Movie websites have one of the highest engagement rates and revenues. We’re referring to movie blogs, review sites, forums, movie catalogs, and legal streaming services.
Do you want to learn how to earn money from a movie website? You’ve arrived at the right place. Follow us as we explain the proven methods to monetize a movie website.
How to earn money from a movie website
Advertising
Advertising is the fastest way to earn revenue from a movie’s website content. You place an ad slot and start getting paid when visitors view advertisements, click them, or buy something from an advertiser.
You can sell advertising space directly to, say, e-shops, but most webmasters resort to ad networks. A trick to finding the best one is to look for advertising networks with lots of entertainment ads, like AdSense and Adsterra.
Another trick is to pick an ad network that is friendly to iGaming and sports traffic because advertisers from these niches love movie websites. People who watch movies and TV series are more inclined to play online and support their favorite teams.
Adsterra hosts 15,000+ advertisers across many niches, including entertainment, iGaming, and sports. Get your website visitors connected with relevant offers and increase your earnings.
To Contents ↑Examples of movie sites monetization
Advice from practitioners always works better than theory. And here are examples of how video content sites have been generating high income for years.
It’s not always possible to stream video content. Serious legal restrictions and copyright protection laws make this niche available only to big players. That’s why our publisher found a new niche: he earns up to $14,000 per month from several websites where he posts perfectly optimized news about movies and TV series. Read Udin’s case study and find out how he makes money on movie traffic from Indonesia, India, and the USA.
Films without films. This is a unique story of a blogger and enthusiast from China who is so passionate about cinema that he created a website with trailers. He’s a real sleuth who finds the best search terms, optimizes trailer descriptions and streams totally legal content. Find out how Zhaohui makes $9,000 a month from traffic from Asia.
Which ad types to choose?
Diverse ad types can fit a movie website. These include Popunders, In-Page Push, Social Bars, Banners, and Interstitials. But pay attention to the density of commercials: people come to watch your content, not advertisements. It’s better to mix formats that don’t disturb users while they’re consuming videos. For instance, Popunder ads open up in a separate browser tab. Add a Social Bar unit, and you’ll get a profitable combo.
To Contents ↑Tips for increasing earnings with your movie website:
- Don’t ignore sports fans and online players. Choose ad networks that host iGaming advertisers.
- Allow all types of ads unless your website is only about movies for kids.
- Place ad slots on the most viewable parts of the web page, but ensure the navigation elements are not overlapped.
- If you have no ad space on your website, resort to Direct Link. That’s a simple URL you can add to any piece of text.
Affiliate marketing
Movie websites often promote movie-related products to their audience and collect commissions on sales they generate. For example, a movie review site can promote movie tickets or DVD sets to readers. The site owner collects an agreed-upon commission if someone buys the ticket or DVD.
The above monetization model is called affiliate marketing and is very popular because it’s a win-win for both parties. It’s a productive partnership that boosts the advertiser’s brand and earns you higher revenue.
To Contents ↑Subscription models
You can earn revenue by charging users to access content. The key is producing content valuable enough for readers to pay. Advisably, have free content to introduce readers to your website and lock some content behind a paywall. For example, if you run a popular movie news site, readers can access your news articles for free but must subscribe to access exclusive scoops.
The subscription model is beneficial because it provides a steady revenue stream that you can count on.
Sponsorships and partnerships
Brand sponsorships and partnerships are good ways to earn money from movie websites. If you have a loyal audience, you can partner with brands seeking to reach that target audience. For example, you run a popular forum for the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) movie franchise. You can partner with a company selling LOTR-branded merchandise– you’ll market its product to your audience and collect ad revenue. The partnership represents a win-win for you and the company.
Movie merchandise and products
You can earn revenue by selling movie-branded merchandise directly to your fans. This includes shirts, posters, mugs, collectables, phone cases, and other branded merchandise. However, ensure you have permission to promote and sell such items. Many movies are fiercely guarded intellectual properties, and you could be sued if you promote and sell branded merchandise without the owner’s permission.
Donations
If you have a loyal audience, you can request donations from readers to support your movie website. Most readers will likely not donate, but the few who do might be enough to support your website and earn significant profit.
Collecting website donations has become as simple as ever. You can use a payment processor to embed a donation button on your website, and users are free to donate any amount.
Source: Open Culture
SEO and traffic generation
Optimizing your movie website to rank high on search engines can increase traffic, leading to more revenue opportunities. SEO writing involves using the right keywords people generally search for, enhancing your website’s user experience, using proper article headings, and constantly adapting to search engine algorithm changes.
Search engines are the primary source of organic traffic for websites. SEO writing helps you get organic traffic and, in turn, higher revenue when you put ads on your website.
To Contents ↑Email marketing
Building an email list is a good way to promote and make money from a website. You can insert a form on your website to collect email addresses from readers. Then, you can send regular newsletters to these addresses to keep them engaged. You can share movie updates and include advertisements or affiliate links in your newsletter. It provides an extra medium to earn more affiliate revenue from your efforts to maintain a movie website.
One of Adsterra’s publishers has worked out a surefire strategy to generate profits from email traffic:
Step 1. Getting email subscriptions;
Step 2. Engaging users to visit a website;
Step 3. Growing revenue from Popunder ads Learn more about the strategy that prompted a 20% revenue growth.
Conclusion
A movie website can be lucrative if you play your cards right. Creating such a website has become as easy as ever – you can use free blog platforms or content management systems to do it quickly. The work lies in producing and monetizing content; we’ve explained how to do the latter in this article.
Adsterra is a reliable ad network for movie website publishers. It is trusted by 15K+ advertisers from the Entertainment, E-commerce, Sports, and Software niches. Brands are ready to pay high and increase CPM rates for quality traffic, and your site could be one of those that sends it. We connect you to lucrative advertisers in the movie niche to monetize your content.
To Contents ↑FAQs
Yes, they are legal as long as you don’t infringe on copyrighted content or claim to have control over the intellectual property. You can run movie blogs, forums, review sites, directories, etc., without legal issues. Ensure to credit the owner wherever you use third-party content.
Some types of movie websites are illegal, such as streaming platforms without content licensing agreements. Engaging in such activity could result in serious legal trouble.
Source: IMDb
Movies are copyrighted content, and uploading them without permission is frowned upon. Sometimes, you can upload snippets of content and credit the owner, but uploading full movies is a no-no. The owner can sue you and get awarded a hefty sum, so avoid uploading copyrighted content to your website.
