If you have a fledgling online business, or if it has been impacted by the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, you may be struggling to self-sustain. Most online businesses have just one source of revenue. You may find yourself needing outside investment in order to survive.
And it takes time to raise your startup to a level at which you can easily land angel investments. Until you reach that point, here are some ways you can increase income and keep your online business afloat.
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Using AdSense to Support Your Online Business
The easiest and most obvious way to increase income is Google AdSense. It allows you to immediately convert your online business’ site users into money. You can expect to get monthly checks with quite a different amount, depending on your niche and website traffic.
You can sign up for a Google AdSense account in no time. One of the coolest things about it is that it’s free. Simply paste the code you get from AdSense onto your site and the platform will take it from there.
Google will track your traffic, page views, and earnings on your behalf. To get it going, there is no maintenance or upkeep. Google wants you to succeed, so you can count on them to offer you some digital marketing tips and assistance. Naturally, you can block advertisements from your competitors. If you sign up for Google AdSense, you will still have the option of monetizing your site in other ways—it doesn’t necessarily have to be AdSense exclusive.
Direct Advertising
And, of course, Google AdSense is not the only way to make money from ads on your site. You may be able to sell direct ad space on your site, depending on the type of site your online business has.
It can be a sponsored result in your site’s search result pages or simply a sponsored profile page. This way, you will cut out the middle man (such as Google AdSense) and directly deal with the end companies. Of course, finding advertisers by yourself takes a bit of time and effort, but it should also pay off more. Plus you get to be independent.
For starters, simply setup up a page that will explain the type of ads you sell and why buying ad space on your site pays off. You can also offer them different plans to choose from.
Affiliate Marketing as a Means to Supplement Your Income
In the last few years, affiliate marketing has been booming, and for a good reason. Simply put, affiliate marketing is the activity of promoting services or products of other company’s (also known as a merchant) through an affiliate network (a platform that connects merchants and affiliate marketers).
Affiliate Marketer
If consumers end up buying the product or service thanks to your marketing, you earn a commission. To promote a merchant’s product, you can simply add a link to merchant’s product page on your site. Let’s say one of your site visitors clicks on that link, it takes them to the merchant’s site, and they buy the product. In that case, the merchant will give you a cut. The whole system is based on revenue sharing.
The key is to partner up with a company that is in a non-competing niche, but still has a connection to your business.
Unlike with AdSense or ads in general, it’s not enough for your site’s visitors to click on the promo link for you to make money. Nevertheless, the earning potential is much higher—as long as you make an effort to find a good, relevant product to promote.
Thanks to affiliate marketing networks such as Amazon Affiliate, finding merchants to partner up with is easy.
Affiliate Merchant
If you have your own products or services to sell, the beauty of affiliate marketing is that it goes both ways. Joining an affiliate network and having an affiliate marketer (also known as the publisher) promote your products or services is a great way to boost the income of your online business. To join an affiliate network as a merchant, you only need to pay a one-time sign-up fee.
From then on, you pay a commission to a publisher only if the site visitor they’ve sent your way makes a purchase. So, if a publisher links to your product, their site visitor clicks on it and goes to the product page on your site, but then changes their mind, you don’t have to pay them a dime.
The way the system works incentivizes publishers to do a great job of promoting your product. So, they are doing your marketing for you, and you only pay them for their results, not their work. The advantage of having an online business is that you can boost your income both as an affiliate merchant and an affiliate publisher at the same time.
Consulting, Coaching, or Mentoring
If you are an online entrepreneur that runs their own online business, you are so much more than an expert in your field (be it e-commerce, accounting, manufacturing goods, or whatever it is that you are selling).
You’ve gained leadership skills, management skills, marketing skills, and so much more. You can offer people more than you are offering your customer base at the moment. Chances are, with a bit of self-promotion, you can find people that will pay you to counsel them on their business or personal goals.
Rising professionals and entrepreneurs need someone who can support them and show them the right way.
For instance, you can offer your clients advice on how to develop a good relationship with coworkers, partners, or employers, how to write a business plan, or you can teach them what they need to do to reach the next stage of growth. Naturally, you can also teach people the particular skills you have that help you make a living, such as computer programming or graphic design.
Online coaching or mentoring on the side doesn’t have to take too much of your time, but can still increase your income.
Takeaway
No matter how much your online business is making, adding a few other sources of income to your revenue stream is never a bad idea. If you want to increase your income in an easy and efficient way, try out some of the aforementioned ideas.
