- My first website was a job website.
I used to rank for terms like tech jobs,
job search, find a job.
I would compete with companies like monster.com,
and indeed.com.
These are huge companies, right?
How much money do you think I was making?
A thousand dollars a month?
10,000? 100,000?
Maybe a million?
Well you're all wrong.
I was making a big, fat zero.
And here's why?
I didn't know how to make money on the web.
Hey everyone, I'm Neil Patel,
and today I'm gonna share with you
why your website isn't making any money.
The first thing you need to know is, it's okay.
Most people don't know how to make money
from their website.
And, you're probably using things like AdSense,
or banner ads, or rev content, or Taboola,
and your like, oh yeah this stuff is amazing.
I'm gonna get paid for clicks.
Well, think of it this way.
If a company is willing to spend money
advertising on your website,
and you're usually going to an ad network,
who's keeping the majority of the money, right?
Just think about this way.
Google is worth $700 billion.
So if these guys are putting ads on your website,
do you think you're going to be keeping
the majority of the money?
Of course not.
Even if they pay you out a large percentage,
if someone is advertising directly on your website,
they're making way more money on their end.
If they're not, they're gonna stop advertising.
It's all about an ROI for them.
So if someone could say hey,
John, I'm gonna give you $200 a month,
and they're making a thousand bucks,
they're ecstatic, especially
if their profit margins are high.
The last thing you want to be doing on your website,
is using ads.
And that's how I started off.
I'm like, oh let me put ads all over my job board,
and make money.
Doesn't work.
The second thing you need to know is,
you have to monetize using your own product or service.
It could be an ebook.
You could sell an eCommerce product and do drop shipping.
You can offer a service like consulting.
Whatever you choose,
you have to create your own product or service.
If you don't create your own product or service,
there's always gonna be a middle man
who is making the majority of the money.
Do you want a middle man?
Of course you don't, no one does.
You need to create your own product or service.
Now, don't just create any product or service.
One, you have to be passionate about it,
and two, your users need it.
The way you can find out if your users need it,
is you just survey them.
Run a Qualaru or Survey Monkey survey,
and ask them, what problem can I help you solve?
They'll tell you.
Once you have a list of them,
look for the most common responses.
If everyone's saying, hey Neil,
we want you to help us consulting,
then you know, like oh awesome,
I'm gonna do consulting.
And that's how you monetize your blog.
But on the flip side, if you're trying to monetize
your website or your blog,
and most people are like, hey,
I want you to help me solve my traffic problems,
and you're like, I'm gonna create
this ebook and this course that helps you do it.
But you didn't really dig in and find out why
they want you to help them solve that problem,
and they're like, oh no, we don't want you
to teach us how to do it,
we just want you to do it for us.
You're gonna lose a lot of money.
Here's what I mean by this.
One of the ways I tried monetizing NeilPatel.com,
was through a program called SU Unlocked,
in which I created this marketing program
that teaches you everything I know in SEO,
which is an amazing deal, right?
I rank on page one for terms like SEO and online marketing.
And I was like, oh yeah,
I'll teach you all this stuff for 10 grand.
I'm like, I can sell this course
in mass scale and do really well.
You know what ended up happening?
Everyone who could afford to pay me 10 grand,
was like, we don't want to pay you 10 grand to do this,
or learn marketing, we'd rather just pay you 120 or 240,
and you do the marketing for us.
The point I'm getting at is,
don't just survey people and ask them,
what can I help you with?
Make sure your product that you're thinking about creating,
or solution or service,
is right up their alley,
and it's a solution that they really want.
The third reason that you're probably
not making money from your website,
is you haven't picked the right audience.
Here's what I mean by saying,
you haven't picked the right audience.
If you go after something like auto insurance,
you may think, oh this is boring, it's ugly,
but auto insurance makes money.
You ever want to bid for that term
on Google and pay per click,
you're gonna be spending 10, 20, 30 dollars, per click.
On the flip side, if you say, hey I'm gonna teach people
how to create home made sunscreen,
so that way they don't have to spend money on sunscreen.
I don't know how I came up with that topic,
but it's purely random.
And if that's your audience,
what you'll find is, oh people are all coming,
and they're like, all these people love it.
Well, they're coming to you because
they don't want to buy sunscreen and spend money on it.
So of course you're not gonna monetize that
and make money off of it.
You need an audience that can help you generate income.
So here's what you need to do to pick a right audience.
One, go look for all the competitive terms,
on Google Keyword Planner.
Type in keywords related to your industry,
they'll give you more ideas, hundreds of ideas,
and they'll even show you the cost per click.
When they show you the cost per click,
look for the ones that are high.
When they're high, that means there's money to be made,
and it monetizes.
When it's low, it means that it doesn't monetize well.
You also need to look for volume.
If a keyword only gets 10 visitors,
and 10 clicks, it's not gonna generate you much income.
So you need to look through Google Keyword Planner,
on the volume that you can get from all these terms,
plus go to google.com slash trends,
type in the keyword,
and you'll see if it's on an upward trend,
or downward trend.
If it's on an upward trend, that's great.
If it's flat, that's great.
If it's going down you may want to rethink it.
So now you know these little simple things,
you're gonna be much better off to making money.
Now there's one last thing that I want to tell you,
that will really help change
how much money you make from your website.
And this is what most people don't talk about.
It's called a funnel.
Have you heard of a company called, Click Funnels?
It's a multi-hundred million dollar company now,
because they teach businesses how to create a funnel.
Here's what I mean by this.
If I went to you and I'm like,
would you marry me, and I had ring,
what are you gonna say?
You're probably gonna be like, you're crazy Neil.
I may be watching your videos but I don't know you,
you could be a killer, right?
I am a killer marketer, but you may be thinking
he could be a killer with a knife.
All right so, why would you say no?
You're like, I don't know you.
The same goes with your website visitors.
If you just tell a random person who comes to your website,
hey, buy from me.
It just costs a thousand bucks, 10 thousand dollars,
even 50 bucks, yeah you're gonna get some sales.
But majority of visitors don't convert,
the reason being is they don't know you.
The whole purpose of creating a funnel,
is to let people become comfortable with you,
and walk them down a journey
that causes visitors to convert into customers.
Here's an example of this.
You could create a funnel on your website,
where someone comes, and they buy a seven dollar item,
a product, service, ebook, a tripwire is what they call it.
Once they buy that,
you already know that they're comfortable,
you gave them so much value
for this thing that's seven dollars,
but in reality, it should be 50 bucks or 100 bucks.
They're like, oh my God, I got this steal,
look what Neil's doing for seven bucks.
This is crazy, this is a $10,000 course,
and he's giving it to me for seven dollars.
You could even do this with products, too.
But once you get something for seven dollars,
then you can sell something for 50 bucks, 100 bucks,
and then you can get into higher ticket items,
like a thousand dollars, and $10,000.
The goal is a funnel, you walk them down
with such an easy and good deal,
kind of like those Groupons,
that everyone's gonna be like, I have to buy.
Now, if you sell physical products,
a good example of this is Orabrush.
Orabrush said free tongue cleaner,
'cause they're like, oh you've got bad breath?
Solve it with an Orabrush.
And it's free, you don't even have to pay a dollar.
Just pay for shipping.
That's a good example about how they grew,
and they eventually got bought out.
And after you buy their free product,
and you just pay for shipping,
they have upsells and downsells,
and that's how they made a lot more money.
And if you think about a company who does this,
that you've been to, and your kids have been to,
it's McDonald's.
You buy a hamburger, and they're like,
oh would you like a drink and fries with that?
Or you buy a meal, they're like,
would you like to supersize it?
Those are all examples of upsells and downsells.
If you follow those tricks and tips,
your website won't just have visitors,
but you'll also have those visitors
converting into customers.
Thank you for watching, and if you like the tips,
make sure you subscribe to my page, or my channel,
and leave a comment below with any questions you have,
and I'm here to help,
and help you grow and succeed.