One of the methods that I am using to monetize my websites is to promote others complementary products. It’s a great method especially to those websites that offer their services for free.

Giving the visitor a free service is one of my main strategies that I’ve been using in the last years. People are happy to find what they need and more happy to get it for free. Using this strategy I developed many products and websites. What I am making out of it? Traffic!

When you have a lot of traffic you can make money by converting the traffic into a sell. But… when you are offering a free service you will find that it’s not so easy to find what to promote to your visitors. The main difficulty is due to your visitors’ nature: They like to get things for free. However, assuming that you are experiencing a large number of visitors you can expect that I least some of them are making a purchase online.

But what can you offer to your visitors? What products can you promote on your website? Will it be wise to offer them the same product or service that you are offering for free?
Based on my experience, only small percent of the visitors will make a purchase for equivalent products. It also has a bad psychological effect: By doing so you are damaging the credibility of your product or service and your website.

The solution that I found effective is to promote complementary products.
Promoting a complementary products enable to offer to your visitors an added value on top the basic usage of your product or service. Your visitors get the exact thing they were looking for: A free product or a service, and the option to enhance their experience by purchasing complementary products.

How do you know which complementary products will convent well by your visitors?
You don’t. I would advise to try to think as a visitor: What they might find interesting? Its not easy thing to do and most of the time you will find the products that you thought to promote on your website will not convert by your visitors. It’s very important to track on the conversion rate. Offer variety of products from different niches. Don’t stick with your website niche. You can be supervised to find that the products that convert the best are those you did not gave them a chance. Don’t jump into conclusions after only few days. Collect enough data and make a deep analysis. To a website with small-medium traffic allows at least two weeks before you decide to remove a promotion campaign.

At the end you will learn your website buying habits. Once you are on this stage it will be much easier for you to consider new campaigns to your website.
Remember, no matter how well your website earn per day, it can do better. Use your imagination and forget from been lazy.

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