How I Earn $2000 a Month from One Small Website

I make most of my money from affiliate marketing but the strategies I use can be applied to any small business website. It doesn’t matter what you are selling – a service, product or event.

(Side note: Affiliate marketing means that I promote other people’s products and services on my website. If people click through one of my affiliate links on my website and purchase through that link, I make a small commission. I make most of my income via the Amazon affiliate program but I use other affiliate programs too.). 

6 Strategies I Use To Earn Money Through My Website

1.) My Website Attracts Visitors Who Are Ready to Buy

My readers are ready to purchase when they land on my website and are much more likely to spend their money. There’s less persuasion needed. And a high conversion rate.

Let me give you an example. Imagine your vacuum cleaner has broken. You Google the best vacuum cleaner but you want one that’s good for picking up pet hair. You type “the best vacuum cleaner for pet hair” into Google and find an article “9 Best Vacuum Cleaners for Pet Hair 2021”.  You find the perfect one in that article, click and buy. The person who wrote the article will have earned a small commission by referring you to the seller. These are the kinds of visitors you want to attract to your website, they’re ready to buy!

It works in all kinds of areas. For example, perhaps you are a fitness instructor who runs circuit training classes in your local area. If somebody types in “circuit training classes in (place name)” you want your website to come up on the Google search. And you want a big “Book Now” so they can book on quickly and easily.

How Do I Get Visitors That Are Ready to Buy?

1.) You need to have focused content that people are searching for and are going to spend their money on. 

The visitors you want know exactly what they are looking for. They are ready to spend their money.  Write content that answers these people’s questions and queries. Show them you have exactly what they want. If you show you can provide exactly what they want you don’t have to persuade them to buy, they just will.

For example, perhaps you have a service that you provide in a certain geographical area. Make sure you have the place name where you provide the service on your web pages and in your website content. So many businesses don’t do this. 

Your content should have the right keywords for the topic. For example, if I search for “circuit training classes in Manchester”, a website with the following content is listed in the search results.

The article features the keywords “Manchester” and “circuit training” in the header so both Google and the reader know exactly what it’s about. There’s also a link where you can book right away. If you are searching for a circuit training class in Manchester, you have found what you’re looking for and can book on easily. Money is coming their way!

If you are looking for a “Review of the Eufy Video Powered Doorbell” and type this into Google, this site comes up. It includes all the keywords needed in the title so both Google and the visitors know what it’s about. There is an affiliate link in the article so if you click on it and buy from there a person will earn a commission. It ranks on the first page of Google as it is niche-focused content that is keyword optimized.

2.) Have Content Which Persuades Visitors To Spend Money

You need to have content where people are going to be persuaded to spend their money. You need to write about the products, services and events people are going to spend their money on. Here are some examples of website content that people might search for with a credit card in their hand:

• A review of a product, service, event or a day out
• “Best of” articles where you list the best products / days out / services / events
• The Comparison Article – where you compare 2 products or services and show which is best
• Benefits article – A list of 5 or more benefits of having a certain product or service
• Testimonials from people who have used your product / service and how they have benefited.
• Pictures, photos and video answering their questions and giving more product /service detail.

3.) Make It Easy for Your Visitors To Buy

Don’t send your readers on a treasure hunt to buy.

Make the “Buy Now” or “Book Now” button visible and above the fold. Above the fold is the part of the webpage people have before they scroll down.

Include “Buy Now” links at the end of the reviews too.

4.) Write Content That Offers Value.

Internet users are savvy. They want content that offers value. They will hit the back button quicker that you know is possible if they sniff they’re not getting what they want.

Proving valuable content is a must to keep visitors on your page. The type of valuable content will vary depending on your website or blog.

The Content That Does Well and Who It Works Best For

1.) Long posts – (Top Tip for Affiliate Marketers)

The posts that do the best for me and other affiliate marketers are between 2000 and 3000 words. Articles of this size won’t be needed in every small website. However, if you want to make money from affiliate marketing long posts are the way to go.

Why?

Many bloggers don’t realize that long, valuable content does the best in Google. They are still writing posts between 500 and 1000 words. These bloggers find it much harder to rank in Google and it’s easy to beat them in the search engine results with longer content.

Longer content gives Google much more opportunities to pick up your content for SEO

Long content gives more opportunity for backlinks.

Readers see you as an authority on the topic as you have obviously done your research and have so much valuable content on the subject so you are much more likely to buy.

2.) Articles with testimonials or other people’s reviews – (Top Tip for small business websites)

People are often persuaded to buy when they see how other people have bought and benefitted from the product or service. This works really well if you are offering a service or a product for your small business. However, it also works well on any kind of website where you are trying to sell products including affiliate marketing

3.) Pictures, photos and videos.

People like visual content so they can see what they are buying. This may be the pictures of an event you are running or the location of where it will be held. Or it may be pictures of a product you are reviewing.

Visual content also breaks up the text, making it easier to read.

Video is also ideal to show the value of services, products and events.

4.) Niche websites with at least 21 to 50 pages (Great tip for affiliate websites)

Not all websites need lots of pages. If your website is for a local service, you won’t need lots of pages to rank on Google as there is generally less competition.

Having said this, it’s easier to rank on Google when you write focused content that has many pages. My website is small, but it currently has 54 pages. This sounds a lot, but if you write 2 articles a week, you will have an awesome niche website in just 6 months. And now, I only do maintenance work on my small websites and the money still comes in.

When you think about it, this is common sense. Is Google going to feature a website with just 10 pages or is it going to feature content from a website with 50 pages? It takes time but if you are an affiliate marketer, having more top quality posts makes it easier for your content to rank in the search engines.

5.) Choose Topics With Less Competition from Other Websites

When picking the articles to write about and sell from, I try to pick topics that have the least competition in the search engines but that people are  searching for. I try to review products on my affiliate site that don’t have many reviews (or many good reviews). This makes it easier to rank on Google and get traffic.

You may find there is a lot of competition with website content for a particular search term. However, when you drill down the articles in the search engine results aren’t very good. Perhaps they are short or out of date. In those cases, it’s possible to write good quality content and beat the other websites in the search engine results.

6.) Use Just One Platform to Promote Your Work

I use Pinterest to promote my website as well as trying to rank on Google. I use Pinterest because it works well for my affiliate content. I can present the content on my affiliate site in a visual way on Pinterest so that people will pin and come back to it. Pinterest is great for many topics but not all. If you want to use Pinterest to promote your website content, make sure it will work well for your topic.

There are many other options where you can promote your website content, including Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter. I would choose just one other platform to promote your website as well as the search engines. Choose the one that is going to work best for your business. This will help increase your traffic and give your website more authority on Google as you have a strong presence on another site.

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