As you are reading this article, you might have a wealth of untapped opportunities to monetize your website, without even increasing the amount of traffic that you already have going to it. Many online business owners are looking for ways to bring more traffic to their site so that they can increase their earnings. However, there are several things you can do to widen your profit margins by earning more money off of the traffic which you already have going to your site. In this article, we’ll be looking at five ways to increase your earnings without paying for more visitors or attracting more traffic through natural search engine results.

#1: Adding an Upsell Offer

If you are selling anything on your site and you aren’t making an immediate upsell offer after each customer purchase, you are certainly missing out on opportunities to earn more. Marketing research tells us that an upsell offer which is about 25% of the price of the regular offer will be exercised by approximately 30% of the customers who make a purchase. Some marketers even make multiple upsell offers for the customers who say yes to the first one. So ask yourself what other products your customers might be interested in and what you can offer them as an upsell. This simple monetization strategy could increase your earnings significantly, and without having to generate any more traffic than you are right now.

#2: Adding a Downsell Offer

When a visitor clicks away from the page which contains your sales offer, make them an immediate “down-sell” offer. A down-sell offers a lighter or “abridged” version of your product to the customers who choose not to exercise your original offer. In addition, you can add these customers to a separate subscriber list and use follow up email marketing to sell them on upgrading to the full version of the product. You can even credit the money they paid for the abridged version of the product towards their future purchase, making it easier for you to increase conversions.

For example, if you are selling a product for $47, your down-sell offer could be a $17 version of the product, and you could use follow up marketing to offer them the option of making the full purchase for another $30. This method can help you to convert customers who are “on the fence” about buying the full-priced product and increase the amount of money earned from your existing traffic.

#3: Viral Marketing

In addition to collecting email addresses from your visitors, make an immediate offer for them to receive a free gift in exchange for inviting some of their friends to sign up for your email list. This will help you to generate more traffic to your site from word to mouth and to build your email subscriber list. Provided that you have an effective email marketing strategy in place, this monetization method can help you to increase your number of email subscribers and thus bring you more sales from your email marketing campaign.  

Just be sure that you don’t automatically add the invited people to your list, send them an invitation to join your list in exchange for a free gift, then offer them a free gift in exchange for inviting their friends to join your subscriber list.

(More on Viral Marketing)

#4: Offering Affiliate Products on Your Site

Many website owners don’t want to make affiliate offers on their site because those offers create a conflict of interest with the products which the site owner is already selling. However, there’s a VERY good chance that your customers are purchasing products from people who aren’t your competitors, and there’s no reason why you can’t profit from those purchases by advertising those products on your site. For example, if you have a site that sells Guitars, check Amazon or Clickbank or another affiliate network for guitar instructions products.

Any product which is being purchased by your customers but which is not in direct competition with your product will work for generating additional affiliate commission. This way, you’re offering your customers something which they’re already going to purchase anyway, but without discouraging them from purchasing your products.

#5: Adding an Ongoing Membership Product

Adding an ongoing membership product is similar to an upsell, only you automatically give your customers the first month free when they purchase your original product. For example, you can sell monthly memberships to premium to tech support forums, instructional content on how to use your products, or other types of access to members-only areas on your site. The best way to do this is to make the purchase of the membership automatic for the customers who purchase your product, offering the first month for free. Set up an automatic billing process that begins monthly billing if the customer does not cancel the membership within the first 30 days.

Provided that you offer the customer enough value for the first 30 days of membership, you can create some residual income through the collection of monthly membership fees.

Conclusion

Select one of these monetization strategies which you think that you can easily incorporate into your existing marketing funnel and get started with it. Once you’ve tweaked it, you can move on to the next one, until you have applied all five. Doing this alone could significantly increase your profits without having to bring more traffic to your site. Good luck!