Monetizing your Bitcoin Web Hosting

From Wikipedia:

Website monetization is the process of converting existing traffic being sent to a particular website into revenue. The most popular ways of monetizing a website are by implementing pay per click (PPC) and cost per impression (CPI/CPM) advertising. Various ad networks facilitate a webmaster in placing advertisements on pages of the website to benefit from the traffic the site is experiencing.

Monetizing a website is an art, it isn’t a just put advertising up and reap revenue.

Before you learn how to monetize a website, there are some factors that should be considered.

You can’t expect from day 1 to see thousands of dollars revenue from ad revenue, therefor you need to invest time as money, below we will break down several aspects how to get a ROI by AD revenue

The basic principle is that you advertise what your site is about besides informing your users (legal required at most countries) that 3rd party AD providers will place cookies eg the DART technology cookie which is also used by Google Adsense, next demographics and that’s extremely important.

Main revenue models

• CPM/CPI (MellowAds, ZENads)
• CPC/PPC (AdSense - but not advisable for crypto related sites)
• CPA (Affiliate marketing)
• CPL (Affiliate marketing)

Other revenue models

• Crypto related, Referral Link/Banner Placement (Hora Games, EarnCrypto, …)
• Paid Membership
• Sponsored Content
• E-commerce (selling your own products through a web shop)
• Donations
• Selling AD Space directly

Bad revenue models

• Paid short links, using a paid short link service for every link on your website as good the content might be will drive visitors away. Paid short link services are also known as bad payers and turn often scam.

Some interesting market segments

The market segments below or geared towards cryptocurrency adoption or already are. Example is Sliver.tv an e-sports platform that shares bandwidth where you can earn cryptocurrency THETA/TFUEL by watching people that play online games, and they earn cryptocurrency by streaming their gameplay with shared bandwidth.

• Online Gaming (a 150 billion USD market and growing year after year), Crypto related you could monetize by using eg Hora Games for referral earnings, their game concept and earnings model has proven to work.
• E-Sports (fairly new and related to gaming but already accounting for more than the tv/movie biz)
• Cryptocurrencies, still a niche market worth Billions of dollars and growing year after year
• Cryptocurrency Merchandise, a growing niche market already accounting for a fair revenue model share. eg Crypto Threads affiliate program.

Demographics

If you have a website geared towards US customers then it’s obvious that it is pointless to have AD’s at your site for people from another country. However, for certain websites that is difficult as they hold a worldwide audience. If you have a worldwide audience then you select what countries are most beneficial for you based on visits. If you have mainly Asian visitors then there is no point to have ads shown of European or US companies. A next step is age/gender, not all advertising platforms allow you to select this part but some do. If you have a website geared to women age 30-45 then there is no need to have ads shown for men articles.

• By country
• By age
• By gender
• …

Here is an example of the affiliate program of Innogames what demographics are preferable. If your website doesn’t have the right target audience it is pointless to put time and effort in it to use them to monetize your website.

When your website is generating enough traffic, it’s time to monetize it!

1. 1. CPC/PPC Advertising placement with Google AdSense

      CPC/PPC (Cost Per Click/Pay Per Click)  is an online advertising model where website owners can gain passive revenue when a visitor clicks on an advertisement banner or link provided by an Advertising platform. The most popular Advertising platform for this is Google AdSense.

      Google AdSense is also one of the easiest to make extra money as you don’t need much time to invest or knowledge to place ads on your blog or website.

      Due to the support from Google, publishers (website owners) won’t have to worry about setting things up.

   2. CPM/CPI Advertising placement

      CPM (Cost per thousand) this is an online advertising model where website owners gain passive revenue by displaying advertisements to visitors, there is no need to have the Ads clicked to gain revenue. Some popular Advertising platforms that offer CPM and pay in crypto are MellowAds, Coinzilla, A-Ads

      There is a simple rule for revenue earning by placing CPM ads, the more traffic your website receives the more you earn. For low traffic websites this isn’t an Advertising method that will cover your Bitcoin Hosting or Bitcoin VPS Hosting cost.

   3. Affiliate Marketing

      If you have a talent in reviewing or promoting products, you can try affiliate marketing to monetize your website.

      Through affiliate links, you can earn commissions when visitors buy the products or services of the companies that you affiliate with. Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest methods to earn passive revenue. You don’t need to have your own products to sell.

      Some popular affiliate portals Crypto Threads, Amazon, ShareASale and CJ Affiliate.

   4. E-Commerce

      This is another revenue model that can create a decent gain and plenty of tools/scripts are available for this.

      The process of making an online web shop and see revenue is more than just creating a simple website. Having an E-Commerce website built within a day will take time and dedication.

      So how to monetize a website via e-commerce:

      • Set your niche market
      • Choose a domain name and Bitcoin Web Hosting.
      • Install WordPress.
      • Set up WooCommerce or a similar E-Commerce platform.
      • Design your store by browsing through themes and customizing it.
      • Add your products
      • Start marketing and get your first sale!

      This revenue model does take time, but nothing is impossible see the Crypto Merchandise web shop of cryptothreads.com

   5. Sponsored Content

      Sponsored content is a collaboration between you as a publisher/website owner and brands that you’re partnering with. Companies pay you to create content for them and publish it on your site.

      I often name  “sponsored content”, Adverticles as they are a hidden form of Advertising inside an article, blog post, etc.

      Such content can be in the form of product or sales announcements, offers, info graphics, or reviews. They can be written by you or by the sponsoring brand itself. You can charge a fair price If you’ll be writing the post as well as publishing it on your website.

      If you are interested in sponsored content then www.cooperatize.com and www.tomoson.com might be a good start.

      However, some important aspects before you can do Sponsored content

      • How much influence you have online. The bigger your online presence and influence the better, having 5000 Facebook Followers vs 10 makes already a big difference.
      • The number of posts you’ll be writing each month.
      • How much time you’ll spend creating the content and/or doing research for.
      • Brand value (the sponsored content vs. your blogging brand), there is no point to write sponsored content for a brand of Dog Food while your site is all about Cats.
   6. Paid Membership

      A membership website can be seen as an upgrade to the donations method. Here, you’ll be charging readers to access specific content. or services at your website.

      If you’re positive that your content/website is worth paying for, you can try monetizing your website with paid memberships.

      How to monetize a website via memberships:

      • Find the right paid membership model for your site.
        Subscription: users pay daily, monthly or annually to access a site’s content and services.
        Transaction: separately selling individual contents such as tutorial videos, downloads, or other content/services.
        Metered: content is free until members reach a certain checkpoint. They will have to pay a certain amount if they want to continue using your website.
      • Set up a membership page. If you have a WordPress website, then all you have to do is add a member site plugin.
   7. Referral Link placement

      Another revenue model is by finding referrals for other websites that offer services, this can be anything. Crypto related ICO’s often have a referral program and same counts for cryptocurrency airdrops.

      An example is using Crypto Idle Miner by Hora Games, you will earn a % in HORA Tokens from your referrals. These HORA Tokens can be used/exchanged at the Tron Ecosystem.

      This is not the biggest earner, but with some dedication and time you can build up a nice referral user base at a particular website that does make it all worth with a decent revenue share.

   8. Donations

      Not a preferable method but it could work based on the type of website you operate. This method involves skills and content that you post. Some visitors might be willing to give monetary compensation for good content.

      If your content is of value and you need help to grow your website, you can politely ask for donations. Not every visitor will donate, but if you have enough traffic, you might gain enough to operate your website and pay for Bitcoin Hosting or Bitcoin VPS Hosting.

      You can use various payment processors for accepting donations, they often have scripts available for donation buttons eg PayPal, but to accept Cryptocurrency donations nothing is easier, all you need is a QR code of your Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency address placed at your website.

There are a lot more ways to generate revenue but the above mentioned  monetizing methods is a good start.

What revenue models will you try for your website? Which monetizing method is the best for your website? Let us know in the comments below.