The best money-making content websites have multiple revenue streams. Often they have contextual advertising, display advertising, affiliate links, paid membership, an online shop selling books, reports and other items, an order form for tickets to offline events and much more. The tendency of a lot of these sites is to squeeze as many revenue sources as they can onto every page, the theory being that the more opportunities they give their readers to click on a money-making link, the more chances they have of making money from every visitor.
Research has shown that this thinking does not, in practice, optimize revenue.
The way to make more money is to reduce the choices you give to your readers and focus their attention on the most valuable action on each page.
The most valuable action, or MVA, is just as it says. It is the action that a reader takes on any given page that makes you the most money. For example, if one of your Web pages has:
- Google Adsense, which pays you $0.05 per click,
- An affiliate link that pays you $10 per sale and
- A "Buy Now" link to order a copy of the publishers' ebook for $29.95
... the MVA is clicking on the "Buy Now" link to your ebook.
But the MVA theory is not quite that simple, because you also have to take into account the most appropriate way to make money from each page of content. For example, if you run a website about digital photography and you publish a positive review about a new camera, then the MVA will probably be clicking on an affiliate link to a camera retailer where the visitor can buy the camera. So even if you offer a photography course for $100, given the content of the page the MVA is the affiliate link to buy the camera. Therefore this affiliate link should be promoted on the page more dominantly than any other money-making link. Indeed, there is a school of thought that says you should have only one money-making action available to the reader on every page and ensure that it is highly relevant to the content.
Summary
Every time you publish a page, ask yourself what is the most valuable action that readers are likely to want to take once they have read this page of content. It may be clicking on an ad, buying something from an affiliate site, buying something from your own shop, signing up for membership or purchasing a ticket to an event. Whatever the MVA is, make sure you clearly promote this on the page and minimize the other links that will earn you less or distract the visitor's attention.
