Over the years of developing websites for myself and my clients I have come across projects big and small. However, one of the ultimate goals of having a website developed is to make more money for the owner.
Either it be a blog so the owner or company can make announcements to its customers, a static website that inform the rest of the world what the company is about, products/services it provides, and how to contact us, or a social networking site for badminton players - the goal is to ultimately make money with the website.
Having the website built brings you one step closer to making you more money - the website only provides a vehicle, you will still need to learn how to drive it to gets you to places you want to go.
So how do you make money with your website? Well, simply put, you will need traffic and monetization.
Traffic
If you build it, they are not going to come. Unlike running a brick-and-mortar business where you can set up shop at a busy street corner and get tons of customers the first day you open, a website is a virtual shop and no one is going to know about this brand new website without some marketing or advertising.
There are several ways you can drive traffic to your website.
1. Buy Advertising
Before you go out and buy advertising, you have to know or understand where your customers will most likely come from. For example, if your target audience is college students, then it may be worthwhile for you to look into advertising on Facebook, rather than buying keywords on search engines.
You can “leech” off other existing websites with traffic by buying advertisements on those websites. One way to do this would be go to Google search engine and search for websites that are closely related to your business (most likely your competitor is not going to want to place an ad for you to your website), contact them and work out a deal.
Other places you may consider are classified/auction ads sites such as Craigslist and eBay.
2. Word-of-Mouth Advertising
For this type of advertising to work out well you will need to make it “worthwhile” for people to spread the word for you - think about running a promotion, a giveaway, a grand-opening special offer.
For example, you can construct an enticing contest and get it listed on a highly trafficked online contest directory site (tip: to find popular online contest directory site just Google “online contest” - why? Because people would search for “online contest” if they were to look for one!).
Alternatively, if you already a member of social networking sites (such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) and have a friend-base, then you can make an announcement there as well (tip: remember to make it worth their while to spread the word for you).
Monetization
Now that you have people going to your website, you just need to tweak your sales message for these people to give them their money in exchange for products or services that you are providing.
If you are not selling any product or service from your website or if your website is more information-based (ie. you are running a review site, a social networking site, your personal blog), then the only other thing you can sell is advertising space.
If you want to get started with selling advertising space right away, then I suggest you look into ad networks such as Google Adwords, AdBrite, text-link-ads, CPA networks (take a look at this report to learn more about CPA networks and how you can make money even without a website). The role of these network is to bring publishers (that is you) and advertisers together.
Without joining ad networks you will need to “sell” your ad space to advertisers or wait for them to come to you to make an offer to buy your ad space.
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Hopefully this article has provided an overview on how to make money with your website.
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