How to Build a Content Website – Part 7

At LAST! We get rich!! (not)

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Does money really make the world go round? Maybe not, but it is handy to have. And if you've spent the $200 for software, $70 for a domain name, $15+ per month for hosting, etc you're likely wondering what can be done just to recoup some of the costs! This is especially true once you start getting so many visitors that your hosting company starts charging bandwidth.

Really, short of a rich uncle or extremely generous husband a site like mine (running costs of about $20,000 per month these days) absolutely must have some way of earning money to support itself.

SELLING PRODUCT OR MEMBERSHIPS DIRECTLY TO VIEWERS:

Tough to do, people like to know what they're buying. Someone like Disney can do it because folks know them, but Joe off the street will have a tougher time making it work.

If you are going to try it, try doing it like http://www.daniellesplace.com/ She has a mix of free and pay material. For at least a year she was 100% free. Then, once she had some traffic she switched to part paid, part free. http://www.learningpages.com also has a similar setup but is run by a company not an individual.

If you are going to charge folks they're not going to want to see advertising. It tends to be one way or the other.

The nice thing about memberships is that it does cut down on traffic a bit which reduces your costs. You have the opportunity to make a site you enjoy making without worrying about ads or big bills while your viewers help pay for the hosting/bandwidth charges you incur on their behalf.

ADVERTISING - SELLING YOUR OWN ADS:

You can be your own marketers and try to sell your own ad space. http://www.kinderstart.com/ does this. Just make sure you collect 1/2 the money up front or something like that to avoid huge amounts of bad debts.

ADVERTISING - GOING THROUGH AN AGENCY:

Rather than selling your own space, you can hire professionals to do it. This is what I do. They keep about 1/2 (ish) the money though! Most require you have a certain amount of visitors before you apply. (er, my DLTK sites get about 100 million hits per month and there are still some ad agencies who consider me too small to bother with, so don't be too discouraged if you don't get accepted right away).

The pro is that they handle the administration for you (Yay!!). The con is they take a big chunk of the money and you don't have as much control over the ads that show up on your site (some allow more control than others). You can opt for only 'family friendly' ads but their definition of family friendly isn't always the same as yours. If you speak to them about a particular ad, they'll usually remove it for you but you have to be careful about how often you bug them or they stop talking to you *blush*.

Here are a few:

http://www.tribalfusion.com

https://www.burstmedia.com/

https://www.valueclickmedia.com/index.shtml

http://www.casalemedia.com/

http://www.advertising.com

http://www.cj.com

ADVERTISING: SELLING SOMEONE ELSE's PRODUCT:

http://www.amazon.com and http://www.amazon.ca (yippee -- finally they've come to Canada!) is the most well known of these types of deals. Sign up with them and link book recommendations related to your topic to them. If nothing else, it gives your viewers the chance to see the cover, author, ISBN, some reviews, etc.

ADVERTISING TERMINOLOGY - TYPES OF ADS:

Banner ad - the 468x60 pixel banner at the top of many webpages

Leaderboard - the larger banner (720x60 pixels) also at the top of many webpages

Tower - the 120x600 long narrow ad at the left or right side of many webpages

Pop Unders - annoying little boxes that pop UNDER your window

Pop Ups - even more annoying little boxes that pop UP right in front of what you're trying to see.

Text Ads - a text ad (no pictures, just words)

Note: Nowadays, banner ads often have Pop unders/Pop ups tied to them. So even if your site only has banners, you may still see things popping.

Not all ad agencies offer every type of ad, but all do offer banners.

ADVERTISING TERMINOLOGY - TYPES OF PAYMENT:

CPM - Cost per Thousand ($ amount you receive for every thousand ads you show)

CPC - Cost per Click ($ amount you receive every time someone clicks on the ad)

CPA - Cost per Action ($ amount you receive every time someone clicks on the ad and does something -- the something is variable. It could be sign up for a newsletter or purchase a product -- sometimes it's a % of sales rather than a fixed $ amount like in the case of Amazon.com)

An ad typically only pays one of these ways -- either CPM, CPC or CPA

And that's pretty much all there is to running a website. (other than answering a lot of email *grin*)