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The Newbie Monetization Guide - How To Generate Money On Your Content Site

I remember when I first started making websites. I had a site on how to get DVD's cheap, a video/audio site, a movie information site, and a website on an actress I idolized at the time. I spent hours making these sites for fun. It's kind of crazy to see that some of my past competitors that continued publishing their sites are now making over 6 figures. I didn't think that I could make money off of those sites at the time. It was all a hobby.

I still see many fan sites that have tons of content, but don't generate any money at all. People spend tons of hours publishing free videos and podcasts on their websites. This might seem pretty cool, but I don't think it's cool if somebody is capitalizing on your ideas and making a fortune on them. If somebody is making money on great ideas and information, why can't it be you?

Now, don't get me wrong. Their were tons of sites back then that made money, but looked like garbage. They had flashing banners and those darn-never-ending pop-up ads. I'm not talking about making money through annoying methods.

So how can you make money by providing information, but not sell anything (directly) at all? The answer is: affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing? It's a way to gain commission through pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, or pay-per-sale transactions.

So how could you implement this type of marketing on your site.

Let's go through the easy way.

I've made it easy for you. There's a easy sign up button for Adsense below my "blogger" and "spam poison" images on the bottom of my navigation bar on the right hand side.

Sign up for Google Adsense today.

Why monetize your site with Adsense?

* The sign up process is simple
* You don't have to hunt around for advertisers
* Advertising is highly relevant to your content
* ...and it's free

How do you make money from this method? When you sign up, you get a piece of customizable code you put on your site. When your web page is loaded, ads that relate to your content are displayed. If somebody clicks on the ads, you get paid a small portion.

So where does the money come from? People pay to put ads in Google via Adwords. When a person clicks on the ad, that person/company pays a price that that chose (bid price). These ads are called PPC (pay-per-click). If that ads is displayed on your site (impression), you have a chance to earn money if somebody clicks on it.

Whether you have 1 site or 200 sites, you only have to sign up once. You can customize the code to add a channel. This will allow you to set up a channel for each site so you can track your sites independently.

How much money could you make? It varies. The more competitive the ads are (bid-wise), the more money you'll make. Some people pay only 5 cents for their ad. You can't squeeze much money from non-competitive ads. Last year, I had some Adword campaigns that costs $5 a click in a highly competitive niche. In order to get to the number 1 listing, I had to pay over $30 a click (which I wasn't planning to do). You would be making a lot more on niches like this.

What kind of ads should you pick? Adsense offers a variety of banners, boxes, and skyscrapers. For me, skyscrapers, buttons, and inline squares seem to work out the best. Banners have been a dying trend.

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Affiliate Links

I won't go into too much detail about this. It's finding good companies to advertise within your content. I could right a great review on a book I like. Let's say that I did a review on great book about making money online through affiliate marketing. I could go to Clickbank.com or CJ.com and find companies or affiliate programs on those sites. For every sale that comes from my links, I get paid a fraction of it.

So if you're the type of person that likes to write reviews, or just great information, why not monetize your site with affiliate links? (Inline text links seem to work better than banner ads)

What if you can't find a great Affiliate program in your niche on these sites? Go to Google and search for: niche name affiliate (ie. surfing tips affiliate). You'll be able to find an affiliate program in most cases.

What's the difference between CJ and Clickbank? Clickbank mostly specialized in downloadable information (ebooks, software), while CJ focuses on merchants. Since Clickbank has downloadable info, they offer higher commissions. There's a lot of programs in CB that offer 50% on each sale.

For more information about making money online, visit our quick internet business guide topic--making money online.

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