How to Make Money Online More Efficiently

Our universe is comprised of an almost infinite number of systems. The solar system, financial systems, plumbing systems, traffic systems — system after system.

If you want to to be a good businessman and learn how to make money online, you have to learn the system on some level. If you want to be great at football, you have to know the rules. If you want to learn SEO, you have to learn the systems that search engines use.

Success in anything requires familiarity with a system of some sort. (Which is why blogs that offer digital nomad tips—blogger—are so popular nowadays.)

This post will be about how to take your blog, learn the system, and increase earnings through efficiency—not brute force.

Your Blog is a System

Every blog is a sort of system, and includes even more sub-systems. But for most blogs, the monetization system is relatively simple, and mostly contains two or three parts.

The website is set up so that visitors will have a chance to take some action (click an ad, email the webmaster, donate money, buy a book, etc) that will cause the owner of the blog to make money.

The owner then tries to get as many people as possible to get through the system—hence a “money-making system” is born—as thousands of “marketers” like to refer to it.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to get “caught up” in one step of the process and forget about the other just-as-important step.

Traffic is Just Part of the Process

If the website is a motor, then visitors are the fuel. But if you’ve got a four-wheeler, it doesn’t matter what kind of fuel you use – you’ll never be able to go substantially faster without altering your engine.

Fuel is just part of the equation.

The same is true for traffic. Some popular bloggers have tens-of-thousands of visitors per day, but hardly make any income, comparatively speaking. Others, like myself, get only get a few thousand, but are able to convert that traffic into more income than many “rockstar” bloggers.

The reason for this is simple. My “conversion” rate of visitors-to-profit is higher. Because of that, I need less traffic.

Most of us realize this is true. For example, what niche would you rather get 5k visitors in per day, credit cards or bed-spreads?

The reason is that “credit cards” is a naturally high-paying niche. You can have less traffic than most niches, yet still make more money. Your engine is already high-powered, so your chances of going fast are much, much better.

But enough of the explanation of the theory – let’s move on to how you can make your blog’s “motor” more efficient.

Ways to Increase Your Conversion

This might sound a little disappointing, but when it all boils down, there aren’t many life-altering “secrets” to blogging for money. Most blogs that fail do so for pretty obvious reasons.

Bad monetization, lame content, bad SEO – most sites fail in at least one of these areas. And one failure is enough to cripple most blogs.

Fundamentally, when it comes to making money with a website, there are only two ways to go about it:

1. Increase Your Traffic
2. Increase Conversions

That’s it. Either put more into your machine, or make your machine better. That’s it. I won’t be talking about how to increase your traffic, but will list a few ways to research increasing conversions:

• Increase Website Usability

“Website usability” basically means “a website that does what it’s supposed to do.” Are your ads placed at the right place? Is your navigation bar on your right or left sidebar? Where do you put your images, if any?

Answering these questions correctly can actually increase your visitors’ time on your site by up to 20%, at least in my experience. To learn more about web usability, read 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid.

• In-Text Advertisements

To be honest, I have absolutely no idea why more people aren’t using advertising services like Kontera and Infolink. I use infolink and it currently earns an EPM (earnings per thousand impressions) that is almost what my AdSense EPM is.

If you do it correctly, expect to see another $3 per thousand impressions on your blog by using Infolink. This might not sound like much, but just a small increase in EPM can mean thousands in the long run.

Of course, they do make your blog feel a little more crowded. Still, if your content is compelling, it shouldn’t be a problem. I haven’t experienced any lack of traffic thus far.

• Search-Engine Ads

Showing advertisements specifically for search-engine traffic is a great way to increase you monetization without making your site seem “crowded” for your regular visitors. Chitika has taken this to an art.

Though the earnings vary depending on the niche, I experienced between a $2 and $3 EPM increase, without seeing my other ads lose any revenue at all. Again, though the earnings increase is small, over a long period of time, it’s really big. Plus, mixed with a few more earnings boosters, you can see a huge impact on your income.

• Utilize “Footers”

You can edit the template of your blog to put a small message at the end of every post/page of your blog. Don’t waste that area by leaving it blank or unfilled. An advertisement, a two paragraph “mini” sales pitch for a product, an opt-in form for subscriptions or your newsletter — find something to put there.

Daniel has a great example of the ultimate “Post Footer”, and uses it to collect subscriptions to his newsletter. That opt-in is where I originally signed up. If nothing else, utilizing your footer will increase your subscribers, increase your traffic and later add to your income.

• “Free” Affiliate Programs

A huge portion of internet traffic doesn’t spend money. They either don’t have a paypal account, don’t have their credit card handy, are super frugal — whatever the reason, a large part are very unlikely to spend money.

Typically, the only way most blogs monetize that traffic is through advertisements like AdSense. However, the best way is an affiliate program where you get paid per lead, rather than sale.

In the “make money online” niche, for example, “surveys” are an extremely popular affiliate program to pedal, mostly because the blogger can make money without their visitors having to spend a dime.

All in all, some of the most profitable affiliate programs I use are free “signup” programs. If there are any in your niche, make sure to utilize them — anything else is wasting otherwise useless traffic.

Conclusion and Last Thoughts

Monetization is one of the most important aspects of building a money-making blog. No duh, right? Still, it’s often the most screwed up concept that bloggers often get wrong. The above ways to make money with your website might not be fantastically new, but I’ll wager most blogs still don’t use them.

Information is useless if it isn’t acted upon. Don’t get up from the computer until you’ve found at least one way to increase the efficiency of your blog’s earnings.

Do you have any methods of squeezing more profit out of your traffic? If so, let me know in the comments!

Shaun Connell is a full-time blogger. He’s the guy behind Learn Financial Planning. He also has a specific “sub-blog” on the website appropriately entitled “Make Money Online” where he explains how to systematically blog for profit.