As your websites grow older there are times when few of your pages are not available due to obselescence of links or for few other reasons and what your visitors get is 404 error page. In a simple word, the page they are looking is no longer in existence.
Most of us think 404 error page is useless. Yes, indeed UNLESS you can turn the error page into something pleasant and you should be able to monetize your blog via this page. A simple way of monetizing your website via this page is by adding affiliates link.
Take a look at the following examples.
HomeStarRunner error page 2
HomeStarRunner error page 1
Yeah, they are unique and amusing. If you can turn your 404 error page into something that is appealing as your main sites with the addition of few lines like..
"The page you are looking for is not available. Please go back to our main page or or take a look at the following offer..Offer 1, Offer 2 etc"
you will definitely turn your "useless" 404 error page into a profitable page. Say you have decent traffic, as time goes by, try to keep tracking on the conversion rate of 404 error page. Even if it's just small earnings you got from that page, something is ALWAYS better than nothing :)
Technorati Tags: monetize website, 404 error page, tips, earn money online
Jan 3, 2007 at 07:58:54
Wow… totally over looked that one. What an great way to utilize a dead page. Nice work bringing that to everyone’s attention. I will be sure to do something with my 404 pages… not sure if I will advertise on them… but something definately will be done with them.
I might possibly try to create a page that explains to viewers that the page has been moved or removed, etc… but also publish the page in a way which balances communicating the proper message against making sure that the 404 page doesn’t knock points away from my Google SEO.
In either case, it sure does get you to thinking… “What can I do with all my 404’s!”
- Garry
Jan 3, 2007 at 08:35:25
Thanks for the tips. I have been noticed that before but haven’t really use yet.
Jan 3, 2007 at 10:44:41
Great tip man …
Jan 3, 2007 at 15:12:34
Thanks for a such a good tips but i cant adopt as i am still using blogger space.
Can u suggest me any other ways of generating revenue from my blog.
Jan 3, 2007 at 15:18:17
abhishekbhatnagar,
The best thing you can do is get off blogger and upgrade to your own hosted Wordpress.org
I don’t even think Wordpress.com does this for you… you have to download Wordpress.org and setup on your own hosting.