How to Monetize a Site

byKFowkes

97 followers

Updated 8 years ago

Hi! I'm a newbie with WA but finding it to be a warm, friendly and exciting place full of knowledgeable folk in exactly the way I need! :-) I hope I will also be able to contribute and be a help to others. I have been a freelance editor and proofreader for my entire adult life. I love reading, writing and helping others.

I'm going to put this out there, because it's specific to my goals. But's it's an extremely narrow niche, so I want to explain it first and I hope those of you who read this will understand even if you aren't able to relate. :-)

Ever since I was a child I have had a keen interest in spiritual matters. I study religions because it fascinates me, all the various ways we approach God. I was fascinated by near death experience books as a teen and have had a number of spiritual experiences of my own, especially related to my children before they were born. I've since learned they are similar to near-death experiences and are referred to as pre-birth experiences and/or announcing dreams and occur to people of all religions, nationalities, and walks of life.

In 1996 (I was 31) I met a woman, Sarah Hinze, who wrote about experiences similar to my own. Sarah was the guest speaker at my writer's group meeting. I had never heard of what she described except for my own experiences, and I was both fascinated and skeptical. By the end of her talk, I knew I wanted to work with her and share her message because it was so full of hope and healing. (Actually, studies have now proven that people who read near death experiences and the like benefit in similar ways to the experience as the experiencers do. Fascinating!)

So I've been helping her since then. I wrote her first website with pure HTML I had taught myself using online tutorials. We transferred it in later years to www.sarahhinze.com and I switched over to a Wordpress design so she could blog. Last year we also created www.thecastaways.world to focus even more narrowly on a specific type of pre-birth experience. We originally planned on this site being more than it is with parenting advice, information about adoption, and so on. But we haven't expanded like we intended. She also doesn't get much exposure and her books aren't selling like we'd hoped. However, anyone who actually does read her books comes away uplifted and positively changed. These accounts she shares in her books are very powerful and moving. (I also edit and proofread her books, format them and then publish them through CreateSpace and Kindle. My husband, a graphic designer, does her covers.)

So my goal here at WA is to learn how to market her site and her books, and learn other ways to generate income to pay for our travel and publishing expenses. Her books and her message bring hope, healing and joy. I want to help spread that as far as it can go. I believe at WA I can learn how to do just that! :-) I have added the two websites I maintain for her to my profile and I'm going through the courses available as fast as I can. I can hardly wait to absorb all the learning here!

Any suggestions to improve and monetize the site will be welcome! We've been kind of shooting in the dark up until now. And let it be known, as an editor myself, I love constructive criticism. Blunt, direct, anything. I have no feelings to hurt! I just want to finally get this mission off the ground and into the hands of readers everywhere and we don't have to best way of doing that yet or it would have already happened.

Thank you in advance! You guys are an awesome community, that much I've already discovered!