As an internet marketer the Wordpress blogging platform is so versatile and flexible that it give me so many options. I have mentioned this before and I will mention it again to emphasize how much I think it’s true, Wordpress is the best website platform. Many people know Wordpress as a great blogging platform but they feel that for a “real” website it is of no use. Those people could not be more wrong. In my experience working with Wordpress I have come to understand and realize the power of this platform and what you can really do with it.
Here are 5 ways to make money using Wordpress:
1) Blog With Ads – This is the “no thinking” way. There is nothing wrong with this way but I call it “no thinking” only because it is the most common and I suppose what Wordpress was originally designed for, blogging. This site, http://www.AlaisterLow.com is exactly that, it is a blog and I make money from advertising whether it be affiliate advertising, Google adsense, selling private website real estate or through another ad network. To be successful with this money making method you need to pump out great quality content, and do it regularly. You must give your readers or viewers a reason to come back and consume your content. The more people that read/view your site the higher your earning capacity will be when looking at ads.
I often see a lot of blogs with a couple of Adsense ads slapped on the sidebar and in the posts. Many people make lots of money using Google Adsense but I feel that it is a poor monetization method for your blog. What I mean is that with the amount of visitors you are getting you should be able to make more money monetizing your site some other way. One of the first blogs I ever ran was a blogger blog called Exclusive Clothes. I started this in 2005 after purchasing a single ebook of eBay that exposed me to the world of blogging and adsense. About 2 years ago was the peak of that blog. I was receiving approx 6000 unique visitors per day and was making about 50-80/month. In hindsight I look back at that blog and think to myself I should have capitalized on that opportunity further and monetized that traffic more effectively.
2) E-Commerce Online Store – With the use of plugins Wordpress is able to be customized almost anyway you like, even to create your own fully blown shopping cart selling actual physical products. The best Wordpress plugin to do this is called WP E-Commerce and can be downloaded HERE. With this plugin your shopping cart will enable easy payment for your customers as it can be integrated with Google Checkout, Paypal, authorize.net, payment express and many other payment processors. You are able to improve your conversations by having a one page checkout. Many studies have been done on online shopping carts which show that the more number of pages the online shopper has to jump through the more likely they are to click away. With the option of a one page checkout this allows you to streamline your checkout process.
WP E-commerce also integrates with social networking site and social media in order to allow your customers to spread the word about your online store within their networks. This is a great way to attract more customers and become a business within a community.
3) Wordpress Review Site – With more and more people becoming increasingly aware of affiliate marketing, there has been an increase of review sites. Basically these are sites that concentrate on a particular niche and review products or services within that industry. Usually each reviewed item or service is backed with a link the the site owner’s affiliate code in order to promote sales and collect affilaite commission. One of the most popular niches is web hosting. There are a lot of web hosting review sites that review different hosting companies. Web hosting companies usually offer very generous affiliate payouts and sometimes reward commission every month as hosting is a monthly cost. This makes the hosting niche very attractive to affiliate marketers. That being said this market is very competitive and difficult to enter into.
There are many other niches that you can use a review site for, such as Internet Service Providers, Mobile Phone networks, internet marketing education programs and many more. In order to create a Wordpress review site you will need to purchase a premium plugin that is designed perfectly to create a review site. The plugin is called WP Review Site 3.0 and can be found here. Here is an example of the plugin in use creating a web hosting review site, Award Winning Hosts.
4) Create a Job Board – Wordpress can be used to create a job board where employers pay you a fee to post their job listing. In order to do this you will need a large number of people looking for jobs. A suggestion is to offer for a certain fixed price to run employer’s ads until an employee is found. This niche is great as there are always employers with open position and employees looking for jobs. You can either be very broad can run ads in all industries and all locations or you can be more specific either by industry or location or both. It really is up to you how you want to run your job board.
In order to create this job board using Wordpress you will need a premium theme called Jobpress. You can find Jobpress here. Another way you can create a Wordpress job board is to use a premium plugin. Personally I think the premium theme has more options and is more customizable, but you should take the time out to check out both option. The plugin can be found here.
5) Create a Paid Membership Site – With Wordpress you can create a paid membership price with an ongoing subscription. You need to give your members a reason to continually pay you a membership fee whether it be new content, training, videos, forum or support. In order to do this my friend Leigh Burke has a premium Wordpress plugin called WP Member site. It can be found here.
This plugin has some great features including:
- The option to have a recurring payment or a once off payment
- Options to change your membership price
- Complete Integration with the Wordpress CMS.
- Make portions of posts or pages visible to non-paying customers as a preview
A payment page that you can redirect user to from teaser pages, the generic registration page, or by sending the actual page link.
The ability to charge one-time or recurring monthly fees.
The ability to set your membership price.
Full integration with the Wordpress User management system.The ability to tag text to make portions of posts and pages visible to non-paying members as teaser text.
I really hope that these 5 unique ways that Wordpress can be used to create money making sites have opened your eyes to the great possibilities that Wordpress enables. I would love to hear about your Wordpress sites and what you are doing?
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