Different Streams of Revenue on Internet Sites

[swasch]

Hello,

I have a quick question and have been looking for specific examples on how sites, like Young Entrepreneur, make money. I am helping someone with a school project, but I can't figure it out myself. I don't see any advertising, and I registered for free. Could someone help explain to me?

Thank you.

Sandra

[ChrisB]

Not all sites make money. When I make a site I usually don't monetize it until it is getting substantial traffic or I think the time is right.

Its usually better for promotion to keep advertisements off a site when it is still young.

[guitarizt]

Like newspapers, most sites make money with advertising. Take www.harmony-central.com for example. Scott Lehman started that site. He gets money from to prioritize companies new products on the homepage, and he probably gets a ton of money because he uses google ads. Harmony-Central is the biggest music message board on the internet. If you've got the traffic, you'll get the clicks. And google adsense does an amazing job at targeting ads to your site content.

[teana]

depending ont he type of site, i have found that joining affiliate programs work. not selling your own stuff, but selling others, where you direct them to another site like amazon.com's associate program. so if you have a school site, maybe you can put up a page of products for stuff that students like that take them to amazon to buy it, so that you get a commission for each sale. there tons of programs out there, the one i use is linkshare, which in itself has a lot of other stores that are part of their network, like overstock.com, handspring, office depot, etc.

its not much but its something. and if you are getting substantial traffic or notice that there are certain types of products that sell well, then maybe u can negotiate something and sell it yourself, but that opens a whole other can of worms.

-teana

[swasch]

Thanks! Great coincedence that you posted this response. I am considering what you are talking about as we speak. I have one question for you using the example you gave... let's say the some of the products and services for the school are available internationally and some are only available nationally. For example, this great Dell computer ships to North America but not to Australia. i understand that based on the user's profile, I could be sure to target the right products to the right user based on my user segmentation strategy. But what I don't understand is how you would roll-out such a site. What would be the least amount of work for the most amount of revenue? For example, would it make sense then to create a marketing plan to target all provinces in Canada, then U.S, then Australia and find those school-related companies looking to post their products and services at the same time you enter these countries. It's hard to explain what I am trying to get at, but I guess you could summarize it by what approach should you use - get international products and services first or just get all local and international products per country as you expand OR don't offer localized products.

[teana]

hmm.. thats a toughy. i would make it regional, such as canada stuff, australia stuff and US stuff, and keep all those separate. it sounds like you plan on rolling out something pretty huge if you want to have traffic across these different locations. i would first concentrate it to my local area, then expand it. your main goal is to generate traffic then begin the products. there are many ways to sell products on your site without making it seem like your main goal is to sell it. my example was the school example. so i'd put up products related to schools. my main demographic is college students, so i would look for deals that may pique their interests, such as electronics, books, music, whatevers, and give reviews and invite other ppl to give their opinions. its basically like a forum / review site. that gets pretty intensive, but it ensures traffic and the ability to push other products.

the site will require a lot of work, but it can generate some revenue in the end. if your main goal is to do as little work as possible to generate revenue, i'll let you know that, your site may show that, and your revenue will be small if any. i had friends that ran some sites together, and updated it nightly, and inbetween classes. this allowed them to get some spending cash going, but it did take them some time to do it, like a few months.

good luck with your site.

teana