Most startup projects struggle to self-sustain with the monthly bills and need outside investment in order to survive. I will share some insight info on how we manage to self-sustain and grow with the user generated moving reviews website mymovingreviews.com and some tips on how you can apply that to your start up too.
Most startups have a single source of revenue or no source at all. Example of a similar service will be Twitter that until recently relied solely on investments to operate. As not all of us are able to raise immediate angel investments (especially if you are targeted in an non-tech industry) you need to find a way to self-sustain your business.
Keep in mind that with the moving company reviews website we currently have three different types of visitors:
- Visitors that are about to move.
- Visitors that are already relocated and are writing reviews.
- Moving companies with company profiles.
See if you can define your audience first. This will help you draft your strategy and building your income sources. Given that you have a regular flow of visitors, you can try to monetize them in a number of ways. You just need to think how to do that. I will start with several streams of revenue that we currently use and will continue with some other ideas that can be relevant to your niche.
1. AdSense - of course this is the most obvious and easy to set up way to convert visitors into money straight away. Depending on your niche (and visitors of course), your monthly check will be with a significantly different amount. Usually if you receive good money for your current visitors, sooner or later Google might invade your niche and make sure they convert directly those customers and not through your website. Observing the last algorithm updates regarding money keywords, in my opinion, Google tries to pull up the big user generated websites (forums, reviews, Q&A) on top of the SERPs and commercial websites on the bottom, leading to better conversion of the SERPs ads. This is one of the reasons why your website cannot rely solely on that and you should not be totally dependent on Google.
Setting up an Adsense account is a pretty straight-forward job and is relatively easy. Here are some more tips on how embed your adds to perform better.
2. Generate Leads - Depending on your niche you may try to generate leads. For example at My Moving Reviews we are in the moving business and we offer moving quotes and we connect customers with companies. You can contact the companies that will perform the service in a desired area or field of expertise and charge a fee per lead.
Contact several companies in the industry and ask them if they are interested in leads. Make sure you find the right person to contact. You will get a few companies to start with and slowly expand your partners by adding more companies and spread on a wider area. There is some manual work involved in the process of finding companies that are willing to buy your leads, but if you generate a good number of quality ones, it will not be a hard one to do. You may also try sending them some free samples for them to try to convert them and see the benefit.
3. Direct advertising on your website - Depending on the type of website you are operating, you may be able to sell direct advertising space on your website. This may be a sponsored profile page (as we currently do on your state pages), might be an expanded profile with more features as the regular one, or as a sponsored result in your websites’ search results. That way you’ll directly deal with the end companies that are interested to advertise and cut the middle man. This is better for the companies that advertise and even better for you, because you get to be independent.
You can easily start selling ads by creating a page explaining the types of ads you offer as well as the benefits to the companies that are willing to buy them. Also give them options (or plans) for them to choose from. Then promote that page on the other pages of your website to make it easier for the visitors to see it. If you want to boost your sales a little more, you can run an Adwords campaign or a Facebook ad to promote it.
4. Advertise connected businesses from different niche businesses - This is an interesting way to raise some additional money for your startup by advertising other connected businesses. For example if you are running a complaints/review website, you might want to offer attorney services to the unhappy customers. This way you will have very targeted ads with a high conversion rate. Another example will be to send special offers of storage companies to all your visitors that are about to move. Deepening on your niche, you might find connected businesses to advertise.
In order to do that you should reach to a selected list of companies by email or phone. As this strongly depends on your website niche, the list will vary a lot.
5. Convert the registered users - This is another way of connecting different businesses. For example if your website connects customers with businesses, you might want to get the best out of both audiences. As I mentioned previously how to do that with the visitor, you might want to do a similar thing with the registered business too. You already know a lot about your registered users and you can easily tie the specific ads or offers to their interests and needs. In the moving industry for example if you have a registered moving company, you can advertise upcoming moving & storage conferences or moving supplies in bulk. You can also send the registered users monthly newsletters with promotions and deals. Please do not spam your users. Mix the newsletter with valuable information like updates and your newest blog posts with the ads.
6. Convert the converted visitors - Once you receive that lead, you shouldn’t stop there. Find out a way to offer relevant information, deals or suggestions for the user once he has converted your main goal. Think of secondary conversion goals. Become an affiliate for a connected business and display the links on your thank you page. This way you will also be safe if you are concerned about Google punishing websites with affiliate links, as bots won’t be able to crawl them.
Nowadays it is relatively easy to enter the affiliate business and start earning commissions. Creating an account on websites like Commission Junction takes minutes and you have access to thousands of offers and deals you can display on your website.
7. Partner with companies in a connected niche - You can redistribute leads or advertising space by partnering with other websites in a connected niche. For example in the moving industry, there is a partnership opportunity with websites that offers storage (or car moving or home renovation). Create a section in your website of that partner and create a moving section in your partner's website. This way both of you will take advantage of each other's traffic and benefit from it.
Start searching for companies in those niches online. Contact them via email or phone and start the conversation. Make sure you choose websites with a similar traffic/metrics to your website so it will be a win-win partnership. Usually the big players will not be interested, but finding similar sized companies in a connected industry and contacting them will work better. Again, make sure you are speaking with the decision maker behind the website you are targeting.
8. Donations – If you offer a really great (trully exceptional) service, depending on your area of operation, you might ask your audience to donate for the future development of the website. This is not an easy task and it doesn’t work with many online services, but if you’re in the right area, this is a great opportunity to explore.
You can easily accept donations via PayPal or use a paid online fundraising service to handle that like GivingFuel or Qgiv (I haven't used these two particular services yet).
9. Conversion optimization – This is HUGE. Whether you’re already exploiting one or all of these revenue sources, there is always room to improve. Use your analytics data and conversion reports to see what else could be done to increase the conversion rate, based on the number of visitors you currently receive. Sometimes the solution could be very simple and you might have missed it. Change the design, play with colors, position and navigation, make a mobile version of your site. Experiment, experiment, experiment. See Google's countless experiments and Facebook's design changes every year.
Here is some more info on conversion optimization you must go through, written by fellow mozzers:
- The definitive how-to for conversion rate optimization by Stephen
- Seogadget guide to conversion rate optimization by Richard Baxter
- The new on-page optimization - a great Whiteboard Friday video by Joanna Lord
10.
Offer more value – add more to what you offer, extend to other media. If you already have a rich database and you don’t have a mobile app, you might want to launch an iPhone/iPad and Android one and present your data in a mobile-friendly way. By doing that you will please your users in the smartphone age and you will offer even more value to your advertisers. With the right marketing and clever AppStore SEO you will attract even more users. If you are in a complicated industry and you need to educate your users, you may want to publish your knowledge. We are currently finishing our moving related e-book that will hit the digital book stores later on this year.
Some ideas and suggestions
- Create and publish e-books: Publish your digital book on Amazon, iTunes and Google Play. You can also create smaller PDF e-books and offer them on your website for free with registration.
- Create an iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire and Windows Mobile app: I know this is a hard one, but in the mobile age this is the right direction to dig in. Of cource this one is an industry specific one as well, so you might want to do a survey to make sure the investment is worth it before you begin. Also these platforms offer an easy way to increase revenue if your apps are paid. You should always consider having a free "lite version" though.
- Create a mobile website: If I have to decide between a mobile website and a mobile app, I'll choose both. This will also increase your conversions.
- Webinars & Hangouts: This is hot right now. Organizing events like that will further help you with the conversions and will help you connect with people in the industry. Also you will have some more content to share like recordings of the live event.
- Live events: Find out if it is a common thing in your industry to organize events and gatherings. If not, you might be the first one to do it and it may have a major impact in the industry itself. Also the exposure may help you in your branding and fundraising effors.
Bonus tip: 11. Think outside the box. There are some even crazier ways to expand your revenue specific to the industry. For example if you’ve already developed web software in a certain niche and it is performing good for you, you can always repurpose it by doing small changes and launching it under another brand name for another niche. Or for example if you are SEOmoz and you already have indexed a major part of the internet, you can easily launch a search-engine, a historical snapshot website like archive.org, or just create another company to compete with yourself. Get creative!
Driving additional revenue will help you fund your future development without the need of angel investors. Please note that some of these ideas can be put into action only if the startup type and industry allows it to. In order for a startup to be a successful one it has to under-promise and over-deliver. And another very important advice - do not banish your visitors with excessive ads.
Keep in mind that a self-sustaining startup costs a lot more than one that does not generate any revenue if you decide to sell it. This is why we are able to grow and even to turn down a few acquisition offers that didn't meet our expectations without regrets.
What do you think? Let me know of any other sources of revenue that you can think of in the comments below. There in not that much information beyond the trivial "make money online" posts out there to cover the subject in depth. I want to hear your opinion too.
The 2 most important lessons of this article:
Don't put all of your eggs in the same basket, not just income but traffic also.
Don't allow google to rule your business.
BTW I gave you thumbs up immediately after I read the following sentence:
"Usually if you receive good money for your current visitors, sooner or later Google might invade your niche and make sure they convert directly those customers and not through your website."
Breath of fresh air. Great article.
I've never liked the idea of adsense as you can't really control what appears on your site. Direct advertising however, you have complete control of who and what can advertise and you have a better idea of how much $ you can expect.
But, it can be really tough starting out selling ads on a site. I started out using Double Click / Google Ad Manager and it was a bit of work setting everything up, and I didn't get many advertisers. So, I tried an ad buying / selling platform (buysellads) and pretty quickly sold my entire ad inventory, and have been solidly booked since. The benefit of a platform like this is that they have the audience of potential advertisers and make the entire booking process quite automated (you still review each advertiser) the only down side is the % cut the platform take, which is kind of negligible considering the increase in ad revenue.
Hey David,
Thanks for the comment. It is a good thing to know about the Double Click network and it seems like a great idea to utilize in websites that want more control over the ad copy.
Hi Martin, interesting read. Which revenue streams make your company the most money? Were there any you've tried that started out well and then taper down and were not really worth it anymore? I've got a couple pet projects with Adsense on them that seem to make more money closer to the domain renewal period each year (conspiracy theories abound) and then they taper off again through the "off season".
Hey George,
Actually we've tried several of them and they all perform differently. We are planning to add some of the mentioned above in our niche, since I have information that they perform pretty good in other niche websites.
I would say it is very different based on the niche. I agree that some of the streams may dry up with the time, this is why you should always look for something else that performs better. For example Adwords performed pretty good for the last several years, but we are slowly walking away from it and cleaning the website and switching with things that work better for us (and the users).
Working on conversion optimization made a huge difference in our case, this is why we do over 10-15 tune ups and design/template changes per month. We are always testing something.
Mobile is getting more and more important and I think the main growth (and still the easiest) of the big websites will be in that area.
Bottom line is to provide value. What we do is we look at the competition and the big players - is there something that is done better. If there is, we need to work on our product to make it even better. This is the only way to become the niche authority and create a sustainable online strategy for the long term.
Sustaining a start-up business has never been easy. It is a bumpy ride and as a start-up owner, you need to get used to it. But cashing in on a start-up business from the first day onward may not be that easy. First of all, your website needs to have traffic and good PR before you can approach prospective advertisers. The same thing is applicable for Google Adsense. You will find it hard to get your first check from Google Adsense if your website fails to get massive amount of traffic on regular basis. And the same is applicable with Affiliate marketing.
However, the tips are great. But seem like they will help you only when your website starts gaining traction.
Hey Debdulal,
This is absolutely right. In order to be able to increase the revenue, the start up business should already generate something based on its business model. Once you have the primary revenue stream secured, adding additional ones is an on-going process.
Hi, martine can you define about the starting business model? what things we have to cover and what we can avoid for the structuring our business?
I think it is about the service the website is offering. I mean if you are offering design services, hopefully you have some clients already. Website is just an online presence and an investment for the future. We cannot simply expect that we will start earning from the day one. However, things could be different if you are using Google Adwords or any other paid advertising platform.
Awesome blog, actually I love to read about informative content on how to increase profit in online business but until this time, I didn't get my ultimate success on advertiser earnings.
Now, I create a News, Blog and Opinion Site and love to test my ability to generate traffic and to harvest loyal readers about my country and my fellow related news.
I build the quality of the site from structure, people behind, company license, informative content and guarded with staff to interact as well to clean up from spam.
I also get multi-awarded reporter, blogger, writer and good contributors to assure that my site can help providing quality and informative updates to the readers.
The main concern I like to raise, if I follow all the google wants + proper on-page + social signals will this track me on to success?
My news site named Manila Channel, it's a Philippine News Site, can it be characterized what I mention above and can lead me to success in both delivering quality information and earnings?
Or what I did is just a waste of time?
Hope you can help me Martin or other SOEmoz friends about my news site project.
Suggestion will help me a lot. Thanks for an awesome post. Thanks
Nice post martine, I agree that number of people does not have any single source for generating revenue and business startup. Your all pints are best for the converting visitors into customers. Is that applicable for the small business owners to generate revenue by the following technique? Because revenue is the most important for the future development.
Hi Sanket,
This is especially applicable for small and medium sized online businesses with a moderate traffic and visitor flow. Once you have the visitors coming in, you can always explore new ways to extend your revenue sources.
Revenue is crucial for the future development of StartUp businesses and in order to be able to attract more visitors and customers, future developments and new features are key.
Thanks martine, for your valuable response.
Awesome Tips. Though you can find alot on www.meraresult.com
Thanks for the tips. I've been concentrating on conversions for my site. My concern has been that sites that have to many money links can get hurt in the serps. Not sure if this is still the case. I'm talking more about affiliate links. Whats your take on this?
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