There are several methods used for making money from a website.

 You may be looking to earn a little extra income from a website or to build a full time income from your website (s), here you will learn about the different types of website that you can build and the methods you can use to make money from them.

If you are new to making money online then starting can be very difficult due to the vast amount of information available that in most cases is contradictory.

You will see many money making opportunities advertised that sound good and may even work but are they really suitable to you?

Money Making Options

There are three main ways of making money from a website:

• Sell Your own Product/Products or Service
• Sell other peoples products/services via Affiliate programs
• Sell Advertising on the site e.g. Google Adsense

The site you build may be focused on one method or a mixture, and will have an impact on the site size and how you get visitors/traffic.

As an example if you are selling a product/service then paying fro traffic is a viable option, but if you are using Google Adsense as the monetization method then it isn't.

Sell Your own Product/Products or Service

There are two scenarios to consider.

• A pure shopping site (like  amazon.com) - This type of site uses a shopping cart platform and is considered in the ecommerce section.
• The other is a digital download like a report or a course.

This option is probably the most difficult for beginners as you first have to source the product, which usually means creating it yourself.

You will also come across various offers on the net using other peoples content like Resale rights which I don't do and don't recommend but it doesn't hurt knowing what it all means.

Using Affiliate Marketing

 Affiliate programs have been around since the very early days on the Internet and  Affiliate Marketing is a very popular method of making money online.

Although not as easy as Google Adsense is has the potential to be far more lucrative. It is also over hyped and although there is lots of good quality information available (free and paid) it is easy to get ripped off by online marketers selling the latest internet marketing fad. -See How to Make Money With Affiliate Programs

Using/Selling Online Advertising- Google Adsense
 

Contextual  Advertising (Google Adsense) is by far the easiest method for website owners to begin making money with their website.

 It is the easiest because all you need to do is to paste a small bit of code (Google provide it) into your web pages and Google does the rest.

Not only does Google Adsense generate revenue for the website owner it also provides valuable resources for the website visitor, as the adverts are target adverts that relate to the web page content ( so called contextual ads). -See The Google Adsense Guide.

Website Types and Theme

Firstly all websites should have a theme/or niche. The choice of your website topic or theme has a major impact on the money making potential of your website.

How broad or how narrow the topic/theme/niche will have a major impact on how easy it is to get free search engine traffic.

In general the broader the theme the more difficult it will be to get free traffic as the competition will be greater.

This in turn impacts the site size, as the larger the site the more pages are available to be ranked and in general the greater the chance of getting free traffic.

So the general rule of thumb is a broad theme requires a larger site (50+pages) and a very narrow only needs a small site (1-10 pages).

See Themes/Niches and Micro Niches

Traffic Sources

Just like an offline business needs customers your website needs visitors to make money. For an offline business the business location often plays a very important role. For a website the search engines usually play a predominate role.

Traffic from the search engines is available in two distinct forms -paid and free.

One of the main choices you will need to make is which method will you use to get visitors initially and long term.

See Understanding Search Engine Traffic

Latest/Popular Articles:

Niches Research and Analysis-How to use keyword tools to find niche ideas and analyse a niche for suitability in terms of ranking in the search engines and making money.

Google Adsense Keywords-Google Adsense Keywords and what they are worth.

Money making Methods . A list and description of the methods used to make money online

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