While many people may not think of it this way, Amazon is likely one of the most successful—if not the most successful—websites from a monetization standpoint. Initially, it started as an online bookseller, but today, much of Amazon’s revenue comes through payments received from third parties selling products on its site—a practice referred to as affiliate marketing. Today, more than 60% of its sales come through independent sellers, the company reports.
Amazon, the gorilla in the room here, is the third-most-visited website in the U.S., per Statista, among other giants such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook. But while Amazon delivers what successful websites must deliver to monetize effectively—an audience—that audience doesn’t have to be massive. It just has to be relevant. Any number of much smaller websites have been able to gain revenue—even significant revenue—through monetization efforts.
Job #1: Delivering a Relevant Audience
Chances are, whatever the content of your website is, there’s a way to monetize it. That audience doesn’t have to be huge.
Value of Niche Audiences
In fact, niche audiences can, and do, hold value for many website owners. Effectively monetizing your website, though, requires a “chicken and egg” approach that can prove challenging: You need to have an audience before you can work to grow that audience through monetization. To begin, you need to build an audience through your content—whether that’s the products and services you sell or ancillary content such as blog posts, infographics, case studies, and/or white papers that offer value to some target audience.
Domain Authority
With that in mind, you’re going to want to ensure that your website has enough domain authority to attract the attention of search engines. Domain Authority is a metric, developed by Moz, ranging from 0 to 100, with higher authority the goal. Ahrefs offers a free tool to measure a similar metric that it refers to simply as authority.
While higher is better, there’s no agreed-upon target score. It will vary by industry and the type of content that you produce. A good way to determine how you stack up, though, is to review the authority rankings of others in your business, including your competitors. Just as authority scores can vary significantly, so can the means of monetization.
Website monetization isn’t one-size-fits-all. There are various options and opportunities that website owners should consider when determining what might work best not only for them, but for their audience.
(Note: This article first appeared in the April 2024 issue of Information Today.)
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Strategic Communications, LLC, works with B2B clients to help them achieve their goals through effective content marketing and management with both internal and external audiences. We work with clients to plan, create and publish high-quality, unique content. Whether on- or offline, or both, we’ll help you achieve desired results at reasonable rates.
In addition to content creation we specialize in helping B2B clients raise awareness and drive website traffic through a strong LinkedIn and X presence.
(Strategic Communications is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise through the Wisconsin Department of Administration.)
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Tags: content marketing, content marketing effectivneess, internet marketing, monetizing websites, website monetization