How to optimize the monetization of my site
I want to do this so when people find my site, they will want to come back often. I also am just looking at my site as if I was someone browsing the web and coming across a website that I could spend weeks on and still never see all that it has to offer!
Ok so that's the long-term goal - to have a cool ass site that people will really like!
My current monetization strategies are as follows:
1.) Adsense ads - why not? It's so simple and easy although I don't see it actually leading to much income. I still figured I'd advertise on the site just because its another means of monetization.
2.) 4 eBooks that I have for sale at $3.99 a piece. I also offer a package deal where they can buy all of my eBooks at once for $9.99. The eBooks are all displayed on my right sidebar, and when you click on them it takes you to a description page. At the bottom of the description page, there is an "add to cart" button letting them know the $3.99 price.
3.) 2 free eBooks so when they download the book, it puts them on a mailing list.
4.) A direct "sign up sheet" that I have on my left sidebar and at the bottom of every blog/content post and page.
So those are my four means of monetization. Obviously direct sales and ad revenue is a function of how much traffic I get to my site.
I'm not so sure about the list thing though. I understand that "building a list" means keeping in contact with the people, offering more quality free content and also letting them know about offers I may have.
My site remained idle for quite a long time due to lack of motivation, and therefor I only have 56 subscribers. 10 subscribers directly signed up (I guess because they thought my site was cool enough to freely give me their email address).
About 42 subscribers came from downloading my free eBook.
The remaining 4 subscribers came from purchasing of my eBooks.
Now I'm not exactly sure what to do with this "list" or these "lists". I usually just send all of my subscribers a message when I create a piece of content that I am extremely proud of, and they wouldn't know about it unless they visited my site. This results in recurring visits to my site (and let's them see my book offers more).
I also avoid coming across as an annoying salesman, because I hate when Internet marketers do that to me. Basically, I attempt to keep my messages all about "giving values" as opposed to me trying to sell stuff. For instance, I sent out a message last week telling all of my subscribers that I would be launching another free eBook in the upcoming weeks and I would let them know when it was available for download.
So as you can see my strategy is geared towards giving away as much quality content as possible with a few different monetization streams. I guess if I stick with this long enough and continue to build traffic and followers, then "the money will follow"?
Or is there something else I could/should be doing in order to optimize my earning potential.
Right now I make practically nothing from my site, but then again I haven't started attempting to build traffic hardcore yet, because I'm still doing some final design tweaks and whatnot. I'd rather wait until the site is exactly as I want it until I start seriously promoting it. I do have a good deal of content already though, so I am getting some organic traffic.
Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to explain my thought-process first so that maybe people could offer some suggestions.
Thanks!
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