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How To Make Money With Your Website

Or

How To Run A Website And Not Go Broke

Starting a website or a web based business can be very different from starting a traditional “brick and mortar” business. With a traditional business you have a much higher start-up cost. Buildings, inventory, payroll, can often make the cost of entry to high for the average person.
With an Internet, or Web based business the start-up cost can be almost nothing. If you build the website using free software the only costs associated would be the initial domain registration and first year’s web hosting. If you buy economy host from sites such as SquareSpace.com or Godaddy.com the cost could be less than $100. Even then you could go with a free hosting solution and only pay for your domain name and get started for around $10.
The unique thing with web based businesses is the cost to run it starts to go up after it gets popular. As your website starts to generate a larger and larger amount of traffic the bandwidth cost can start to go up. If you’re an online retailer it’s not as bad because this usually means that you’re selling more. If you’re not a retail web site the question comes up

“How do I Make money with my website”?

Sell Advertising

1. Sell “Pay-Per-Click” advertising.

This is when an advertiser only pays you when someone clicks on their banner ad. This model is very popular with advertisers because they know they will get people to visit their site. However it’s not as popular with publishers because it may take a while for them to generate enough revenue to make it worth their time.

Pros: Rates for pay-per-click advertising are typically higher than pay-per-impression advertising. Rates vary depending on the website and the demographics of the traffic it generates. Rates range from a few cents, to ten’s of dollars, and higher per click. If you have a website that targets a very specialized demographic you could charge more per click than someone who runs a more general website.

Cons: Unless you’re a big website (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.) you probably don’t have the web traffic to generate enough clicks to make it worth your time. With any advertising you have to establish your website as credible on the topic you cover for advertisers to consider advertising on it.

2. Sell Impression Based Advertising.

With this advertising model you tell an advertiser that their ad will be seen a certain number of times. For example you could sell someone 10,000 impressions. This means that their ad will be seen 10,000 times. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the ad will be seen by 10,000 different people. Just that it will be seen 10,000 times. This method of advertising is similar to traditional print or display advertising. In addition to clicks, the main benefit to advertisers is brand awareness and name recognition. Even if no one clicks on the banner ad there is still value in being seen so many times.
The best thing you can do to sell impression based advertising is to sell the benefits of brand awareness and name recognition combined with the call to action “Click Here”. If presented correctly Impression based advertising can be the best value of advertisers.

Pros: It’s easy to track the impressions and even if your website doesn’t receive a lot of traffic you can still sell ads. It may take you a month or two to get 10,000 impressions but you can still deliver the impressions. Again the advertising rates vary but are usually set on a per 1,000 impressions basis. The rates should be based on your web sites demographic. If you’re not sure how much to charge just start low and then gradually increase the rate until you start loosing advertisers. If you lose to many advertisers your rates are to high, if you have to many advertisers your rates are to low. You want to achieve what’s known as a “healthy rate of vacancy”. Let’s be honest though, you would have to have a lot of advertisers to start complaining about having to many advertisers.

Cons: Many advertisers are resistant to buying something they perceive as being intangible. Many advertisers are accustomed to advertising platforms such as Google and Facebook where they can buy a set number of clicks. It can be hard for advertisers to see the value in impression based advertising.

3. Sign Up For An Affiliate Program

Many retail websites offer programs where they give you a piece of HTML code that will insert a banner ad and track visitors that leave your website and then go to theirs. You get paid when they spend money on their site.

Pros: These programs are free and very easy to get. All you need to do is find companies that offer products or services that your website visitors would be interested in. Then just insert the HTML code on your site and let it go. The amount you get paid will vary from company to company so look around and find the best one from your site

Cons: If your website’s visitors don’t buy anything from your advertisers, you don’t make any money.

4. Trade Links

Teaming up is always a good thing. Contact friends that have websites and trade links. This is always good because it’s free and many times easy to do. Many sites have a page or links to partner websites. Usually if you add a link to someone’s site they will link back to your site. Link exchange programs can be banner ads or text links. To see our Link Page Click Here.

Pros: It’s free and it’s a great way to make contacts with other websites. It’s a free way to generate web traffic to your site and to increase your web sites SEO search rank. Unless you’re running, or are listed on a Link Farm, if you have other sites link to you it’s a good thing.

Cons: There really aren’t many Cons. The biggest thing you’ll run in to is other sites that don’t have a link exchange program. If that happens just go to the next site.

5. Sign Up With An Ad Placement Service

This isn’t the “go to New York City and meet with an advertising agency”, but you can sign up with free services like Good AdSence Or Commission Junction and display their ads. These type of services scan your website and then display advertising on your site that is related to your content.

Pros: No selling involved. It’s a free service. These services are very helpful but it’s hard to say exactly how you get paid. These sites say that your paid based on both impressions and clicks.

Cons: We’re not sure exactly how the base your commission but it’s a free service that does pay you. Essentially you’re running their ads on your site and they give you a cut of the revenue.

Create a subscription based website.

The magic bullet of Internet success is good content. If you have a website that people want to visit and want to come back to time after time you might be able to sell subscriptions. Many radio personalities have found success with this model. Create a member’s only section and give valuable content that people want and then sell subscriptions. You may need to offer free trails so people can see the value that you offer.

The nice thing with subscriptions is that you can also sell advertising. Potentially you could have two streams of income. The better your content, the more you can charge for a subscription.

Pros: Regular reoccurring income. Need I say more? Also a huge benefit that many publishers don’t see with a subscription based website is that you know exactly who your website visitors are. Publishers can offer better demographic info to advertisers.

Cons: Because of your subscriber’s expectations, maintaining the website may be a full time job. You will need to ensure a very high level information and customer service. Although if you started a subscription website you probably enjoy the website and topic covered so it’s something you would do anyway as a fun hobby. So hopefully it won’t feel like work.

The question is always asked, “Who do I sell to”. The easiest way to start selling is to find local businesses in your town that would be interested in the people that come to your web site and set up a meeting. It’s much easier to sell to someone when you can sit down with them, look them in the eye and explain your passion for your site. If you can clearly and concisely tell them how your site can help them grow there business you will have a much higher rate of success.

In order to monetize your web site you need to generate web traffic. This is your audience that you will sell. Keep in mind the magic bullet is good content. Once that is in place your web traffic will continue to grow.

The two main resources you will need are what you web traffic is and who your web traffic is. The industry standard for reliable web traffic information is Googles Analytics. A great website for getting good web traffic demographics for your site is Quantcast.com. Both are free services. All you need to do is add a small piece of code to your site and they will track everything for you.

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