How can I make money running an informational website?

Question

I would like to start a website in which I provide information about vairous topics for Mothers/parents. I.E. Breastfeeding info, cloth diapering, money saving tips, etc. I don't want to have to sell anything. How do these sites make money? Any tips? Thanks.

Answer 1

For an information-based website, there are a number of ways to earn money. Others such as About.com or EuropeforVisitors.com create content and monetize their content in a number of ways:

a. Advertising - 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
Kanoodle Brightads http://www.kanoodle.com/about/brightads.html
Clicksor http://www.clicksor.com/affiliate_programs.php
Contextweb http://www.contextweb.com/
Bidclix http://www.bidclix.com/
Bidvertiser http://www.bidvertiser.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!"

4. 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)

5. Paid online content. Hoovers.com or WebmasterWorld.com Supporters forum all require paid subscription before accessing the information. You can have a free section for non-members and a paid section for subscribers.

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

Answer 2

Yes I agree Google adsense is the way to go. That makes some serious money on the right website. Right I mean well visited.

Answer 3

Ads and affiliate programs. There is an articles on this site about how informational sites make money.

Answer 4

Affiliate Links from cj.com and linkshare.com, oh, and of course, Amazon.com, all are good sources for "affiliate marketing". Oh yeah, and Google Adsense to!

I hope you have a lot of time though, it's very time consuming the first year or so to learn, and apply the ways to utilize affiliate marketing your way, because there are tons of features, ads, banners, etc to choose from, and track, it's a lot of work!

Answer 5

I will like to go into this type of business to..Kindly contact me on [e-mail]