How to Make Money Online With Digital Real Estate

First off, the topic needs a little explanation. We all know what making money is. Right? 

Even if you are not aware of this awesome phenomenon, just hang in there to get an insight.

Coming back to the explanation part, many of us may not be aware of the term digital real estate. So, what exactly is it? 

I know you are smart enough to get there before my explanation. You have already sorted out the analogy with physical real estate.

You sell or rent the physical real estate to get money—actually, a lot of it. Similarly, digital real estate is any online asset that you can sell or rent to earn money. 

What are these assets in the digital world? They can include a website, a blog, a Youtube channel, a domain name, or even a social media account.

Let’s have a look at how to encash them.

Ways Of Making Money Through Digital Real Estate

There are plenty of digital assets you can acquire overtime to make money off them. It’s always best to choose something you’re good at.

Websites

Websites are the commercial apartments in the digital world. You can invest in them by either building them from scratch or by purchasing them if you have enough money. 

However, the already established websites are really expensive.

Why are they expensive? Because they are already generating profits for their owners, and nobody kills a goose that lays golden eggs. 

The owners sell websites only when they have a chance to earn a lot more profit than their monthly earnings from the website.

On the other hand, building a website from scratch is also profitable. The initial investments are low with content management systems such as WordPress. However, running a website efficiently is a real painstaking task.

It would be best if you worked hard to plan keywords that sell. To solve the problem, you can benefit from software such as Google Keyword planner and many others to get a hold of profitable keywords that can generate traffic.

Anyway, the process is lengthy and frustrating. No matter which path you choose, creating the content yourself or hiring freelancers, ranking a website is not easy. 

There are ways other than keyword planning to generate traffic for your website that include:

1. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a referral based system. Think about using your commercial apartment as an outlet for another business. In the same manner, affiliate marketing involves selling someone else’s product on your website.

The number of times the other product sells through your website, the owner pays you an agreed-upon commission.

2. Selling Advertising Space on the Website

You can always rent out a room in your apartment to a paying guest. The same applies to the realm of digital real estate. You can rent out space on your website to another business.

The other business can place their ads in the allotted space and generate traffic through your website’s click-through-rate.

3. Sponsored Content from Other Businesses

In the digital world, businesses are always on the hunt for getting visibility. They will pay you money to write posts, do integrations and PR activities. The content generated by this process is known as sponsored content because the other business pays you for that.

4. Making Your Own Brand

Just like you buy a lot and build a property over it or buy an older property and flip it, you can create your own brand with the website. This is basically creating a whole business from scratch, which requires investment and commitment. 

It could be anything really, as long as you can grow the website with it. Once you’ve established your brand, you can sell it to prospective buyers. Good websites with tens of thousands of monthly visitors can be worth thousands of dollars. 

Blogs

Blogs are basically websites. 

However, there are differences between a website and a blog. Blogs are usually more dynamic with continuous updates as compared to a static website that updates occasionally.

Blogs are usually content-centric websites that do not have a physical inventory to sell. Instead, they sell content, which could be anything from articles to videos. 

Typically, blogs are associated with businesses that sell products or services. However, there are thousands of giant personal blogs as well.

Moving towards the critical part, how can you start a successful blog? Well, again, the content management systems such as WordPress and medium come into play. 

To make an analogy with physical real estate, a blog is an apartment that needs continuous renovation. Sounds meh, Right? But it is what it is. The blog is a high-maintenance digital real estate.

The content of a blog needs to be worthy. You cannot just beat about the bush with a blog. 

The only way to run a successful blog is to give value to the readers with continuous updates to the content. 

Now, let’s move on to some ways in which blogs make their owners money:

1. Guest Posting for Brands

The starting point for a blog is great content that builds authority in a niche. You can guest post for other blogs with a little advertisement to your own blog if you’re already there. This way, your blog will get traffic, and ultimately it will help you monetize the blog.

2. Banner Ads for Other Businesses

You can earn money by contacting other businesses to place their ads on either the top or the sidebars of your blog. Yeah, specifically these two positions because these are banner ads. You could also use Google Ads on your website which generates passive income.

Although there’s a lot of maths involved with the cost-per-click and the cost-per-thousand methods of digital advertising, it is worth it. 

3. Affiliate Content

As explained in the earlier section, affiliate content is a referral based system. You work with other businesses and brands to help promote their product or service, or simply divert traffic to their website. 

The basics remain the same. You feature a product from another website of your niche. Someone clicks through, purchases it, and you get a commission from the purchase.

4. Selling a Digital Product

Bloggers do this regularly. They make a digital product such as a course or a webinar to make their subscribers learn new things while making money through registrations.

It is an easy way to make money through a blog if you’re an expert in your niche and can provide value for money.

Social Media Profiles / Instagram

There are many other social media platforms to make money, but I have chosen Instagram here. Why? It is relatively easy to make money on Instagram due to the nature of the platform.

The thing about Instagram is that you can make money either as an individual or a business entity. With a user base of more than 1 billion accounts and a business-centric approach, Instagram is ideal for making online money without a blog or website.

Moving forward with the legacy of analogy creation with physical real estate, Instagram is a petrol pump in the digital world. You need to invest time to get paid, but the outcomes are massive.

Let’s see what the ways of making money through an Instagram account are:

1. Become an Influencer

Influencer marketing is on a roll. If you know how to position yourself well and create visual content that generates traffic, there’s nothing better than opting to become an influencer.

Just make sure to pick your niche wisely because high competition niches will not do any good to you. You may have a huge following, but your competitors are shooting for the stars, and the big guns will let you down.

2. Choose Online Selling

If you have an inventory to sell, photograph it, and upload it on an Instagram business account. The ease of Instagram becomes eminent when it comes to switching from a personal account to a business account.

It is only a few-step process, and you’re set to showcase your products to the thriving, young market.

3. Sell Your Visual Inventory

If you’re a photographer, Instagram is your platform. You can sell your photographs to companies and even get them licensed, for which you earn money.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of potential in the digital real estate market, but it is not easy. Unlike buying physical real estate, digital ones require a bit more involvement and work. 

Anyone who promises fast results is a scam. Trust me, it takes consistent effort to get good cash out of digital real estate, but millions worldwide are doing it, so why not you?

    Prab Premkumar is the owner of FinancialWolves.com. Financial Wolves is a blog focused on helping you make more money to achieve financial freedom. After repaying student loans, I’ve shifted my focus to make more money from side hustles, real estate, freelancing, and the online economy. Follow us on Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.

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