I remember when I first considered creating a website, Me, My Kid and Life, just over 5 months ago. The first thing I did was to spend a good amount of time online reading about how to make money online, internet businesses, and how to monetize your website. I didn’t focus on things like how to get rich, fast money or mlm leads.

Certain topics are repeated frequently by webmasters who work from home, have an online business, and have been around for a while. They often talk about how the content for a website is the most important attribute for getting website traffic and making money via the Adsense program.

Different webmasters have different opinions and take different approaches to building website traffic and the best way to monetize your website. Steve Pavlina’s niche, Personal Development, is rather huge while Lisa specifically focuses her site on all the varying aspects of building a website. Both sites are ranked quite high in Alexa which goes to show that there are many options you can take as to how to design your own website and monetize your website.

Both Steve and Lisa’s sites have get a high number of website traffic hits and both webmasters support themselves exclusively from monetizing their websites in various ways, including the use of the Adsense program.

Did I lose you with the word ‘monetizing’? I used it in a sentence the other day with Sophie and she was like ‘huh? What does that mean?” To monetize your website means to make it so that you can make money from your website. It means setting your site up so that it can earn money. That is the act of monetizing your website.

It seems that some of the best ways to monetize your website are through the use of placing Google Adwords on your website via the Adsense Program and through web affiliate programs.

Google’s Adsense Program
Google’s Adsense program places Google Adwords on your website. When a reader is interested in the ad and clicks on it you make money from your website. No, that does not mean you should try to cheat the system and find ways directly or indirectly to click on the Adwords on your site. That would be against the Google Adsense Program Policies and could potentially get your banned from Google’s search engine.

I’ve seen a lot of sites out there that don’t use Google Adwords but do use other ad programs. I’m guessing that this generally occurs because Google has banned the site for violating Google Adsense Program Policies. If you are thinking about making money online using Google’s Adsense Program then you might want to acquaint yourself with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. I’ve read a lot on this subject and the consensus seems to be that the Adsense Program is the most profitable ad program for websites. It’s not a privilege a webmaster would like to lose.

Website Content
It is important to understand the nature of how the Adsense Program works with your website content. Basically, Adsense is content sensitive or content driven. Content is techy talk for the content of your article or the words in your webpage’s article, story, facts or whatever… as long as it’s words (or text) because Google’s search engine cannot read images.

When reading about creating a website for profit webmasters inevitable discuss the importance of good content. Another common theme is patience. Website design and monetization does not happen overnight. You will need to be patient. Set a goal. Decide how much money you want to make from your website and by what date, then, actively work to make that happen.

My goal is that I want my website to make $3000 a month by its 15th month. My website is currently 5 months old.

My goal is not traffic-based, it is income-based. Traffic and income are two different dynamics although they overlap. Traffic may, or may not, bring in additional direct money whereas income is the money earned from the website. When it comes to website design this distinction becomes very important.

It seems that many webmasters chase traffic. Many complain that they aren’t making much money. It doesn’t seem that traffic creates website income equally. Problogger wrote a good article on this topic. Darren talks about how some of his site make decent money without much traffic while other sites get tons of traffic yet make relatively less money. I believe this has to do with online social networking.

Social Networks
Online social networks are places where people gather to read and post blogs. A couple examples of Social Networks are Stumble Upon and Digg. Many webmasters have decided that social networks are the end all for getting website traffic. Without traffic a site would have no visitor and therefore would not be profitable.

Online social networking sites can dramatically increase a website’s traffic within a matter of hours if a single post catches on well. This could mean that more people than ever before could have access to viewing your account. I have had a few articles picked up by social networking sites that have increased my overall site traffic fairly substantially for a short period of time. Interestingly, none of those highly trafficked articles are my best money makers nor do they have high click through rates (CTR). A click through rate is the number of times an ad is clicked on for a particular article - the percentage.

On the other hand, social networks allow a site to build links going back to the webmaster’s site which helps increase the websites overall Page Rank, which is one of the ways Google determines the popularity of any particular website or webpage.

Ads on Your Website
Some webmasters sell advertising space on their websites. Advertising on your website is based on website traffic hits. Therefore, if you want to sell ads on your website your site will be more profitable (ie, your asking price can go up) with the more website traffic hits received - this is an area where online social networks become valuable to the webmaster. The more web traffic you generate the higher asking price your website will be entitled to.

The Value of Online Social Networking
Whether or not focusing on social networks is right for your website depends on your marketing strategy. Although I don’t focus on social networking I do acknowledge it and respect that it has a collaborative place on my website. By using social networks you increase your popularity in Google’s search engine which in turn increases your web page rankings, which in turn might increase your search engine hits which could help to increase your income from your website.

Search Engine Traffic
I have found that search engine traffic is the most valuable traffic when it comes to click thru rates. Google’s search engine likes interesting and informative web content because that is why a visitor is coming to your site in the first place. The reader is in need of information and because of the content on your webpage Google has decided that your website, or webpage, might offer what the reader wants. The higher you rank in Google’s search engine the more search engine traffic Google will send your way and the more likelihood there will be of making money from those visitors.

I remember reading an article by Steve Palvina in which he mentioned that some very small percentage of his total traffic came from search engines - something like 1.5%. For Steve’s site, perhaps search engine traffic isn’t really that important. Each site is different and unique just as each webmaster is unique. For this reason, it is important to understand how your site works and what monetizing techniques work best for you. I haven’t heard Lisa directly state the percentage of hits her site receives directly from search engines but she strongly advocates the importance of high ranking in search engine results.