How to create more revenue from your website traffic

 Your company has probably spent considerable funds developing a functional website. It may look good, and reflect what readers want. But is it making the company money?

Most publishers have an advertising model of sorts. If you are only making money from display ad sales, you could probably add a zero to your check by implementing a properly managed email marketing strategy.

Golden opportunities are not hard to find. It may be as simple as working with market research companies to help them reach a target niche.

People love doing market research surveys, often for a small incentive. Actually, one of our clients has built a successful list by laser targeting people who do surveys without incentive.

To make big money, first you must build a big list
We’ve found that most publishers do a poor job of capturing email details. Mainly because they believe nobody will sign up. But you should put aside that doubt.

A well thought out opt-in program will see around 30% of visitors either subscribe or divulge the necessary details for further contact if the value proposition is fair. In other words, the visitor will register if they care about the offer and the end result.

Once this 30% sign up (start to do the math on your traffic numbers now) a proficient email marketing program will:

warm those people to your brand

increase interest in your relevant ad offers

help you earn revenue for life from visitors who never intend to return to your site.

Maximising your advertising revenue
Online Ad Networks don't tend to care about maximising yield for publishers –it’s just not their driving aim. And ad agencies don’t usually want to deal with individual publishers. So that leaves the publisher out on their own struggling to grow their revenue. Or does it?  

Working with a publisher’s representative like Cogent (shameless plug) gives website owners an opportunity to take an even share of what is usually a much wider and deeper advertising schedule.
Online ad spends are often highly targeted. This extremely relevant match will mean more revenue for both you and the publisher - and seem natural to the end users’ experience.

Advertising packages
If you have high web traffic, you can put together profiled lists that are attractive to the advertiser, lucrative and actually enhance the end user experience.

But even with the best ad inventory (banner impressions, email newsletter ad spots), you will need to think carefully about:

how to package it

which networks to partner with

how to apply best practices to your marketing efforts.

If this is all causing your head to spin, have a think about getting us to conduct a “site audit”. This is where we make specific recommendations based on your brand considerations, internal limitations and end user profile.

Site audits end up giving you multiple ways forward with new revenue strategies as well as maximising yield from your existing advertising earnings.