5 Practical Tactics for Turning Pageviews into Profits

The ultimate beginner’s guide to making your pageviews work for you

You’re writing and people are seeing your work. More and more people every day. It’s possible that hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of people have seen some of your pieces.

You’re getting obsessed with your stats.

You’ve watched your views climb. The number of views keeps getting higher and higher.

You check your dashboard, excited to see the largest payment listed that you’ve ever had…

Peanuts. Crickets!

You made almost nothing.

You’re crushed. Outraged! It must be a mistake!

Nope.

I’m going to tell you a little secret: you will not get rich from pageviews alone.

If you’ve been writing for a little while and have made some money here and there, congratulations! You’re one of the incredibly lucky people who gets paid to write. That’s phenomenal! You may have even had have had some articles that have gotten good views by now. Congratulations again! That’s a sign that you’re doing something right and people want to see what you’ve written. (Or it’s a sign that you wrote a killer headline, which is also an amazing thing.)

But by now, you’ve probably noticed that your pageviews don’t have a lot to do with your profit. Here’s a great example of this:

If you look at the details, you’ll see that this post gets a ton of traffic from Google.

Hooray for landing on the first page of a good Google search! Having a post that ranks well on Google is gold in terms of views. But those clicks don’t necessarily have anything to do with dollars. For example, if you choose to write on Medium and you’re enrolled in the Partner Program, that program only takes into account the engagement of subscribers. It’s unlikely that most of the clicks from a Google search will happen to be from subscribers, so those views won’t affect your payment.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have written a lot of posts with tens of thousands of views and more. There are enormous benefits to having a lot of views! But people often think that getting a lot of views means that you’ll earn a lot of money directly from those clicks and that’s the end of it. They get bitterly disappointed when they find out that things don’t actually work that way. Then they decide that’s the end of the road and give up or move on to the next post.

But it’s not the end of the road if you don’t want it to be.

Pageviews are just the beginning

Don’t give up! If you have posts that are getting a lot of views, then you have an audience whose eyes are on something that you created. Use this as leverage.

You wrote something! People clicked on it! That’s awesome! Think of your pageviews as the first step on a fabulous new path, not the end of the story.

Don’t be discouraged!

Keep going. Have a plan and make smarter decisions. With a few simple tweaks, you can turn your platform into some pretty powerful leverage.

This article is all about using high pageviews to your advantage. If you’re looking for help getting higher visibility in general, you might want to check out this post:

Before you get started

If you’re planning to submit your posts to a publication, take a look at their guidelines. Some have pretty strict rules about what you can and can’t include in your posts, and if you don’t follow them, they won’t publish you. If you’re writing on Medium, for example, make sure to take a look at the curation guidelines if you haven’t already. You don’t want to cross a line that means your pieces won’t be curated.

Optimize your profile

Start by optimizing your profile on whatever platform you use for your writing. You have a little space available. Use it to say something memorable! Link to a site where you want people to go. Send people to your website or your favorite social media channel. Tell them something that will help them want to follow you and read more of your writing.

You don’t want your writing platform to feel like it has a lot of spam on it, so think about directing people to somewhere more comfortable. Social media is a great place to share links to your books, products, coaching sessions, courses, newsletter signups, affiliate links, and anything else you might use to generate income.

Make sure you have a profile picture. People would rather see your face than an image most of the time, so I do recommend using a picture of yourself. There are some cases where it might make sense to use an image, but they’re the minority. You might be a designer who created a cool image or you have a recognizable and trusted business logo. I’d still go with a picture of yourself, but those would be some pretty valid arguments.

See what a difference these little tweaks can make?

When you look at each of these profiles, what kind of action do you want to take? Do any of them seem more inviting and approachable? Does one of them make you want to read more of my writing?

…are you considering clicking the link?

Think about what you want people to do when they see your profile.

Pay attention to how you interact with author profiles. Are there details that make you want to stay in touch? Details that send you running for the hills?

There’s a good chance that if someone is checking out your profile it’s because she’s interested in learning more. Think about what you want her to see! Do you want her to check out more of your writing? Do you have a question you’d like to ask her? Do you want to say hi and extend an invitation? Give it some thought!

The details you include are a matter of personal preference, but take advantage of your little piece of real estate. If you read an awesome piece by a writer and went to her profile, wouldn’t it be cool to see where you could find more of her writing? Would you want to be able to connect with her?

Optimize your posts

Use your posts to generate interest about who you are, what you’re working on, and what else you’ve written. It doesn’t matter if you have a business or a blog, a novel or an invention. If people are checking out your posts, you have an audience who might be interested in what you’re doing.

That interest can lead to projects, consultations, and collaborations. It can mean an endless number of opportunities that you might not have even considered. Set up your posts in a way that will get more eyes on what you’re doing and what you’ve already done. Add links to (relevant) posts to get some more love on your less popular pieces. Help people get interested in your writing and what can happen might surprise you.

If you have a blog that you’ve monetized, use your post to invite people over there! Don’t be gross about it, of course. But do it! If you have a link that makes sense to include, get that baby in there! Not only does it make it infinitely more likely that someone will check out another one of your pieces, but Google loves links.

You want Google to like your posts. Trust me.

I promise, no one reading a random article you wrote knows that you have a blog unless you just told them about it. So tell them! (But don’t be gross.)

Establish yourself as an expert

You have a platform! You have this space where you can share your ideas and skills. You may even have readers. Take advantage of it! Position yourself as an expert or an influencer and you might just become one. People want to work with experts and influencers. They expect to spend extra money doing it. They might even have a budget set aside for exactly that!

What are you great at doing? Be as specific and consistent as makes sense and make sure that people know what you can help them with. I’m definitely not telling you to only write about one thing all the time and nothing else. Just make sure you’re consistently putting out focused pieces that set you apart from the competition. If you have some amazing knowledge that you can share, share it often and freely! Being an expert in something and sharing what you know can help you discover a loyal audience of people who are truly interested in what you’re writing about. People who want your ideas and advice.

People who are willing to pay for your ideas and advice…

Here’s the cool part: when you start to become an expert and influencer, people will start to reach out to you with projects and ideas. Projects mean profit! Long before I considered turning writing into a career and creating Content Simplicity, people started reaching out to me for consultations and with project ideas because of the success of my posts. I’ve been lucky enough to meet incredible people, have amazing conversations, try cool products, and consult on new technologies. I’ve had dozens of experiences that I probably never would have had otherwise.

Create an email list

I know.

This is that thing that everyone says, but you don’t see how it makes sense for you. I get that! But it’s also the one thing everyone says they regret not having started right away. You have the opportunity to connect with a lot of people who want to read your writing. Engage with them! Or at least, keep them in the loop with your posts. You may find yourself with a book, podcast, product, or company in the future and really wish that you had started connecting with interested people and building your email list a lot earlier.

Don’t wait. Do this now while you have a lot of interested readers so you can start building relationships that will last into the future.

Just remember that most publications don’t want you to add a big spammy call-to-action (CTA) on your posts, so you probably shouldn’t do that if you’re using a platform that doesn’t belong to you. But you might choose to include a quick link! You can always make sure your email signup is available through a link you include in your profile.

Start a business

If want to do some freelance writing, designing, or consulting on a topic you’ve been writing about and you’ve written some great content and gotten good page views, what are you waiting for? Start a business! You now have an online portfolio of writing with some real results that you can point to. Plus, you have an audience of people interested in what you’re writing. Mention in your posts that you’ve started your business or write posts about starting your business. Write about what you’re doing and people might start reaching out to you because they want to pay you for what you have to offer.

Start a blog

Okay. The blog-starting advice is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t already have one and don’t know what you’re doing, starting a blog can be a brutal process. But you should do it if you have the time and energy.

You’re already writing. Why not have a safe place of your own where your writing lives? You can take your time making it look and feel the way you want it to. You can build interest and make it work for you. When you’ve built something you’re proud of and you have visitors, you can look at monetizing that thing with ads, affiliate links, and so on. You’ll have a place where you can sell your products and services and so much more.

If you have decent pageviews, don’t wait! Let people know where else they can find you while you have their attention. You don’t know what the future holds, so take advantage of your success now.

If you’re interested in getting more views, Medium makes it ridiculously simple to import blog posts. Sign up, then go to your profile image and drop down the menu to “Stories.”

On your “Stories” page click “Import a Story.”

Then add your link!

Next, you’ll see this screen reminding you to check your imported story. Do it! I often have to go back and add in all of my images separately.

Medium will take care of canonical links and automatically include a link at the bottom of your story to your original post. It couldn’t be easier.

If you’re interested in starting a blog and you don’t know what you’re doing, Wordpress is great for beginners and they have a totally free option. (There are a lot of ways you can start a blog, of course, but Wordpress is pretty fantastic for complete beginners who want their own site.)

You might, however, want a lot more freedom than you get with the free option. If you decide that a better blog is something that you want to spend money on, Wordpress is also crazy easy to customize once you have a basic sense of how things work.

If you have a little background in website creation (or a lot of drive to try something new), you can set up a completely free site with GitHub Pages!

There are a number of ways to monetize your blog if you do start one. Be aware that on Wordpress, the good options are pretty much only viable with the business plan. If monetizing your blog is a dream of yours, it’s likely that you’ll only make pennies at first (if you’re lucky). You’ll want to balance that reality against the cost of creating and maintaining your site. But if you decide to go that route, you can use your pageviews to drive ads, affiliate links, sell your products and books, and so on.

Remember that getting to a point where any of these things generates real money takes an insane amount of time, effort, and luck. If you don’t have those things right now, just don’t worry about it! You have other options.

Apply for things that you think are out of reach

This is the tactic that most people forget and it’s huge.

You’re doing something amazing. You’re writing and people are reading what you’re writing. You’re creating an online portfolio of successful pieces. Make sure you include links to your profile in your applications and on social media. Mention it in your cover letters or conversations.

Remember that you have something really cool to offer. Something awesome that you’ve already done.

If there’s a job you want, go for it! If you want to apply for work as a writer, you’re building a pretty cool portfolio. If there are connections you’d like to make, reach out! If there are programs you can’t afford, apply for scholarships and include your writing successes in your application. It might just be that one special detail that sets you apart in a sea of equally qualified candidates.

You have endless opportunities when it comes to leveraging the successes you’ve already had. You can absolutely turn your high pageviews into real profits. Just start with these five simple tactics:

• Establish yourself as an expert to discover opportunities
• Optimize your profile to drive traffic and connections
• Start a blog that you can monetize
• Create an email list for future sales
• Apply for things that you think are out of reach

and see what happens!

High pageviews aren’t some get-rich-quick scheme. But they are a huge opportunity. Take advantage of it!

Do you have more ideas for turning your pageviews into profits? Let everyone know about them in the comments below or connect with me any time.

Thanks for reading!