Many people dream of running their own website and not having to go into an office to make money. This has become a reality for quite a few people as people flock to the internet to read their favorite blogs or writers on a daily basis. There is a multitude of opportunity when it comes to ad revenue as well as other career opportunities that establishing yourself as a thought leader in a niche can offer. This does not mean that creating this site then maintaining it will be an easy job as it will take nearly daily work.
The following are tips to help you succeed in creating a profitable website and how to maintain the site in order to keep it profitable.
Creating Your Website or Having It Done
The first step is obviously creating the website itself after finding a host and domain name. Getting a professional to do this can be advantageous especially if they specialize in user friendly website design. A poorly staged website can impact all parts of a business’ site, blog, or website as it does not direct the visitor in a clear manner. Make sure that you test the site with paid testers as finding all of the glitches before the site launches is important. Something that freezes a computer can lead to visitors never coming back to the site. Poor navigation can also frustrate visitors and cause them to leave the site. A clear navigation bar can help reduce time that visitors take searching for their desired part of the website.
Social Media is Free, Take Advantage
Anyone who is running a blog or website needs to be using social media on a consistent basis. The fact that these platforms are free and can help promote sharing of your content make this a must do for many website owners. Hashtagging appropriately can help you trend in your industry or niche. This can help you gain followers on all platforms as well as many people commonly search hashtags that are of interest to them. Travel bloggers tend to flock to Instagram while finance bloggers love to share via Twitter and Facebook. Figure out which platform yields the most views and shares then make this one of your main focuses.
Content Actually is King
Quality content on a consistent basis can be writer or recorded quite easily. We produce and consume so much content that creating it has become easier than ever. People make quite a bit of money from having conversations via podcasts when in the past this type of content would not have been possible to stream live. Find out which type of content works best as far as traffic goes by using your Google Analytics then keep creating this type of content. This will help you produce the best possible editorial calendar for your readers.
Let Readers Contribute Ideas or Content
The readers of the site can be one of the largest tools to utilize when it comes to generating content ideas as well as generating content itself. Ask the readers what they would like to see including what they would like to see in the future. You can create reader polls to make sure one rogue reader is not spewing bad ideas that could lose fellow readers. Content can be created by the readers as well and this can create a sense of community with visitors. A site that cares about the readers enough to give them an opportunity to grow their writing portfolio is a perfect brand image to create. Add that to the fact that the content will save you time or money and this makes reader contributed content invaluable to a site owner.
As you can see it will take a proactive approach towards engaging customers and creating content. Getting behind can impact visitors and thus ad revenue that you make monthly. Make your website profitable and possibly maintaining it can turn into your full-time job.