementing.

We’ve had some big shout outs in the industries to some large groups and we’re really appreciative of all the comments and feedback we’ve had. So thank you.

Quick recap

Now, a quick recap, this is the website monetization tips episode. We’ve promised to catch a few ideas here that we may have missed along the way. Along the way though, we’ve had a good discussion. In terms of the six episodes, you can catch all of them at SuperFastBusiness.com. We’ve linked all of the episodes from the shownotes of this one. The main monetization tips that we’ve already mentioned in this series. Let’s just do a quick little recap of the actual techniques Matthew, then will finish out with some two power tips. Are you ready?

Matthew: OK. Let’s do it.

Lessons from previous episodes

James: So, one of the monetization tips we talked about fairly, extensively in Part 1 was the whole lead capture. Grabbing an email address and converting that email subscriber into a paying customer.

Matthew: Yup. And then another one we talked about was selling your website. So if you have a website that makes money and you don’t want to run it anymore, there are kind of known quantities and known ways to cash out and get two to three times annual revenue for it.

James: Yes. And that was a really interesting episode where we talked about not just websites but even just domains when you finish using what you’ve got. So if you don’t want your website anymore, you can monetize it by flicking it. We talked about how you might go about that.

Also, focusing more on your core website was a tip we talked about in Part 2. That episode really hit hard into the Internet marketing space because so many people have side projects. Everyone can relate to that episode. So if you want to make more money from your website, have a website, not hundreds of websites. Big tip there.

Matthew: Yeah. And we had an episode where we talked about turning around a failing business, so how to do conversion optimization and just going through every step of your business and looking for the different things that could have the biggest impact on getting people from one step, to the next, to the next, then those things multiply on top of each other. So if you can get 10% more people opting in and 10% of those are buying products, that adds up overtime.

James: Yeah, that was Episode 4. In particular, we were talking about packaging, how you can add high priced packages and 10% of your customers will probably pay 10 times more, and how you can make those packages recurring so they have multiple frequency of payment rather than just a one-time sale. And then in the Episode 5 when we were talking about name changes, we actually also brought up ideas about increasing usability for your website, navigation techniques, helping people find what they need quickly. All of these things help you make more money.

We also covered in one of our episodes that you should get people on multiple subscriptions. It think it was probably Part 1, where not just an email subscriber, but get them as an iTunes subscriber. Some people who are very techie are going to want to be an RSS subscriber, and then of course, they might want to be on a YouTube channel or a LinkedIn page or Pinterest channel. So wherever you happen to have content; Facebook friends or subscribers will be good and Twitter followers are also great.

By the way Matthew, where can people find you on Twitter?

Matthew: My Twitter id is matthewdp, D as in Dog, P as in Pony.

James: Nice phonetics there. D for Delta, P for Papa. Right. So I’m also on Twitter as well. JamesSchramko. Try and spell that one if you can. So today, we’re going to just cover a few bonus website monetization tips that haven’t really come up too much in the discussions so far. I think we should roll out with your power, your super power, Matthew, would have to be AdSense, and this is the publisher model.

At some stage, I think January 2013, at SuperFastBusiness, on our website, is an episode – How to Make 6 Figures Per Year with AdSense. It is a great episode to go back and listen to. What can you tell us about monetizing your website with AdSense? Here we are, recording this episode a few years later. Has it much changed or is it still exactly the same?

Using AdSense for website monetization

Matthew: It hasn’t changed that much. I was doing about six figures a year at AdSense and now I’m doing just under six figures a month. So it’s definitely grown as a part of my business. AdSense works great and other display advertising networks too. For websites, they get a decent amount of traffic. So if you’re getting say 50,000 or 100,000 page views a month, going to publish your model or running AdSense on your website and other ad networks in addition to AdSense can be a very good way to monetize.

What I like about it is when you sell a product, you have to develop the product, you have to market the product, you have to put it on your website, then you have to do support for the product, which is fine. But you know, when you’re just trying the ads in your website, there’s no follow-up work to get paid. People click on the ad, the AdSense or whoever the advertising network is sends you a check and it’s just a very low maintenance way to make money.

It does work better in some industries than others. So there are certain niches where the cost per click is a lot higher than others in AdSense. I’m in the finance and investing industry, that is a very good space. Medical, anything medical or anything legal are also great spaces for AdSense. It’s basically any industry where there are people in it that make a lot of money. It tends to be a good industry for AdSense.

James: Right. So we’ve covered why you might do this because there’s really not that much effort involved. You’re just giving up a bit of your real estate to monetize that when someone is just paying to be there even if it’s through a third party like Google. We should talk about what AdSense actually is, just in case someone is not aware of it. We could be taking for granted too much prior knowledge here. Certainly, it’s been about 9 years since I was into AdSense. So let’s have a refresher. How does it work?

What is AdSense and how does it work?

Matthew: Yeah. So Google runs a two-part advertising network. There is the AdWords side, where you as an advertiser go and bid on people’s keywords and ads and that kind of stuff. Then AdSense is the publisher side, where you run their ads in exchange for money for a click. So Google, if you sign up for AdSense, they will approve your website, they will give you ad takes to put on your website, so you might put like a 728×90 banner in your header or a couple of 300×250 banners in your sidebar. You put the code on your website.

They show an ad that they think is going to work well with the content of your page or maybe they have somebody cookied, so they say, “Oh James was just on a website about surfboards. So we’re going to show him a surfboard ad.” They try to maximize your revenue for whoever’s viewing that ad. You go to a website, you click on the ad, the publisher will get maybe between $.50 or $1.50. It just kind of depends for that click. And then the next month, Google will send you a check or a direct deposit for whatever you earned from the previous month.

James: Something you mentioned there, obviously the technique of remarketing, although you didn’t say the word, where we’re getting relevant ads based on places we visited, has the advent of remarketing changed the AdSense revenue possibilities? Is there more revenue now because people are seeing more relevant ads?

AdSense revenue possibilities

Matthew: I don’t think so. From the traffic on my website, only about 20% of it is actually retargeted traffic. Google will show you the AdSense reporting like how each or what percentage of your traffic showed interest in ads based on the websites they were on before and then which are based on the keywords on your page. The retargeting is probably only about 20% but I think that again depends on what industry you’re in. They have financial ads that’s going to pay $2 per click. They’re not going to show a surfboard ad that pays $.50 per click even if you have that retargeting interest.

James: Right. So they’re working that you’re on this finance site, so you might be interested in that too.

Matthew: Yeah. What has made a big difference, there’s two factors in AdSense. You know obviously, how you make money. One is through traffic and that’s going to be on the scope of this discussion, but two is the content that you write about. So if you can find highly paying keywords in Google and you write about those and you get traffic for those, your cost per click will go up.

And then the third is your placement, so which ads you put on your website. There’s a lot of different places that you can put them. Google publishes a heat map that shows you kind of suggestions where to place your ads. Generally, around content is good. Above the fold is good. Wherever are most people likely to see them is usually a pretty good place.

James: Right. So above the fold means that it’s viewable without having to scroll.

Matthew: Yup.

James: And am I right in thinking you’re running this AdSense as a monetization technique in addition to your email newsletter?

Matthew: Yeah. It’s a business that has multiple monetization points. So there are a lot of different steps in a funnel that I have. You make money at different points along the way. You get the quick money upfront with AdSense and you get more money down the line from subscriptions and then showing ads to your email list. So it’s kind of a nice way to have multiple streams of income there.

James: So you can reinvest your AdSense in common to buying more traffic to drive it to your offers to build your email list to make more offers of your own products.

Matthew: Yes you can.

James: Very clever.

Matthew: Yeah. I mean I used the AdSense money, I probably buy about 20,000 opt-ins a month through co-registration advertising networks now, so I just take the money from AdSense and funnel that back into getting new subscribers.

James: The AdSense on my blogs were funding all of the hosting for them and development of the websites, so it was a good business model while I had the content happening. Of course, when we switch over topics, we’ll talk about options that you have, in terms of what you can do with that real estate.

So we talked about why you might do it, we’ve talked about AdSense is, it’s literally putting a little banner or piece of code somewhere on your site that when people click on, you get paid. What are the best ad sizes? Is that a relevant question?

The best ad size

Matthew: Yeah, I think it is. You see, a 300×250 is a pretty safe bet. That’s just kind of a square. You see them all over the Internet. There’s a 336×280. That’s a slightly bigger square. You can stick it in your content. You can stick it in your sidebar. And then the 720×90, which is kind of the big leader board that you see on top of a lot of different websites.

James: And are we trying to stick out or blend in?

Matthew: You know, the colors don’t matter so much anymore because most of the ads that show are banners. They give you all these options to pick different colors. Yeah, you should generally have your links on your AdSense match up with what’s on your website and blend it in but if 75% or 80% of the ads that run in your ad unit are banner ads, then those colors don’t really matter so much because you generally don’t see those type of ads as much.

Should you block ads?

James: Are there any specific settings that you find effective in terms of what you might block or not allow?

Matthew: I allow everything. So I never block any specific advertiser. I don’t know any reason why you would unless you want to block a direct competitor or if you want to block adult stuff. But they don’t even allow adult stuff on there, but if you had like a website for kids, then you might want to be more careful. But generally, I don’t block anything and I don’t recommend you look in the section where you can block stuff. It’s not a good use of your time and you’re only going to hurt yourself by blocking stuff.

James: Right. Yeah, one of my customers who does quite well with AdSense can tell when the advertisers are changing because the revenue goes up and down substantially. So maybe you can prune back a little bit by trying to get the good payer.

Now, not knowing so much about AdSense these days, what are the things should we be talking about when it comes to AdSense? What sort of challenges do people have? Obviously, one thing that comes to mind is we really got to know the rules in terms of where you can put them and how many you can have, and how you’re driving traffic, etc. There must be restrictions that you should be aware of.

Things to remember about AdSense

Matthew: Yeah. You can have three ad units on a page generally. If you do a lot of revenue, you can negotiate with them a little bit on that. They let me do for now after talking to people over the phone, which is nice. Don’t click on your own ads. Never do that because they know that right away because you’re usually logged in your Google account. So if you click on your own ads, they’re going to know that. They ban people pretty quickly for clicking on their ads. So just never do that. Never encourage people to click on your ads. Just make them organic. Don’t do bought traffic. Anything that you know you think will get you in trouble will probably get you in trouble.

James: Right. “Bought traffic” for the English speakers out there is an automated program that goes along and clicks on your ads so you can make money. I just find it so fascinating that humans just always want to take the shortcut. It’s like when you do SEO, the first thing someone asks, “Could we put text on the page the same color as the background to get more keywords on the page?” I was like, why do people think that they’re going to shortcut the system like that? The cheap shot, like clicking on your own ads is a very low yield activity in terms of the whole point of doing it, isn’t it?

Matthew: Yeah. It’s just not sustainable. Even if you get away with it, you might make 10 bucks. Who cares? When you’re first getting started and you want to have some results, you kind of feel like it’s tempting to do that just to see something rather that nothing, but it’s just not a good long-term strategy for anybody.

James: Right. So knowing that there’s a lot more information in our How to Make 6 Figures Per Year With AdSense, any final things on AdSense?

Final things on AdSense

Matthew: They have a pretty good help knowledge base in the AdSense website. Just read it and then do what they tell you, and you won’t get in trouble. I read that there’s an AdSense section where people complain all the time that they got banned and they don’t know why. Well, did you read FAQs? Do you read the publish guidelines? No.

James: It’s so true of any platform.

Matthew: Yeah. I love the guys at AdSense and I think a lot of people that run into the issues are people who don’t follow the rules and just don’t pay attention to what the rules are.

James: Well said. That can be applied to the other business monetization model we want to talk about.

Other content ads

Matthew: Before we dive into that, AdSense isn’t only the game in town. Most of my websites have seven or eight banner ads. AdSense are three or four of those. So there are also other things you can add in addition to AdSense to kind of maximize your ad network a little bit. I’ll just touch on two of those briefly.

One of those content ads that you see over the place now from Taboola and AdBlade and a few other companies like that that you know are generally blog post, those pay pretty well. Those are worth checking out.

James: What was the one after Taboola?

Matthew: AdBlade.

James: Are they like Outbrain?

Matthew: Yeah. They are very much like them. I think Outbrain mostly works for big publishers. I think Taboola probably works for smaller ones. Then there’s another one called content.ad that works for small publishers too. Those are worth doing. Then you can also sign up for a second ad network, like a display ad network like Tribal Fusion, Technorati media has one, there’s one called Pop Galaxy, there’s just hundreds of those. You can kind of stick some of those ads below the fold and you can get a couple of dollars extra CPM out of your ads just by placing them into places where people generally won’t see them or care but still make money out of them.

James: OK. Slow down cowboy, CPM stands for?

Matthew: Cost per thousand views.

James: Right. So for every thousand people who view it, they’ll pay you.

Matthew: Yes.

James: Nice. What else?

Matthew: There are a lot of names in there.

James: You’re the information machine, Matthew. Any other tips on display or publishing ads?

Matthew: Just test everything. If you’ve had the ads in the same positions they had been for years, try moving stuff around to see if you can get improvement out of it. Split testing has been a big win for me at AdSense and other stuff so just do the color test, do whatever you can. Just come up with ideas for things to try and move ads and around and see what works better. Sometimes you can get huge wins out of doing that.

James: Fantastic. The point is that this real estate is available there. Another thing that you might be able to put there is people who want to advertise directly on your site. I’m sure people would approach you and say, “Hey, can I rent some space on your site?” Banner buys direct banner buys, where you’re cutting out the middleman and dealing direct. There’ll be pros and cons for that certainly. Whether you get paid or not could be a con. A pro might be they’re prepared to pay a little more than what they’re paying someone who’s scraping a profit on the way through.

Matthew: You’ll have an entirely different way to monetize your website other than display ads. That’s affiliate marketing. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about that.

Website monetization through affiliate marketing

James: Yeah. So generally, I like to promote my own things in my own media. That applies to podcast through to my website. I don’t need to put someone else’s ads there because I am prepared to go through the process of setting up products and services for the most part. But then there’s still that extra monetization ability of promoting someone else’s stuff. But a different way to approach it is to go down the affiliate path.

A simple way to think about this might be if you were running AdSense and you notice the same people advertising there all the time, let’s say you saw an email service provider advertising on your site, then what you might do is go directly to that email provider, join their affiliate program and then you put your affiliate banner in that spot. So now you’ve got a direct deal. You’ve effectively done what’s called vertical integration. You’ve gone direct to the person who wants to be on your site, instead of them having to buy the ad from Google, then Google putting the ad on your site and then you getting paid by Google. You’ve just gone direct.

So you can get a higher payout for that. And often, you can get a recurring payout. Some of the things that I promote pay thousands of dollars per month every single month just by sending them leads. The good thing is that I’m not competing with these products. I’m not setting up an autoresponder service. It’s not a competition situation.

I know that my customer is going to have this stuff anyway. That’s why I would do it because my customer is going to find out about these products and services anyway. I can actually help them find the right ones instead of the wrong ones by putting the ones that I support or promote in a more prominent place, so they find it easily and that they get good solutions. And then I go about putting those in the right place on my website.

So the way that I’ve approached it is two-fold. One is I might put in in-content links, which is one of the best ways to promote anything and it’s called native advertising. That’s just putting things into the content. So if I put an article about something and I mention autoresponder system, the very fact that I say those words, my team will automatically link those words to a page on our site where we talk about that autoresponder system, even in the transcription. So that’s pretty cool.

We also have a recommended page on our website. So when we have our product chooser, which we spoke about in Part 5 of this series, we have a Products We Recommend tab, and it’s got a big love heart, and it’s like, here’s things we love and we use.

What we do is rather than just directly link to most of them, we actually have a little review where we talk about the product and we go through a framework – what is it, what problems does it solve, who’s it for, who’s not the good customer for this, why did we choose it, what results do we get, where can you go and find out more, and we link off to them.

We have a clear disclaimer that we will make affiliate commissions from links on the website. So we’re not doing this in a sneaky way. It’s clearly delineated. There’s obviously a big understanding in our industry that that’s how many is made with these things.

But I will say this, I only recommend products that I use or that I like, or that I think a good value. We’ve had a lot of people approach us, pretty much on a daily basis. Could you promote our product? Could you sell this? And we say, “No, thanks.” So we’ve restricted it to the very few solutions that people actually get the most value from.

The newest section that we have is basically a list of all the things that I use in the business. I’ve linked to the ones that I use, whether they’re affiliated or not. I’ll even put a raw link to a product just because it really does build trust. People get to know that I’m recommending from my heart. Sometimes, I get a commission. Sometimes, I don’t. That’s OK. I’m not doing it because I get a commission. But if there is an affiliate program and I think that’s going to be a substantial investment from people, then I will put an affiliate link because it’s only fair to collect a reward if you are sending that business a lot of customers.

Now some of the exceptions, for example, I love Wistia, and I promote that product without any affiliate commission because it’s such a good product. People need it. Even if there’s programs with affiliate commission that compete with it, they’re not as good and I’d rather get people the right solution.

Matthew: How do you find that page in your website?

James: People go to Products and then they can click on Products we recommend. So we have three of our own products or services, and then we have everyone else’s.

Matthew: OK. Cool. You used to have a website called BuyWithBonus. I assume you gave people a bonus when they used your affiliate marketing link. You told me about that strategy. Do you still do that?

James: We still do it. We ported that entire site across to SuperFastBusiness.com/recommended. That is the page people get to when they click on Products we recommend. We still have the BuyWithBonus situation. Interestingly enough, a lot of people just buy my stuff and not worry about claiming it because they like that I’m endorsing it. I don’t know if it’s a strategy I’ll need in the long term. It was certainly great in the beginning. It was my entire first hundred thousand dollars. It was rewarding people for buying a certain product or service. They get extra value. It doesn’t cost the customer anything, and I get a commission. So everyone was happy. That was good.

But I think now, the site’s built up such authority and people recommend the site without being an affiliate. I also recommend things without being an affiliate as well. So I think I’ve just sort of leveled up to a more giving back status where I’m not really needing to incentivize people so much. I could see a day where that part is not required. But certainly, if someone is a little bit bargain oriented or they like to get value when they’re buying something and they’re looking for a deal, people will find it and it does give them something extra, they can get one of the courses from my many workshops. They can have it for free if they buy through my link and they claim it.

It’s a very simple step-by-step process. They click on our link, buy something, and then claim, and they get a bonus. So it’s still working. We still get claims most days. But I could see that one day in the future, I’ll just have a straight list of stuff. I think the site will be so powerful that that will be enough. But yeah, still halfway through that, not so hard on it, but we have such a residual recurring income now in hundreds of thousands from affiliate marketing that it has been a very successful strategy for us.

Getting started as an affiliate

Matthew: So if somebody’s first getting started, if you’ve only got a minimal amount of traffic, do you build your own product first, do you do affiliate marketing, do you do AdSense, do you do anything besides traffic generation? What do you get started?

James: Do what I do and that’s just list down everything you’ve bought and find the ones that you’ve purchased and that you use all the time because that’s really easy to have a conversation with someone about. I’ve had a several conversations with people about Ontraport for example. It’s the system I use to send out emails. I put a little link in the bottom of my email. This email is sent using Ontraport, and that goes to my affiliate link. Such a simple step to monetize your emails. Just to list the resource that you use to send the emails.

I know you’ve got a custom system, but most of our listeners could do this with whatever they’re sending. If they’re using Aweber or Infusionsoft, they could just put an affiliate link. Other things that you’ve purchased or a good thing for you to start with because your customers have probably also purchased them or need them as well. So that’s a starting point.

The next step is to talk to your customers and find out what they’ve bought. If you could speak to 10 customers and they all have the same things, you know that that’s an easy win. They all have hosting with Liquid Web. You could put a banner to Liquid Web on your website. If your customers in the finance market all buy the Wall Street Journal or whatever financial news thing everyone has to have, it’ll be pretty straightforward to go and see if they have an affiliate program on their website. Amazon have a program called Associates. So it’s really easy to join up Amazon.

If you have a photography blog and people are buying cameras and lighting, then you would definitely want to be putting a list of resource or recommended cameras and link to the products on Amazon where you can get a commission of anything they buy in that section, which is mindblowing. If we go and get a camera and then lenses and then lights, like someone could spend $5,000 or $6,000 and you get a percentage of that, it’s a very easy win.

Matthew: Yeah, I use Amazon Associates. Whenever I have a book coming out, the link I promote is going to have my affiliate link in it, so I get the normal commission, but then I also get that extra 4, 5, 6 percent for sending people to buy my book through Amazon. If you’re selling anything on Amazon, it’s just a nice way to get a few extra percentage points in whatever you sell to people.

James: Exactly right. What people don’t realize is that most companies have an affiliate program. It’s just you’ve got to dig for it a bit sometimes on the footer or search for the product plus affiliate, and you might find it. So things that you already buy and things that your customers definitely buy, a great place to start.

Only promote good value

And only ever promote something that you really think is good value for people because it will come back on you if you promote bad products or services. Just because you’re a bit interested in that commission means you shouldn’t. A lot of marketers tap into this. The promotions that I get asked to promote, they’re always saying, “Hey, promote this. Win a Harley Davidson. Win my Ferrari or win whatever.” That’s not a good enough reason for me to send an email to my customer.

I don’t think my customer cares that I might win a Ferrari because I’m sending the email, but I do think they care that they get their emails delivered or that their website software works properly. So it’s very important to only represent products that you think are good. So you are literally a commissioned salesperson and you get a fee for success.

You can rotate the offers to see which ones are giving you a good result. But I would say don’t do it purely based on revenue. Do it based on reputation and reward for your effort. The companies that pay you quite well, they’re the ones that are easy to create more content for. You could make 20 or 100 articles around photography and have your link to the Canon camera that’s sitting there on Amazon from every single one of them.

But there’ll also be competitors to Amazon. There’ll be photography shops that sell cameras and may have a better affiliate program. Just like with AdSense versus different publishing platforms, you can shop around for a good payout for the same product.

Matthew: Yeah.

James: There you go. So simple ways that you can promote stuff from your website, you can have your banners, you can have articles and content that weaves it into text links, you can put it in your email footers, really simple to do. Mention them in your transcriptions, link to them from your PDFs. One thing, if you are on affiliate marketing, I strongly urge you to use a redirection URL. So don’t link directly to the affiliate link. Use some kind of link cleaner-upper, not bitly. Use your own one. You can get them from yourls.org I think.

You can get your own. I’ve installed my own one. I’m the only one who uses it. So it’s got a good reputation. Get your own shortener, put it on your website. Then you can use it over and over again and have good reputation because affiliate programs often change. They’ll change their platform or they’ll discontinue a product.

If you’ve got the raw link, it’s very hard to go and change it. But if you have your own shortener or a plugin that does this, then you can go and change the link, and you don’t have to go and change it wherever you put it, especially if you put it in a PDF document. You can’t go and change it once the customer downloads it like a Trojan horse onto their computer.

Matthew: Yeah. Or if you’re going to put anything in a book or anything that’s just going to be in print, you want something that’s going to stick around a while.

James: Yeah, redirect it through your website. Nice, simple redirections are the way to go.

Matthew: Yup. I use a plugin called Pretty Link to do pretty much the same thing. Anything I mention in print gets sent through MattPaulson.com/whatever, and it seems to work pretty well.

James: It’s a great idea. And the reason I installed my own link tracking software, I just got my own short URL domain name for it, because I want it to be site agnostic and WordPress-independent.

Matthew: Sure.

James: I just wanted a nice simple script that does what I need it to do. And it gives you good stats. You can go on, just like you’re doing with your AdSense, you can go and click on your link shortener and review which links are getting clicked on. Some of the tricky programs have split testing capabilities and all of that, but I suggest just keep it simple.

Action steps from the episode

A starting action from this podcast would be to go and find a piece of real estate on your website that’s being overlooked, and put an Adblock or an affiliate banner to something that makes sense for your audience, and start monetizing. That’s really the goal.

Matthew: Yeah. And I think it’s important to mention that what works for my website is different than what works for James’s website, which is going to be different from what works for your website. So much of what is effective just depends so much on what kind of niche you’re in. In the Internet marketing space, selling your own products and doing affiliate marketing works great, and in the finance and investing industry, just straight up banner ads works great, and there’s other industries where promoting stuff on Amazon works great.

It just depends, so a great way to figure out, if you’re just getting started and you don’t know what to do, look at what your competitors are doing. If they’re all right into AdSense, you do the view source on their website, you say, oh, this guy’s got an AdSense tag, maybe I should have an AdSense tag too. That’s kind of a neat way to shortcut ideas for monetization.

James: Exactly. Other people are leaving clues for you. So it’s always good as a starting point to see what’s happening in the marketplace. It doesn’t mean you’ll end there, but some people have already figured it out. Matthew’s been talking about all sorts of things that make sense in this series, so he’s got things figured out.

And the things that I’m doing are what’s been working for me, and almost 10 years since I registered my very first domain, I’d like to think that I’ve figured some of the stuff out. And the great thing is, there’s so much more to figure out.

So we will also be interested in your questions, as you go and listen to this series, if you’ve had questions or you’ve had success from taking actions, that’s also something very interesting to us. And if you really care, we may come back with a future miniseries and update you with some news ideas and tips and especially let us know if you’ve got some suggestions for those modules.

Matthew: Yeah. If you want us to do more of these, just leave a comment, and if we get enough of them, maybe we will record some more episodes.

James: That will be cool. So, Matthew, I want to thank you so much for putting aside the time. Obviously, we’ve had to block several hours of your life and my life to record these 6 podcasts, and I just want to say it’s been really great doing this project together.

You’re a terrific co-host, and I recommend that our listeners think about how they might want to do a little joint venture or projects like we’ve done, where 2 people can come together and create something together. It was actually a very good process to do and hopefully, we’ve thrown some great ideas out into the marketplace for people to chew on and get results from, most importantly.

Matthew: Absolutely. And if you do want to learn about something else, just leave it in the comments and maybe a month from now, if we get bored, we’ll hit each other up on Skype and do another one of these. So tell us what you want to learn from us, and maybe we can do that sometime.

James: There you go. Well, thank you, Matthew.

Matthew: Thank you, James.

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