Now that you've created a website, how do you make money from it? There are at
least two ways in which sites
can make money:
1. Advertising Revenue
2. Selling Goods and Services I shall deal with the second
case, "Sellinggoods
services", in another article . In this article, I will address the issue of how your site can
actually make money from
advertising.
Making Money From
Advertising
If you look at many websites, you will probably notice that
there are banner advertisement displayed on
most pages. If you are a
new comer to the scene, you might think that you must
either be a company or that
your site must be famous
before you can get advertisers, just as it is the
case in hardcopy publications. In reality, anyone with a
website can get advitisers,
While it is true that if your site
is well-known, you may get
companies contacting you to offer to advertise on your site, you can get advertising
revenu even if you are just
starting out and your site is relatively unknown. The way to do this is to join as
an "affiliate" of various sites,
either directly, or through an
affiliate network. An affiliate
network is simply an
intermediary where you can select from a variety of
advertisers.
Payment Schemes
Before joining any program, you should probably be aware
of the different payment
schemes available.
1. Pay Per Impression (CPM)
Here, you are paid according to the number of times the
advertiser's banner is
displayed on your site. The amount you earn is typically
calculated based on the number of thousand
impressions of the banner (impressions = number of times
the banner is displayed), often
abbreviated CPM (cost per
thousand, with the M being the Latin numeral for thousand).
That is, $5 CPM means that you get paid $5 for 1,000
displays of the banner. In
general, the amount paid is usually small, but it is easy to earn since everytime a visitor
loads the page, you earn. This
is known as a "high conversion
rate". Needless to say, this
method will allow you to
automatically earn more if your site attracts a lot of
visitors.
2. Pay Per Click (PPC)
When you are paid per click,
you are only paid when visitors click the advertiser's
banner on your site. The
amount paid is usually higher
than the pay per impression scheme. Whether you get a
high conversion rate here depends on the banner
(whether it attracts people to
click it), although in general, it has a higher conversion rate than the pay per sale method.
A high traffic site will
probably enjoy a higher click
rate than a lower traffic site, although you will probably get
better results if your banners are carefully selected to suit
the target audience of your site.
3. Pay Per Sale or Lead
(sometimes referred to as Cost
Per Action, or CPA)
While you will probably get
the highest payment rates with this method, it has the lowest conversion rate of the three schemes. You will only earn if your visitors click through the banner and either purchase an item from the advertiser or take some other prescribed
action (eg, sign up for a
service). Like the Pay Per Click method, you get much better results if you carefully select your advertisers to suit the target audience of your site.
In general, to avoid wasting
resources in issuing cheques
for very small amounts,
advertisers will usually accrue the amount owing to you until it reaches a certain level (such as $25) before they pay you.
Where to Find Affiliate
Programs
You can find a list of
affiliate programs and affiliate
networks on thefreecountry.com's Affiliate
Program page at http://www.thefreecountry.com/
webmaster/affiliate.shtml To join an affiliate network or
program, simply go to the site and complete their online
application form. Some programs will give you instant
approval while others require a human to check out your
application before it is
approved. Once it is approved, you'll be given some HTML code which you can cut and
paste into your web page. Note that some affiliate networks and programs will not accept you unless you have your own domain name. If you are planning to earn from your site, you should you unless you have your own domain name. If you are planning to earn from your site, you should seriously consider registering your own domain name.
