All that work for nothing?

You’ve:

• picked a niche
• made a site
• written content
• drive traffic
• monetized

Good for you! Your dream of becoming a webmaster is finally coming true.

Your site is up and running, easy on the eyes, and has a decent amount of content on it. The site is monetized and you’ve seen a steady increase in traffic since the site was created, however long ago.

You’ve done everything right, but something is wrong; you’re not making any money!

To understand why, let’s take a closer look.

The components of internet marketing are all connected to one another. Think of the website creation process as a pyramid: At the bottom is picking a niche and at the top is making money from the site. Every piece of the pyramid needs to build on the base, until the whole thing becomes concentrated in a single point.

For us, that is when the customer willingly pulls out his wallet.

Build a solid foundation for your site

For those of you on a shoe-string budget, doing it all yourselves, you’re going to have to learn how to build your pyramid the hard way. If you’re site isn’t making any money, you’ve got a problem with something in the foundation of the pyramid.

• It could be your topic itself. Are people paying for products and services in your niche?
• It could be the layout of the site. Is your site aesthetically appealing enough for visitors to return VOLUNTARILY on a daily basis?
• Or, it could be the content. Are you coming across as an authority or just out to make a quick buck?
• Or it could be the traffic. Are your only visitors Googlebots, or are you also attracting targeted traffic?

When all of these values are set correctly, turning your site into a money making machine will be much easier than trying to wing it.

Its for this reason that monetizing your site should be the last step in the creation process. After you’ve got the right amount of traffic and content on your site, feel free to focus on making money.

Hopefully, you’ve chosen a niche you’re passionate about. When you’re trying to figure out the best monetization strategy for your site, do some research about the most common strategies for that niche. Once you’ve checked out the competition, implement some of their strategies.

A fool is a man who has never tried an experiment

However, keep in mind that making money from your site is NOT a “set it and forget it”. If you’re smart, you’ll do testing to see what works best for you.

For instance, if you went the lazy route and started with your basic Google Adsense ads and they’re not working for you, the try switching to another format. Try in-text ads, or promote some affiliate products.

Don’t be afraid to change things around on your site. However, make sure you’re also allowing the ads/product links to get enough exposure before you replace them.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: sales is a numbers game. You’ll have good days and bad days.

Selling on the internet is no different. Give your strategy enough time to fail before you prematurely pull the plug.

Once your site starts generating some income, guess what its time to do?

Build another site! Yay!