Make Money Online- the baby steps part 21

Charging people money for your online content is going to prove a hard sell. In “Make Money Online- the baby steps part 21″ we are going to walk you through the basics of getting paid for content. Can it be done? How do you do it? And what does the experience of others tell us about the different choices at our disposal.

Over the years we have started quite a few sites between us. Most of those sites have been a lot more monetized than Richopedia.com and for many of those sites the object was simply to sell, sell, sell. Our experience is that it is virtually impossible to charge for your content on the internet. There is simply too much information and free content available today. There are however, exceptions to the rule. In fact, we can think of two exceptions straight of the bat. If you can truly provide a time-sensitive, unique, specialist-driven service it can be done. Our first example would be a financial newsletter. Providing that you deliver a quality content, specialist product of this sort, you could probably get away with charging for it. After all, the pitch is pretty straightforward “earn more money trading the markets, by buying our newsletter”. For this to work, the newsletter needs to be of high quality, with a skillful veteran trader writing most of the content. If not, there is plenty of free mediocre quality stuff to be found elsewhere. The other way to charge for content which still seems to be working is selling e-books. Should you choose to go down that road there are a couple of things you need to consider.

In order to sell an e-book online, in most instances you will need some sort of existing platform in place. What do we mean when we say existing platform? For example, an existing website with heavy traffic and a relevant audience for your e-books. So basically, that would mean we are back were we started. You can sell content on the internet, But only after you have given lots and lots of it away for free, establishing a relationship with your visitors and localizing an existent base of potential readers/customers. The other route you might consider if you want to sell e-books online is to simply smack up a sales website. If you go down this road, you will probably need to pay for traffic. You are in reality just like any other traditional business website trying to sell your goods and services. The search engines at Google will certainly overlook what you have to offer. You will need to pay for potential customers and muster a really convincing sales pitch on your website in order to convert those semi-casual  visitors to actual paying customers. This road certainly has opportunity, but only if you are a seasoned veteran in this game.

There is another popular way among internet marketers to sell content, and this method has actually proven to be quite successful. It´s called “freemium”, and what it basically means is that you give away some of your content for free, and then your visitors can purchase additional content. This form of marketing has proven quite successful for a number of reasons. Once again, you establish report with a number of potential customers. The customers are clearly interested in your subject, and if they read you free content you get to demonstrate that you are an authority on the subject. Moreover, people like to try something out before they buy. If they found your initial content interesting, valuable and helpful they might jsut consider paying a couple of bucks to read on and learn even more.

Both newsletters and e-books are under great pressure, at least online. The freebies are gaining foothold in these areas as well. But in chaos and change, lies opportunity. We still feel there will be a market for newsletters. And we are quite certain that there will be a flourishing market for e-books. On a final note we would like to set one thing straight. It might sound that we are negative towards e-books. Nothing could be further frpom the truth. We believe there is a strong ongoing shift in the reading habits of people. We expect that the e-book boom is just starting out and we expect there are fortunes to be made in this segment of the content market. Tablets and reading devices are revolutionizing the way we are devouring books, magazines and even websites and we are expecting this ongoing trend to grow even more in the future.

As far as you and your newly started content oriented website is concerned, your best bet is without a doubt to focus on providing great content for free and getting some advertising going for you once your traffic starts to pick up. In the next part of our guide, “Make Money Online- the baby steps part 22″, we will be looking at changes in website trends as of lately. Google and other search engines have changed the game plan somewhat. We feel it is for the better, join us to let us tell you why we feel this way, and how you should adapt your game plan in order to get the best possible result.