The cost of setting up a web site is dirt cheap nowadays. You
can register a domain for less than $2.00 as I write this (for
.info domains). Hosting is also very cheap, and getting cheaper
all the time.
So why are so many web sites springing up? Obviously somebody's
making money besides the hosting companies, so here's some idea
starters for you:
1. Sell your own products or services. They should be related to
your target audience. You want to be able to take credit cards
(at least with PayPal if not otherwise) on your site and deliver
your product to your customers as fast as possible.
2. Sell another company's products. There is no shortage of
companies willing to drop ship items for you, all you have to do
is make the sale and place the order with your fulfillment
company, they do all the work, and you profit on the difference
between their price and yours. There are ways to avoid the
hassles some attribute to drop shippers.
3. If you have enough activity to your site, you can sell
advertising space, such as banner, classified, or text ads. Of
course you need to have enough traffic coming to your site
first, so that people have an incentive to want to gain exposure
to your visitors. You might not make a lot from displaying small
text or banner ads, but it can easily pay for your hosting fees,
and enough more to invest in some software scripts that will
make your site that much better.
4. Sign up with Google AdSense or another contextual advertising
company, and let them place their ads on your pages. When
someone clicks on an ad, you earn money. Some webmasters are
making many thousands of dollars a month with Google AdSense.
5. If you have enough web space, you could rent other people web
pages. You could also give them away for free and make money by
including your Google AdSense ads on their web pages.
6. Charge people a fee (monthly or annual subscription, or a one
time fee) to access your web site. People will pay you money for
your content if it's valuable to them. This can be ebooks,
reports, interviews, software, etc.
If you find a niche market, you can spend some time researching
your topic and put all sorts of articles and resources to that
niche on your site. Then those who have a similar interest might
be likely to want to take advantage of all the time you've
already spent by coming straight to the site (yours) that has
all the answers for them already. If you have enough articles on
your topic, you might want to get a site search engine (there
are free scripts available) to make it easier to find the
information your visitors want.
7. Make money selling other people's products through affiliate
programs. They'll give you a link to track your sales. If you
haven't heard of affiliate programs, you're in for a treat, many
thousands of people are making a full time income just by
driving traffic from their site to merchant sites, never
touching or shipping a product, letting the merchant do all the
work and make the entire investment in inventory.
A good way to start with affiliate programs is to sign up with
ClickBank. There are well over 10,000 different eBooks that you
are then automatically an affiliate for. It's likely that there
are some that tie in with the theme of your site. Write up some
reviews and recommendations and send traffic to the ClickBank
merchant, and if the eBook sells, you get commissions sometimes
as high as 75%.
Another benefit is that if you make a page for each of your
eBook reviews, you will eventually start drawing traffic from
search engines because some of your pages will get ranked well
for the keywords used to describe the eBook you're reviewing.
8. Publish an e-zine from your web site. Ask your visitors to
subscribe to the e-zine right from your web site through a sign
up box. You might want to find something to entice them to give
you their email address, like a free report, eCourse, or eBook.
Once you have enough subscribers to your e-zine, you could sell
classified or sponsor advertising inside your e-zine, or you
could periodically review and recommend products that you're an
affiliate for to your subscribers.
9. If you have your own business already (real estate agent,
hairdresser, contractor, restaurant, etc.), put up a web page to
draw in prospects. All you need is a picture, contact
information, a description of what you do, and you have a cheap
advertisement that will pull in customers.
10. Set up a local directory of small businesses. Give each
business their own page, fix it up for them so that it's
optimized for the search engines, and charge them annually for
the service. They won't have to pay hosting fees and you do
everything for them. Suggest that they put the web site address
on their business card, and you'll have virtually locked them in
for annual renewals for the life of their business.
These are just some thought-starters for you. There are over a
billion web sites on the Internet, there are obviously more than
ten ways to earn money with them. Come up with a unique method
of cashing in from all those surfers, or use one of our methods,
and one day you'll be writing your own advice articles.
About the author:
Dennis Becker has been a computer "nut" since the late 70's,
specializing in helping non-techies make better use of
computers. Find out how to maximize your profits and minimize
your expenses by visiting: http://www.a1-che
ap-web-site-hosting.com
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