How to Optimize Your Blog for Monetization: Full Guide for Google Monetization Strategies

How to Optimize Your Blog for Monetization: Full Guide for Google Monetization Strategies

Your website traffic is worth money and can result in a nice income for your business. While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site and grow your business, the key is to convert this newly gained traffic into money. That’s where search monetization comes in. In this guide, we’ll walk you through top search monetization strategies you can apply.

How Much Money Can You Make from Your Website?

There is no “one size fits all” solution regarding website monetization. The income you can make from your website will depend on your site’s purpose and how successful you are at achieving it. Some sites earn millions, and other sites make a few thousand.

How much money is there in blogging?

  1. The content marketing industry is predicted to be worth $412.88 billion by 2021.
  2. Google AdSense is the most popular monetization method for bloggers. Here are some popular methods and average figures:
  3. Food and personal finance bloggers are the ones that make the most income. Food bloggers make an average monthly income of $9.169. The personal finance blogger’s income average is $9.100
  4. 42% of Food bloggers’ income comes from ads.
  5. The average blogger’s monthly salary is $8000.

Source: SemRush

How much money do websites make from ads?

Websites earn income when visitors engage with their ads. It could be by generating impressions, engagement, or clicks. Advertisers pay publishers per click, for example, $0.20/click. If 1000 people click on the ad a day, the publisher earns $20/day or $600/month.

  1. According to Smart Insights, the CTR for display ads is 0.05%
  2. The CTR for native display ads is eight times higher than display ads. (Taboola)
  3. The average CTR for Google Ads is 3.17%

Statistics of Average Click-Through-Rate

Source

How effective are paid search ads?

When a person wants to buy something in this digital age, the first action is to use a search engine to look for it. Search advertising can be highly effective because consumers have the highest purchase intent when on search engines.

Leveraging search ads is an efficient strategy for monetizing your traffic. Here is an example of average CTR for paid search ads:

Business Category

Arts & Entertainment

Animals & Pets
Apparel / Fashion & Jewelry
Attorneys & Legal Services
Automotive — For Sale
Automotive — Repair, Service & Parts
Beauty & Personal Care
Business Services
Career & Employment
Dentists & Dental Services
Education & Instruction
Finance & Insurance
Furniture
Health & Fitness
Home & Home Improvement
Industrial & Commercial
Personal Services
Physicians & Surgeons
Real Estate
Restaurants & Food
Shopping, Collectibles & Gifts
Sports & Recreation
Travel

Average Click-Through Rate

10.67%

6.45%
6.19%
3.84%
7.93%
5.39%
5.44%
4.72%
5.33%
4.69%
5.46%
5.07%
5.73%
5.94%
4.21%
5.34%
6.12%
6.11%
7.75%
7.19%
6.33%
7.73%
8.54%

What Is Search Engine Monetization?

Search monetization is the group of tools and techniques used by marketers to convert online traffic into revenue.

Monetizing traffic and search combine the efforts to convert visits, actions, and clicks in revenue. Website traffic consists of potential customers—people’s daily activities online, querying search engines to solve a problem or find a product.

Search monetization delivers to users searching for a keyword the answer for their query and generates revenue from it.

You can monetize search queries by having an in-site search box. By doing that, every search your visitors conduct on your site can give you data about what they are looking for. Then, use this information to give your audience what they are looking for, enhancing their search experience by delivering ads that complement their search.

Top 8 Search Engine Monetization Strategies You Should Try For Your Site:

Targeting search engine results can help you generate more sources of revenue than just aiding sales. You can also target search data to monetize your sales. Here are some search engine monetization strategies you can apply:

Search feed monetization

Adding a search feed to your site can help hold longer your visitors on your page. It is more than a simple search bar. A monetized search box helps you earn a fee every time a person conducts a search.

Want to learn more? Check our guide on search monetization

Search mediation

This strategy enables you to maximize revenue for your media buying strategy. Regardless of where you buy your media, you can use CodeFuel to increase profitability. The optimized landing pages for media campaigns help you reap the best from each media channel. The monetization pages can be customized for your own website.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement by which an organization pays a commission to a publisher for the traffic or leads generated from its referrals. The publishers are the affiliates, which benefit from the commission and incentivize them to promote the company.

Affiliate links can be placed inside blog posts or articles. Your link to the product in the post, and if users click through, you, as a publisher, earn the commission. In a sense, the success of an affiliate marketing campaign also depends on the success of your SEO strategy. The better you are at search engine optimization, the more traffic you drive to your content, and your visitors will likely click on the affiliate links.

Invest in your SEO

As we explained before, search engine optimization is important for the success of your site. If you invest in your SEO, you get a higher ranking in search engines more traffic, leading to more conversions. How to do it? Here are the five best SEO tips to get more organic traffic in 2022.

  • Focus on the user experience- Google’s new ranking system, Core Web Vitals, emphasizes user experience. The three criteria they consider include the website’s loading speed, stability, interactiveness, and responsiveness. So if you want to rank higher, you should enhance your user experience.
  • Use internal linking- According to relevant keywords, internal links are links to different pages within your site. It can be an opportunity to increase traffic to internal pages. In addition, Google can understand the context better via the anchor text, enhancing your overall ranking.
  • Update existing content- Search engines prioritize the most relevant and fresh content for users. That’s why you should update blog posts regularly. By doing this, you increase the traffic volume and give more value to your visitors. Adding relevant and original data, such as infographics and charts, is important. This will get you more shares.
  • Drive traffic with long-tail keywords- Long-tail keywords effectively drive traffic for a simple reason: most people use long-tail keywords when writing a search query. These highly specific terms, three words long or more, are usually easier to rank for. For example, instead of targeting the term “evening dress,” go after a more detailed alternative, adding, for example, the color or style. When you do this, by including your short keyword into the long-tail, you can rank for both and attract more organic traffic.
  • Analyze search intent- Search intent is assessing the intentions and wants of the audience when they search for something. Search intent can be divided into four categories: Informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional.Informational intent refers to a user looking for data about something, such as general information about a topic, a recipe, or a tutorial.
    A person with navigational intent wants to visit a specific website. These people will type the name of the store or site they are looking for. So, you want to make sure your company appears in search results when someone looks by your name online.
    Transactional intent happens when a person searches with the purpose of buying something at the moment. Finally,  commercial intent has a lower intent than transactional because people intend to buy in the future and use the search engine to research, for example, comparing different fridge brands.

AdSense

AdSense is a Google advertising program that automatically serves ads to your site that are relevant to your target keywords. By strengthening the keyword usage on your site, you ensure that you get ads from the advertisers you want and increase the conversions you get for them. Ultimately, this increases the money you earn.

To make money from AdSense, you need to have at least 100 unique visitors a day. Your content should be unique, and you need to have a Google account to use it with AdSense.

If you have sizeable traffic and wish to add monetization options, then the CodeFuel Search Mediation solution is a great choice. Codefuel helps you maximize your yield per user visit and optimize your landing pages.

Use header bidding

Header bidding is a strategic technique that enables publishers to promote their ad inventory to ad exchanges before the ad servers conduct their online campaigns. 

This technique uses programmatic advertising technology to enable publishers to sell ad space at the same time to different ad exchange platforms and ad networks. Thus, publishers can maximize the value of every ad impression.

Header bidding also allows advertisers to be more efficient in better ad targeting by providing automation and bid position. It also enables multiple advertisers to bid on the same ad inventory, increasing the yield for publishers and leveling the field for advertisers.

‍Advertising

Advertising is one of the most popular monetization strategies and one that can be highly effective if done right. The more traffic your site gets, the more attractive it will be to advertisers. Conducting detailed keyword research is the first step to optimizing your site to drive traffic.

You can sign for an ad network that will present ads relevant to your visitors. You get paid when a visitor clicks on the ad or conducts another desired action. For an ad network to work, your website traffic should be significant. An advantage of using an ad network is that advertisers bid top prices for the ad impressions, so you get the chance of getting high-paying bidders.

To attract top advertisers, every page aspect should be optimized to provide value to your visitors, from the content to the ads and the headers. The better you get at this, the higher the bids your impressions will make.

Sell ad space

If your site has an important amount of traffic, you can sell ad space directly. Here you get to negotiate with advertisers and set the price. While it may seem an attractive option, it is not for everyone. You need to be on top of pricing and advertising rates, as well as looking for advertisers. There is no guarantee that you will get the best price for your ad space.

The Search Advertising Market in 2022 in figures

The search advertising market continues increasing, with the greatest percentage of Google’s advertising revenue, coming from search ads. In the last quarter of 2021, Google’s advertising revenue reached $68,874 million.

Statistics of Google's revenue

Ad Spending Worldwide

Source: Statista

Monetize Your Search Traffic With Codefuel

Monetizing traffic can be an extremely effective strategy to add revenue to your site. The best way to do it is to leverage a monetization platform, like CodeFuel. CodeFuel brings the advantage, not only delivering the highest yield for your impressions but also providing search mediation, so you can make the most of managing your media channels.

CodeFuel leverages AI and machine learning to transform search into revenue. Intent-based search targeting enables to capture consumers when their intent is the highest and delivering the right ad to enhance the customer experience and increase conversions.

How to Monetize Tumblr – 11 Proven Tips

Tumblr monetization has its own rules and best practices.

Like any other platform, it has its own do’s and don’ts. For instance, as Pinterest users recently discovered, affiliate links are no longer a viable option for the popular image-based network.

So what are your monetization options on the popular micro-blogging network, Tumblr?

This article offers 11 of the top Tumblr monetization tips that you can start using today.

To begin with, you’ll need to cover your marketing bases:

1. Base #1: Traffic

Traffic is essential to making money. If no one visits your blog, you won’t be able to earn clicks, sales, or income. To generate traffic, you can focus on two sources: Tumblr itself and the outside world.

Tumblr itself is probably the best place to start. Here are a few ways to do that:

  • Follow other bloggers who share your interests. Keep following more of them every week. They’ll follow you and – if you share good content – they’ll promote your content and your blog.
  • Make sure you hashtag your posts. And include plenty of keywords in your post content so that they’ll show up in searches.
  • Comment on other Tumblr blogs to draw attention back to your own.

2. Base #2: Turn Visitors into Customers

Convert visitors into customers. That is, develop relationships with people who visit your site. Use time-tested techniques such as distributing free content, acquiring email addresses, and so on.

Like WordPress, Tumblr has plugins of its own. MailChimp, for instance, has a plugin that allows you to subscribe people to your newsletter.

Which brings us to the next point…

3. Base #3: Supplement Your Tumblr Monetization

Other marketing efforts should always go with any blog you own, whether that blog is a Tumblr blog, a WordPress blog, or a self-hosted solution.

Your online content network should be a full-fledged brand – at least, if you want to make the most money from your efforts. The best way to build relationships with customers – and get money from them – is to build a brand that delivers valuable content across multiple channels.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a staple of any marketing strategy. Unlike Pinterest, Tumblr hasn’t chosen to ban affiliate links. So you’re free to monetize your blog by posting relevant affiliate links throughout your content.

As long as you keep your content valuable and non-spammy, you shouldn’t run into any problems.

5. Advertising

There are plenty of ad networks to choose from. Google AdSense is one of the easiest go-to ad networks to try, but there are plenty of others that can earn you cash for every click.

6. Content Locking

Content locking networks – also called pay-per-download networks – are networks that allow you to place a file or other digital content behind a “locked” hyperlink.

To access the content, users complete an action, such as filling out a survey. Each time they do, you earn cash.

7. Sell Products and Services

If you sell your own products and services, then you know how lucrative this monetization strategy can be. In this case, the Tumblr blog would become more like a gateway to your business.

Using your Tumblr blog as the central hub for your brand, your products, and your services may be a good idea if you really like the platform. Or if your audience is made up mostly of millennials.

8. Meme-ify and Promote

And since Tumblr caters to the younger generation: meme-ify. Just take a look at how brands are using Tumblr to reach younger audiences.

Animate gifs, be creative, be fun, and develop blog posts that are likely to go viral.

9. Target Gamers

Gamers are another demographic that flock to Tumblr. If your content appeals to that audience, all the better. So develop content, memes, and blog posts that would appeal to that demographic.

 

10. Create the Right Content

Given the fact that most of the Tumblr audience is made up of millennials, gamers, geeks, and other meme-loving segments, don’t be too serious with your content.

As any marketer knows, targeting is critical to the success of any sales message. So if you try selling irrelevant content to the Tumblr demographic, your monetization efforts might not be very successful.

11. Expanding to Mobile

Like other social networks, Tumblr users are mobile-heavy. Over half create posts with mobile apps.

To monetize the mobile market, focus your monetization strategy on mobile users:

  • For best results, make sure your affiliate links and ads lead to mobile-friendly content. Otherwise conversions and commissions will suffer.
  • As mentioned above, don’t make content too detailed or serious. Short and concise is best. Viral, short-attention-span posts can go a long way.
  • Tumblr is experimenting with new ad formats – from video to app install ads – that are geared towards mobile devices. If you have an advertising budget and appropriate content, test them out and see if they’ll work for you.

 

Like other social networks and blogging platforms, Tumblr offers up its own monetization opportunities. But it does require some effort. Start by building your audience, focusing on a niche, and experimenting to see what your customers want.

PPL, PPS, PPC, and PPI: Affiliate Compensation Models and Their Benefits

The acronyms PPL, PPS, PPC, and PPI, affiliate marketing, and advertising compensation method, are probably familiar to most online marketers. Each compensation method pays differently and has a different earning potential. Which one is right for you?

Each has its benefits, its drawbacks, and its applications. Generally speaking, certain types of compensation pay more than others, but it should be noted that these rates can vary greatly, especially when it comes to highly competitive industries. 

Pay-Per-Lead (PPL)

Most companies place a high value on leads and offer pay-per-lead (PPL) – often considered a type of pay-per-action (PPA) – compensation methods. As with most affiliate networks and compensation methods, the rate can vary greatly from advertiser to advertiser and from industry to industry. Lead-generation programs offered through affiliate networks can pay anywhere from $2 to $20 or more.

Subscription-based services, such as internet service providers and cell phone networks, as well as other service-based vendors, tend to use this model.

Pay-Per-Sale (PPS)

Pay-per-sale (PPS) requires payment in the form of a commission each time a product is sold. This commission is almost always a percentage of the total cost of the product. As with the other compensation models, the exact rate can vary greatly. But, in general, this rate has the potential to be as high, if not higher, than the others.

Some sales, such as a $2.99 ebook with a 6% commission, doesn’t have a lot of monetization potential, given the low commission rate as well as the low conversion rate for purchases. A camera, however, that generates the same commission on a $1,500 sale would have the potential to be much more lucrative.

This compensation model is very common in affiliate marketing and can earn marketers a great deal of income, but it is also highly competitive and quite time-consuming.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the most ubiquitous, common terms in the online advertising world. With this compensation method, marketers earn money each time a person clicks on an advertisement. Anyone who wishes to monetize an app or a website, for instance, can insert PPC ads as a way to generate an online income stream.

In general, PPC ads don’t earn very much revenue – often less than a few cents. Highly competitive niche markets, however, can pay much more. Logically speaking, then, the more traffic you have and the more you engage them, the more money you will earn.

Pay-Per-Impression (PPI)

Pay-per-impression (PPI) ads are another common compensation model for display ads and text ads. They generate revenue based on the number of times people view the ads. From the advertiser’s perspective, this compensation method is typically called cost-per-mille (CPM), which means cost-per-thousand impressions.

As with PPC, the pay tends to be low relative for this compensation model, and often requires large amounts of traffic in order to gain a significant income.

Which Compensation Model is Best for Marketers?

After reading the above descriptions, it may seem that PPL and PPS are the better way to go. After all, they earn you much more money, so why wouldn’t you?

It’s true, but there are other factors that you should take into consideration.

PPL and PPS take more time to implement. Adding ads to your website, software program, or browser extension is usually a matter of inserting the proper code. And if you have enough traffic to your site or users engaged with your app, you’ll be able to generate decent revenue.

On the other hand, it can be harder to convince someone to spend money on a product or service. You have to put time and effort into contextualizing the offer, creating good content to pitch the sale, and earning people’s trust. This type of marketing can often be a part-time or even full-time job.

Affiliate marketing is highly competitive. Generally, when people use the term “affiliate marketing,” they are referring to PPL, PPA, and PPS compensation methods. Because this type of marketing can be so lucrative, it is also highly competitive. The niches have all become saturated with talented, tech-savvy marketers who make it very difficult to squeeze in. And, as time goes on, these fields will only become more competitive.

Certain types of content are more suited to certain types of marketing. PPC and PPI ads are ideal for certain types of content, but not as ideal for others. They can be excellent for monetizing software, apps, or browser extensions, for instance. Since PPS and PPL marketing often relies heavily on context and content, it can be more of a creative and logistical challenge to use these types of marketing to monetize anything code-based.

 

While there is no one right way to monetize anything, there are two general things to consider: what type of content you’re trying to monetize and how much time you have to put into your online marketing efforts. For those who want to put less time into marketing and more time into content creation, PPC and PPI ads are probably the way to go. But for those who want to focus on the marketing side of things, context-driven sales, and so forth, PPL and PPS compensation methods will probably work well.  

Best Ways To Make Money With Software

You created a great application; it has amazing features, is easy to use, and bug-free. Now you need to let the world know about it!. Send your software out to market requires careful planning and the right tools to make your application stand out. This guide will give you what you need to know to effectively market your software.

What is software marketing?

Software marketing is the group of tools and methods used to promote, advertise and increase the distribution of a software product.

Any software you develop you’re bound to have competition, if not right away, shortly after launch. For an application, with the millions of apps populating the app stores, the task of drawing attention (and sales) to your application gets harder.

There are many methods to market software, but the most popular is inbound marketing, a way that aims to draw customers in a natural way by appealing to their intent and interests.  A characteristic of inbound marketing is that focuses on provide value, a real benefit for the user.

Outbound marketing is geared to a general public without or with minimal targeting involved. For example, online banners, text ads can be forms of outbound marketing. Usually, for software campaigns you’ll find a mixture of both methods.

Why Develop a Software Product?

Many organizations will hesitate to see the value in developing their own software product, such as an application or widget. In reality, there are a number of reasons why develop an app or software product can increase your bottom line.

  • Users want access from anywhere, anytimeThe digitalization of our world means your users want to reach your company online at anytime. Take for example, banking accounts. Account management applications went from a “nice to have” feature to an essential add on for any bank.
  • A custom app or software can solve specific business problemsThe app is tailored to what your users need, and addresses your brand’s specifications. It solves a specific problem for your users, increasing their engagement with your brand.
  • Because your software is unique, it will have features that are not available to other organizations in your industry.
  • Most software applications reduce your workloads by allowing users to self-service. Otherwise time consuming or tedious tasks for your staff, can be now carried out by the users. This frees your staff to focus on more core-business tasks.
  • While developing your proprietary software may seem more costly than simply buy an off the shelf product, in the longer term you end saving costs. You are investing in your own business model and can even market the solution.

The App Market

Want to know more about the applications market? Here are some mind-blowing statistics:

According to Statista, the total revenue in the app market will reach  $437.80 bn in 2022.
The revenue is growing at a CAGR 2022-2026 of 6.58%
The top segments by revenue are Books and reference, Entertainment, Business and Education.

Statistics of Revenue by Segment

Application marketplaces statistics for 2022

Apple and Chrome store are the most popular application marketplaces where you can market your new app. The app economy is based largely on these two platforms.

Here is some data on application marketplaces for 2022:

Google play store statistics

  • Google Play has $2.39 million apps and over 400,000 games
  • Free apps are 96% of the Google Play Store
  • Games are 15.6% of the Google Play Store.

Number of total Apps and Games on Google App Store

Apple store statistics

  • Apple App Store has 3.6 million apps and almost a million games.
  • Games are close to 22% of the app store
  • Free apps are 92% of the Apple App Store.

Statistics of total number of Apps and Games on Apple App store

Other app stores

Recently, both companies added more entry-barriers to developers, and disabled millions of applications from their stores, in order to improve quality and data privacy.

This situation drove some organizations to look into alternative app stores, such as the Windows Store, and China’s own app stores, like MyApp and Huawei App Market.

How To Monetize Your Software With Monetization Platforms

Monetization platforms are an excellent way to increase your software revenue. They monetize your software for you, so you can focus on your core business. These platforms, such as CodeFuel, both monetize and promote the application and software.

So, how do you leverage monetization platforms to your advantage? Here are some steps you can follow:

1. First, choose the platform

When choosing the right solution for you there are a number of factors you need to consider:

  •  What are the features and benefits of the platform? 

Some of the features you may check include:

  • Monetization
  • Promotion
  • Multiple advertising options
  • Analytics
  • Advanced API
  • Cross-platform compatibility
  • Integration with existing solutions

2. Check it includes the right tools for the job

Besides features, there are some tools that can help you monetize your software or app:

  • Search monetization
  • Targeted advertising
  • Advanced analytics

3. Evaluate and improve

After you choose your monetization platform, picked the right tools and started your campaign, you need to monitor and test how it is doing.

Leading monetization platforms come with the analytics feature that make this task easier. Track conversions, downloads and abandonment rates. So you can optimize your application functions, usability and features. You can use your monetization platform to develop the entire conversion funnel automatically.

4. Promote your software

That’s a key part of an effective monetization platform. Leading platforms such as CodeFuel, integrate with ad networks and pay-per install networks, which will promote and advertise your software in the relevant media your users frequent.

Ways To Make Money With Your App

Selling The Application

Charging users for the application or software is one of the earliest software monetization models. App and software developers and publishers set a price for the product and users to need to pay if they want to use it.

This method works best with publishers with an already built brand and audience. Unknown publishers can have difficulty justifying the user the need to pay for the app. After all, there are thousands of free applications.

Freemium

You may recognize this monetization model by its other name: “in-app purchases,” as it is one of the most popular.  How does it work?

You offer your software or app for free but with limited features. Users that want access to extra features must pay to access them.

Games use this quite frequently and very successfully. For example, gamers who want certain power-ups may purchase those extras for real money.

This allows developers to distribute software for free, vastly increasing the number of downloads. But developers still make money in the process. Though turning freebie-seekers into paying customers can be tricky, the effort often pays for itself in dividends.

In-app Advertising

This is another standard monetization model, which you’re probably familiar with. Ads are placed inside apps, either on a piece of the screen real estate or between screens (interstitial ads).

These ads earn income per thousand views or per click. Revenue then varies based on the ad network, the type of ad being displayed, the audience, etc.

This monetization method is second in popularity to the freemium model. And these two methods are sometimes combined: users can pay to remove ads, for instance.

To earn money with in-app or in-software advertising, you need a lot of users for your app. A more significant percentage of users convert on advertisements than on freemium upgrades, but the revenue per conversion is less.

Paid Products

With so many free apps and software programs online, it’s hard to get people to purchase an app. Customers who will spend five dollars on a latte won’t spend two dollars on an app. And, chances are, you’ll be competing against an app that’s free or freemium.

However, when you’ve got the clout, marketing resources, or market share, this is a top monetization strategy. If, for example, you’re the only company offering a niche product, then charging for the product may make sense. Also, if your company already has a reputation and a solid following, you may be able to charge for a piece of software or an app.

Game sequels or high-quality products are examples of software programs that may benefit from this approach.

Paid per Install

Pay-per-install is trending as one of the most effective advertising, distribution, and monetization methods.

This approach is ideal for making money with software distributed on desktop platforms. CodeFuel’s InstallFuel, for instance, supports Windows and Mac OS X. There are also options for mobile developers.

You integrate your software with a smart installer to monetize with a pay-per-install program. The best intelligent installers aren’t just scripts. However, they’re complete platforms that allow you to customize the installer to meet your needs.

You can tailor the look and feel of an installer, pick and choose the products you promote, and advertise your software through the network’s partners. Analytics gives you a 360-degree view of downloads, conversions, and more.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing isn’t just for websites. Developers can design software and apps around affiliate deals. This can be one of the most lucrative ways to make money from an app or software program. But it can also be challenging and limiting.

In other words, if you want to develop a software program and earn money from affiliate deals, you’ll need to design your software for that purpose.

Travel apps and websites are good examples of affiliate marketing programs to earn money. Websites such as Orbitz and apps such as Hipmunk are simple to travel programs, but each sale earns developers a commission.

As you can probably guess, this can be a virtual cash machine once it’s up and running. But it’s also tough to integrate it with a pre-made software program or app. A language-learning app or video game may better suit in-app advertising or a freemium model.

These are the top five monetization models, though other creative methods of earning revenue include selling analytics or code. Subscription models, when appropriately implemented, can also be a lucrative method of earning revenue.

The significant benefit of all these models is that they operate relatively independently. Once you have an app up and running, you only need to tweak your monetization program and update your app from time to time. Developers can stack up to their apps over the long run: the more apps you release, the more money you’ll make.

All You Need to Know About Software Bundles

Software bundling is a great strategy to reach more users for your software and meet your business goals. How does it work?

You choose another company with a recognized brand or a successful (complementary—not competing) product and negotiate a partnership. When users download the product, they also download yours, getting a  deal. 

What are the benefits of software bundling?

More Downloads

When you partner with a recognized brand with a solid client base, you drive downloads to your software. Because the other company will promote their software, you’ll benefit from the combined efforts of promoting the bundle.

You will also get more downloads because your clients will feel they get a two-for-the-price-of-one deal.  Most bundle strategies offer the package at a better price than the two solutions on their own. Other strategies offer unique features not included in any of the separate tools.

Increased Reach

Creating a bundle also extends the reach of your product since your audience will include your partner’s client base. The other brand’s clients will know about your product via their email lists, social media channels, or website. Additionally, when the news about the bundle spreads, you can attract a wider audience.

More Sales

Finally, more downloads mean more sales. But this is not the only benefit. Users that download the bundle will know your brand better and may become interested in other products you have to offer. Finally, the expanded brand awareness can translate into more sales in the future.

Tips To Increase Your Software Downloads

Developing your software product can bring significant revenue for your company if you do it right. An effective development and marketing plan can help your success. Here are some best practices and tips to increase software downloads.

Build a product that brings value to users

If you want to increase your software downloads, you need to create a good software package that solves your target audience’s needs.

Some best practices you may want to follow include extensive testing to ensure the usability and performance of your application, and refine targeting to adjust your software accordingly.

Focus on your marketing

Carefully target your marketing efforts to your audience. Produce content and ads that specifically target to your audience’s intent and needs. The more tailored your marketing, the higher its effectiveness. Creating a buyer persona can help pinpoint your marketing further.

Run PPC Ads

Monetizing through ads, specifically pay per click advertising (PPC) can be a very effective way to increase your sales. PPC is cost-effective since you only pay for ads the users click on. Google Adwords, Bing and monetization platforms like CodeFuel, can help you place your ads exactly where your users are.

Include a smart installer

How fast your application downloads is key to your users’ experience. If the download takes too longe, users may bounce and look for another solution. By including a smart installer, you can make the download process more effective. Not only your downloads will go faster, but you can use it to monetize your software.

9 Ways to Improve Your Software Monetization

1. Focus on your niche, then build your conversion funnel.

Your audience is unique to your business, and they usually prefer some online media channels above the others. Figure out the type of websites and social networks they visit, and map your niche. Then, you can build a conversion funnel based in solid data.

2. Trust the numbers

We  cannot stress enough the importance of basing your marketing efforts in hard data. Everybody, including experienced marketers have opinions and biases. Basing your marketing and advertising decisions on a hunch or what you think it may work for a campaign, it can be inaccurate. Data-driven decisions, based on analytics and user testing can help you find what your audience really wants and how to give it to them.

3. Test, test, test.

Your audience’s interests are always changing, so keep up with their dynamic demands requires adapting constantly. What can you test? Your product design and usability, your user experience, based on the latest user trends. Also test your ads with A/B testing. The data you collect will help you refine your product and pinpoint it to your target audience.

4. Personalize as much as possible

One of the key of a great user experience is personalization. When you develop an app or an extension you can gather user data (under consent). This data can help you understand what your users want, refine and personalize not only your application but your marketing efforts as well.

5. Understand how digital advertising works

The digital world is always evolving, and you should be aware of the latest news so you get an advantage. Learn which monetization options are the best for your product and audience. For instance, you may use an ad network to promote your software or you may use a more complete monetization platform such as CodeFuel to monetize your application.

6. Use display and native ads

Display advertising is increasing. According to eMarketer research, the digital display spending from programmatic advertising, will include 90% of all digital ads in 2022. This means a 29% increase from 2020. You should take advantage of this to use display advertising for your own benefit. Display ads integrate more naturally with your application and your content, enhancing the user experience.

Statistics of Digital Ad Spending worldwide

Source: Statista

7. Use software advertising platforms

Monetization and promotion platforms such as CodeFuel, enable you to centralize your marketing efforts from a single solution. This reduces your marketing costs, enables you to forecast your ROI and gives you insights to optimize your product and strategy.

8. Automate

Automation is the mark of an effective digital marketing strategy. It is useful for tedious and repetitive tasks that can hinder your productivity. Automation is also useful to keep up with the dynamic digital marketing landscape. What can you automate?

  • Content posting on different media channels.
  • Collecting data for analytics.
  • Real-time bidding
  • Optimizing campaigns.

9. Check out your competitors

It is always useful to know what your competitors are doing. Track your competition, after all, they cater the same audience. Automated data collection can help you understand what is working for them so you can replicate for your business.

Streamline and maximize your income with Codefuel

Promoting and monetizing your software can be a hassle if you want to do it by yourself. That’s where CodeFuel comes to help. CodeFuel is a complete, all-in-one monetization platform that you can leverage to maximize your income as a software publisher.

The platform uses machine learning and advanced analytics to deliver contextual, intent-based ads to users, enhancing your user experience. By improving the experience, your brand gets more exposure and engagement, increasing conversions and downloads. Advanced monitoring and analytics makes tracking performance and metrics a breeze. Start monetizing with CodeFuel today, sign up.

Simplify Your Software Distribution with These 4 Tips

Developing software that your business clients can use is one of the best ways to provide value for them and to establish yourself as a valuable resource or authority in your industry. The software doesn’t have to be a huge, comprehensive suite. It just needs to provide a specific solution to a specific problem in order to be successful.

Developing your software is just stage one of the process. You also need to develop a marketing and distribution plan to drive sales and ensure your success. Here are a few tips for how to make software distribution easier and help meet your sales goals:

Use an Installer

Downloading software can be a laborious process – more so the larger the software package is. Clients may lose their patience with the process if the download takes too long or uses up too many resources on their computers. This can lead to a bad reputation for your software, which can hurt sales and hurt your overall business.

Using an installer can help you make the process easier and speed up the pace of the download. In doing so, the installer will increase the completion rates for your downloads. Tools like InstallFuel provide these benefits and also allow you to monetize your software.

You can display special offers during the installation process, either for your other products or for products and services from advertisers. The installer is customizable so you can get the look you want for it and can make it display what you like during the download process.

Sign Up for a Browser Extension

Browser extensions can be powerful advertising tools. People download them to make searching the Internet a bit easier while they are online.

However, they can also display special offers during the installation process or during regular use. If you sign up as an advertiser, you can get more exposure for your software. If your software can be downloaded online, the browser extension can also encourage more downloads.

Explore the available options to sign up with a browser extension that will reach your target clients.

Signing up for the right extension can make all the difference to your success. Research thoroughly and read reviews from other businesses.

Check the stats on users and their demographic information.

Create a Bundle Deal

A great way to increase downloads of your software is to bundle it with other programs or apps. You can do this by creating a partnership with another company. It’s best not to approach your direct competitors for this partnership. Instead, focus on those that offer complementary services.

For example, if your software helps businesses handle project management, you might approach a company who offers software for record keeping or payroll (if that’s not included already in your software package).

By partnering with another company, you get more traffic and customers thanks to the exposure and reputation that the company already gets.

By creating the bundle, you also encourage more downloads by making the software available at a discount. Just be sure that you’re using an installer to make the download process fast and efficient.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great way to increase software distribution. By offering affiliates a commission for software sales, you gain access to a large network of promoters. The better the commission you offer, the more advertisers will agree to promote your product.

Find the sweet spot where you can offer the largest commission while also retaining the margin you need to stay profitable.

Sign up for large affiliate marketing sites to gain access to the largest number of advertisers.

Create professional marketing materials for those advertisers to create brand consistency and to make it easier for them to get the results you need.

Make sure your site is optimized for sales so that you can convert the traffic that is sent your way. The better the affiliate marketing program you create, the more downloads you will get and the more successful you will be.

Software development and distribution can be a successful branch of your business.

With the right software, you can raise your business profile and generate significant revenue.

Creating the right marketing strategy is essential if you want to maximize the potential for your software. In addition to the usual methods – such as content marketing, e-mail campaigns, search engine optimization and social media marketing – you can take advantage of these tools to drive downloads and make the distribution process a little easier.

An installer can help speed the download process and increase completion rates, and browser extensions, bundle deals and affiliate marketing programs can help you increase download rates. Don’t limit your efforts to only one of these.

Take advantage of all the tools available to you to create a multi-pronged strategy and maximize your results.