Hello guys I need opinions on this, for the past year I have been creating quality content that my visitors love, they come to my sites, read the content and leave, I have been spending a lot of money in hosting costs, web design, etc etc etc and I am tired of people not "paying" in one way or the other for my work i.e by clicking ads, bying from my affiliate links etc, so I have been thinking of protecting my web pages with a password. Basically you would be required to register with a username and a password so you can access the site, this way I do not have to depend on the search engines to send me traffic (since I can send you an email when I update my site) and of course I could promote my other sites via email and affiliate products. But here is my problem. 1st will people stop visiting my site since its password protected? 2nd what will happend to all of my search engine traffic since they are behind a password I would really appreciate your input on this, I mean, artists, writers, etc they all generate money by selling their products (books, music, dvd) etc but it seems like not a lot of people are really getting paid for their work on the Internet. Tell me what you thing, thanks
1. I think I would. I am, generally, not the type of sign up for services. How exactly will password protecting posts help you make more money, anyway? I'm a little lost with that. Maybe you should promote signing up more, but in a way that doesn't take away posts. 2. I think you can authenticate web crawlers to visit those pages, but you would have to do that for every single post, which seems overwhelming. Bottom line, I don't think you should password protect the posts. How can you be spending a lot on hosting? I'm sure you can find a quality blog host for cheap.
#1 Would make visitors close the browser. No-one wants to sign up to a site to read content that may or may not be relevant to them. #2 It would blow your SE rankings out of the window. Any traffic you were getting from them would come to an abrupt and unceremonious end.
OK Great tips guys, what about turning the quality content into a book or a audio book for your ipod and charging people for that. Like I said, Adsense pays peanuts and I am tired and working so hard on great content and not getting paid for it, I would probably setup a good sales page, add lots of pages to the book and promote, that way I could potentially make more money per sale than per click, if the person does not buy the book they can not read it.
I would not buy it. I would read it and leave. Unfortunately, ads are really your only option. I suppose you could offer audiobooks and such, but don't rely on them for a big source of income.
It all depends where your traffic is coming from. If it's coming from search engines then it would be a major mistake to add a password to your content as bots would not be able to get in. On the other hand, if the majority of your readers come by word of mouth and your content is so good that people can't stand a day without reading it then do start charging for it. What I suggest you do is you turn your best content in to an E-book or a Video and you charge people for it, but it is very risky to start charging your viewers for content they don't know about. Another way If you want to make a profit then Simply add more ads or tell your readers to donate. If you are getting massive traffic then you can up your Advertising prizes so you will be able to afford your hosting costs. What you should not do is hide your website completely and not show any content, if you are really desperate for money then you should leave some of your articles to the public and then charge to see other content. Or a better idea would be to only show a part of the article and in order to read the rest you would have to pay a small fee. Note that when websites start to charge more and get more rather than give, they start to loose members because people like free. It's all in our heads and there is nothing we can do about it. Before you start to charge for your content ask yourself this questions: -Are my readers really interested in what I post? -Will I actually profit from this? -Is it wise to take this risk? -Will my income not be affected if I suddenly start to loose members? It's up to you whether you want to charge your readers or not. Don't make the mistake of overselling yourself and end up completely loosing your readers. If you want your user's opinion then I suggest running a poll and asking them if they would pay to read your content or not. Just my 2cents.
It depends if you are wanting to charge members. If yes, then password protection will be good for both you and them, if you dont plan to charge then password protection is pretty pointless IMO, as all it will do is drive visitors away as they will just see it as a way for you to harvest email addys. Of course you could find a compromise, let's say 60% of content available to all members and the other 40% is there as a "bonus" to members. Just my thoughts.
Good point tcheck, but I would not allow people to read the book until they buy it, at least if they do not buy I know that they did not read my material. I am really tired of giving away my content, I think that I am going to change my model from now on, I have many sites that make some money with content but it has taken months and months for them to rank. From now on I will charge money for my premium content, I mean if somebody makes a movie you have to pay for the dvd right, if you pay a video game you have to buy it, if you listen to a song you have to pay for it, so why not charge for my premium content, yes I might still make "some" content but most of it will have to be paid for. Check out this post and you will understand what I say. (not my site) http://www.1938media.com/99-cents/
Oh, I was under the impression that you posted your content on the blog as free, but the user had the option of buying it as an audiobook. Well, your new idea is better than your first =]. You can have "standard" and "premium". Best of luck!
I see your point but be careful, yes you have to pay for a dvd, but you are only going to buy it if it has been well reviewed, or you liked the trailer ( the review and trailer cost the end user nothing).Likewise with songs, yes you may buy it, but that is often after hearing it on the radio for free. My point is, you need to give something free to supplement the paid content, otherwise new users are simply going to go elsewhere. Just my thoughts.
Maybe the design of your site and or your articles aren't as good as you think they are? No offense. I'm just saying. How many daily visitors are you getting? If it's less than, say, 1,000, what were you expecting in terms of $? Not much, I hope. And some of them coming from search engines? Search engine traffic is notoriously bad. There's part of your problem right there. And who says that our visitors are obligated to pay us in one way or the other? You want to start charging people to read content? Come back in a couple of months of testing and tell us how that worked for ya.
"2nd what will happend to all of my search engine traffic since they are behind a password" As all content is password protected, search engines will not be able to crawl, and this means that you will lose all your ranking and traffic from SE.
Password protecting a page will obviously increase your security but at the expense of lowering your traffic by almost 50-75 percent. People are too lazy to register an account so they would just click back and go to another website. I wouldn't recommend it.
You might consider keeping the content that you already have as "free", then any content you produce from this point forward as private/protected. I'm in the same situation with two of my three websites. I spent a lot of time and money to create the content that I have, and it's valuable because it draws traffic. But I have to start making it profitable somehow, and making some of it "pay per view" might work.
Getting people to pay for something on the internet they weren't looking for the day before is really hard. Almost no one succeeds at doing this unless they are very popular / come up with a really interesting product. If you are already popular, you might get something by doing this. Otherwise, stick to the free content, focus on making it better, and stick a donate button on the site. Maybe those who donate can have some extra perks? This is basically the same system as "premium" content, only it doesn't seem like you're restricting content to the average user, just giving a little extra to the kind hearted.