How Do I make a Website Profitable? Where can revenue come from besides selling items or info?

Question

I am thinking of designing a website, the idea is new and not found on the web and very useful. I do not however know how this will generate revenue because i am not selling anything but would like to provide links to places that do. How do i get paid for driving traffic to othe site, some which are big companies.

Answer 1

You are thinking of cost per action or affiliate programs. Basically, a company pays you for referring a visitor to do a predefined course of action -- whether it is a lead or a sale or a registration.

To get income from referring traffic, that is called advertising and advertisers have to advertise on your site. There are two models for this: cost per thousand CPM or cost per click CPC. CPM is basically you get paid a set/predetermined amount -- say $2 CPM -- for every thousand impressions you show the ad. For example, you showed the banner 100,000 times (or impressions) so 100,000/1,000 x $2 = Income of $200. CPC on the other hand allows you to earn everytime the banner or ad is clicked = say the rate is $.10 per click and the ad shown on your site gets clicked 1,000 times so $0.10 x 1,000 = $100

Here are the main business models you can adopt:

1. Sell products on the Web - Big boys like Amazon or Lillian Vernon online catalog or smaller businesses like BigKidsVideo.com or Candle4Less.com all sell products on the Web.

You can either sell: (a) through your own storefront through your own website or applications such as Yahoo Stores; or (b) sell through online auctions like eBay

2. Information Delivery. Others such as About.com or EuropeforVisitors.com create content and monetize their content in a number of ways:

a. Advertising - From the article "How to Generate Advertising Revenues for Your Web Site" http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol28/adrevenues.htm , there are several ways you can earn money from advertising:

1. Join an advertising network. Advertising networks are organizations that aggregate Web sites that offer advertising space, and sell banner ads (and other advertising options) across them. Traffic requirement is often a minimum of 5,000 monthly impressions, although many do not accept sites hosted by free page services.

Burst Media http://www.burstmedia.com
Fastclick (ValueClick). http://www.fastclick.com
Advertising.com. http://www.advertising.com
Tribal Fusion http://www.tribalfusion.com

2. Participate in contextual advertising networks. Contextual advertising are text ads delivered based on the content of the web page using an automated system.

Google Adsense https://www.google.com/adsense/
Yahoo! Publishing Network (currently in beta and available to US publishers only) http://publisher.yahoo.com/
Intellixt http://vibrantmedia.com/site/web_01a5.htm
Quigo Adsonar http://www.quigo.com/adsonarexchange.htm
IndustryBrains http://www.industrybrains.com
Commission Junction Evolution http://www.cj.com

3. Sell advertising for your site directly. This is admittedly a more difficult route for a small business site wanting to earn advertising revenues. But hey, as they say: "no pain, no gain!"

b. Affiliate Programs - you sell other people's products that your audience may be interested in; and you get a certain commission after the desired action was done (whether a sale, a lead, subscription to email newsletter, or however this is defined)

c. Paid online content. Hoovers.com or WebmasterWorld.com Supporters forum all require paid subscription before accessing the information

d. Content licensing and syndication. Some publishers such as the Associated Press get paid every time their content is published elsewhere

Answer 2

I suggest you do some more research, because although you may have a GREAT idea, someone is probably already doing it.

That being the case, the easiest way to find out what to do right / wrong is to research what your competitors are doing that works and doesn't work.

For instance, many small websites use affiliate links to generate income. It doesn't amount to much, but if you have a popular website, it can pay the bills. But who / what is going to drive traffic to YOUR website? I don't mean to discourage you, but it's not as simple as it looks to create an income-generating website.

My 2nd suggestions (the first is to research your competitors, because right now you don't even seem to be aware that you'll have any) is to purchase some eBooks (they're cheapest on eBay) about creating websites, selling on the internet, and writing ad copy that sells. Those are the basics for any on-line business.

Answer 3

try advertising.... there good u get paid i think dollar a month BUT you can have unlimited advertisers on u but your site has to be full of traffic so compeitors like Dell would pay you quite more than a Dollar a month.... so i say try advertising im going to open up my site also next year cause imma learn it this year at school..... so i hopeing i would make quite around 80 bucks a year for a 14 year old..lol. but if you have major (leading) companies your gonna make more than a Dollar.... I heard some guy becoming hella rich by just making a site (wonder if it is true)

Answer 4

Affilate advertising is one way but it can be time consuming. Google adsense and similar ventures will cut down the time needed to deal with advertising as they choose the ads that are displayed.
If your site is very informative and worthwhile you can put donate through paypal section on the site to solicit funds.

Answer 5

Use something like Google Adsense, I think it pays you to put ads on your website.

Answer 6

Well, people will pay to put commercials on your website and if you get used enough people will pay to have their link on your website... i think thats mostly it... you could sell stock on your cite i guess...

Answer 7

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