Traffic is important, and we shall see methods in which you can bring in the traffic to your website, but what are the basic things you will need to begin monetizing this traffic? Monetizing means converting your traffic into money. You have to make some efforts not just in bringing in people to your website, but you have to also make sure that you make money off these people. Here we see what it takes.

Making the Preparations

You need to have a website. That’s an absolute must. This is nothing short of an office space. It could be your virtual corporate office. This is what people who don’t know you will see and build an impression about yourself. One of your primary needs is a good website. Of course, there are tons of ways in which you can make money from your online endeavors without a website, but if you have a good website, it will be a completely different story.

If you feel you don’t want a website just as yet, you could at least have a blog. Today, blogs are being considered increasingly better than websites because they are interactive. You can keep in constant touch with your audience through the blog. The best part is that blogs are free. Using tools such as Blogger, you can build your own blog within a matter of minutes and have it up and running. If you don’t want a free blog (the only reason you might not want one is that you will have to contend with their ads on your blog), then you could go for a WordPress blog, which is paid but is ad-free.

Remember that it is not just about bringing people to your site or blog. You have to hook their interest so that they are coerced into taking the action you expect of them. Hence, attractiveness is an important point. But it is also very important to impress them with meaningful content.

The Actual Monetizing Process

To actually start making money what you need is an ecommerce solution. If you have a product that you are selling, having a shopping cart on your site is a great addition. The shopping cart retains the purchase of the customer as long as the money is paid and keeps account. Since payments would be through credit cards, shopping carts also have encryption.

But if you are using a different route for monetizing income, such as you are allowing them to download an eBook as their purchase, then you need to allow them an option such as PayPal payment or wire transfer for collecting your funds.

Note that monetizing does not just mean collecting the money, but it also means the whole process. If you are trying to interest your customers in an opportunity today so that they might become customers tomorrow, that is monetization too. We shall see how you can use landing pages and lead capture pages (also known as squeeze pages) to make this happen.

Building Residual Income

For any Internet marketer, the best thing that could happen is the start of a residual income opportunity. This happens when the marketer has a business set up that keeps paying even though he or she is not putting any active efforts in it. This is much like the royalties that are earned on a novel that is once written and published. There are some ways in which such residual income opportunities can be created on the Internet.

One of these ways is to have an eBook on a popular blog page or web page which people will keep downloading and paying for. This is a residual stream of income. If your eBook is good, people will talk about it and more people will keep purchasing it. This is what is known as viral marketing. Even if you don’t feel like working for a while, your residual income streams should be good enough to tide you over for a while.