Way back when you could put an Adsense block on the sidebar of an information site and make a pretty nice chunk of change from it. That’s not so easy to do anymore, the Adsense platform has grown and evolved, other advertising mediums have come into play, and the internet is this always changing.
So can a strictly informational website that doesn’t really sell anything still be well monetized?
I hope so, because that’s what I have with one of my niche sites. Everything that is provided on the site is free, it even has FREE right in the name and URL.
I do have Adsense on the site and it’s getting a few clicks. I have a few ads throughout the site and occasionally link to related products on Amazon when I can. The site has made some money from those, but I would be over the moon thrilled if it made something consistently.
The first thing I need to do is get consistent with posting to the site and bringing in traffic. When I post it does well, the posts get shared on social media and the traffic comes. So the first thing I’m going to do is increase the post frequency to once a day.
I’ll do that through all of June, I might even throw in a few days where I post twice a day. At the end of June I’ll look at the site traffic and income again and see what kind of improvement it has had with the consistent post frequency and I’ll plan from there.
I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this. Do you work in a niche where things are expected to be free online, like a hobby or a craft? Have you managed to properly monetize some free content? What’s your favorite creative monetization technique? Leave a comment below, I look forward to hearing from you.
Transcriptionist, passionate cross stitcher, writer at heart, wife, mom, and finder of lost shoes… Loretta Oliver, married to the comic book geek of her dreams and mother of four amazing young men, has been working from home full time since 2001. With a busy transcription service business, a few niche sites, and a handful of other internet marketing projects on the go, the computer is always fired up and the ideas are always flowing.