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Google Offers A Way To Monetize Site Content
Recently, Google released a new avenue for website owners to monetize the content on their website. It’s called the Google Consumer Surveys publisher network. So what happens when you sign up for it?
With this approach, you’re not required to pay any money, but there is a catch. Visitors to your website will have to answer a few surveys. In return, they will get access to your content, and you will be paid for each question they have answered.
From the visitor’s perspective, the experience seems reminiscent of websites that use “pay walls” to access their content. A pay wall requires users to pay some sort of one-time fee or subscription fee to view the content on that site. One well-known website that uses a pay wall is The Wall Street Journal.
Now, Google Consumer Surveys and pay walls are similar in some senses. Both are going to block you out of viewing content on a website, but one will require you to pay and one will require you to answer just a few questions. This means that the visitor gets to keep their money (good for them!). With this being introduced, it is more feasible for website owners to generate an extra revenue stream. The rates at the moment are 5 cents an answer, and the individuals who create the surveys are charged a variable rate, but 10 cents per survey is typical.
Those who create the surveys get to harness the power of Google’s AdSense network to assist them with market research. For them, Google Consumer Surveys could be a relatively inexpensive way to get important marketing questions answered, such as what new logo to use, how open their target market is to new ideas and products, and many others.
Website owners will be able to choose where they want the surveys to show up, so at least visitors won’t be completely bombarded by surveys wherever they go. If you’d like to add a such a survey to your website, you need to have an AdSense account, and your visitors need to be at least 18 years in age. It’s not at all what one usually thinks of in terms of content marketing, but it could work out for some site owners and market researchers.
-Zack Rivera, Marketing Coordinator
