Making An Internet Business?

Question

Alright..

Let's say I have a checking account with 200 Dollars in it.

I buy a website domain for 20 Bucks. For a whole year.
Can I possibly make any money off of this? I have heard of people getting an upwards of numbers in the 4s and 5s.


And if i do make money would it be wise to expand it to sell products and such?

Answer 1

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

You can get a domain cheaper than that but Im guessing that includes some space to put a webpage. That would be about average for that. You can spend less (about $5/year) to get a domain and park it on a free site, just to start out. Or you an pay quite abit more to get more done for you and more toys already leaded to play with. But its best to start small until the site proves itself. The domain can be moved to another location later without losing any of its builtup traffic and reputation.

Many people make money. But I highly suggest that should not be your purpose. Those tend to crash horribly. To make a site work, it needs to be a love. Some subject that you are willing to put time in on. Any subject.

Then you create a site. Add content. It can be your own, maybe a blog. It can be others by linking to articles and basically reviewing them such as "I found this and its great". Or even community created such as a chat forum. But what you want is to become THE one-stop place to come to in order to find the best info on that topic.

You can add to it based on that topic. Google-ads which google provides if the seller puts that word as a keyword so they are always on the theme. Or Amazon lets you link to book pages and other sellable items. There are many ways to get a commission for traffic you send to other sellers. WIth some searching you can find the perfect stuff for your subject, and get some money for pointing people to it.

Or you can create your own items. Get a shopping cart hookup with someplace like PayPal. Or create items on CafePress (mugs, tshirts, bumperstickers, posters).

Everything can be done for very cheap. Usually even free. And then when you prove to yourself that you can make something worthwhile from it, move up to a paid arrangement that is more stable and has more built-in goodies.

So it goes like this....
Lets say you have a thing for flobs. It doesnt matter what flob is, item, hobby, sport, pet, country, sexual preference, whatever. And it doesnt matter if you are for or against it.

You create a Flob site. Maybe a free one. Or you go someplace helps you pick out a cool domain name with flob in it. You find and link to every interesting thing on the net about flob. And you start writing about flob. You create a flob blog on a blog site and link to it where you start writing about flob and reviewing other sites things about flob. You create a flob forum on a forum site and link to it so that you can start fights about flob. Ummm I mean discussions.

You get google-ads for anything having to do with flob. You search amazon for books and CDs on flob so you can link to them. You find flob equipment online and link to it. All of those for commission on referals.

You come up with cute sayings about flob and create a shop in CafePress to put it on mugs, tshirts, bumperstickers so you can sell them from your site.

You join forums that are talking about flob and watch for tiems you can casually mention your site. Also watch for more cute sayings to put on shirts, and new items about flob you didnt know about.

Except for registering a domain, all of that was free. Eventually the site gets too big, has too much traffic, and becomes too much work so you sell it to a flob company then pick a new subject to do it all over again.