As the topic/subject says, I would like to know how you earn money/revenue from your website (if you own and run one, that is).
The reason:
I am about to launch my own website (got the domain/hosting 2 weeks ago), and wanted to earn money to:
[1] help pay the hosting company
[2] profit, in general.
So far, I have looked at Google AdSense (as that service is pretty much found on a lot of sites). Tried doing some research, but got very confused. Hence I turned to you guys.
What do you recommend?
Any/all help, hint, or suggestions/recommendations appreciated!
A lot will depend on the kind of site you make. There are many ways:
- advertise (adsense, others)
- sell stuff
- indirect profit (you get in touch with people/companies because of your site and get work through that)
- grow the site and sell it
So a lot will depend on what you plan on doing with the site, and what your strengths are. For example, if you're a good writer you might want to start a content-centered website/blog. But if you're a commercial guy and are able to sell nice products, maybe that's a better idea.
Heh, this entirely depends upon the nature of the website (i.e. is it aimed at professionals, aimed at "adults" or aimed at kids?). Within almost 20,000 *unique* visitors to the home page of one of my websites I've barely fetched $85 USD from adsense revenue. If it was an adult site it would probably fetch far more from ad-revenue.
Basically, it will be a "sub site" of a bigger picture, where I will post guides: tutorials, howto's, walkthroughs, for all different sorts of things [basically, whatever I have learned I will share] another "sub site" will be devoted to code only.... meaning, I will post commented code for different projects that I have been involved and the ones that I have developed (in different languages). of course, these short descriptions do not do full justice as to what the big picture is, but at least it will shed some light
Mightywayne wrote:A game might be a good idea to make.
... No, no, a great idea. Just get enough uniques and find CPM advertising. My suggestion.
Do many people play online PHP based games? I find it hard to believe they're all that popular because, well, all the ones I've seen are a bit rubbish. I guess that might indicate there's a gap in the market...
I recommend AdBrite over Adsense because AdBrite delivers ads in a way so you can actually monitor clicks and then supress the ad after x clicks. Then you have the option to display Google AdSense ads in its place.
I did this method and it worked very well. Better than I had expected.
I am not sure if it constitutes an incentive because the AdBrite ads were a lot larger ( purposely ) than the AdSense ones. Plus there might be an issue with monitoring clicks and hiding the ad to show another ad network.
And FYI, I did try this with AdSense but maybe my JavaScript skills aren't up to par for that challenge. If someone gets that to work be sure to hollar at me!
Another way to make money is offer a subscription with gives people enhanced features and no advertisements. I found that to be a popular thing.
For example, I once ran a gaming site which had about 150 loyal players. Who came back month after month. From AdBrite the site generated about $400 during 2006. It made about $90 from AdSense ( as a backdrop to AdBrite.. and I should note it wasn't active the whole year ). And the subscription service had a decent number of sign ups. Roughly 14% of the population signed up and that brought it about $180.
These numbers may be off a bit since I'm going by memory, but roughly it turned out to $6.5 per user made for the year. For hosting at say $15/month, that's a $470 profit made.
Now, numbers always vary from site-to-site so I wouldn't go by $6.50 per user as an income estimation, but if you have decent ad activity and depending on the nature of the site, you should be in that ballpark and if you get a normal shared account, breaking even is easy and turning a profit is no problem at all.
Where it gets tricky is determining if the profit margin is worth your time invested. For me personally, on that site I was never trying to make money, I simply wanted to provide a service, but if you're out to make money, scrutinize the value of the time investment.
And to note, if the site had kept it's earnings average per user, if it had been popular to the point of sustaining say 5,000 active players... it would have brought in $32,000 in revenue and if you factor in a decent dedicated server for a year that's still around $30K in profit.
* waves his hand in front of the moderators * You do not see this.. * stops waving his hand *
Yeah, I'd go with a game. There might be a gap. Not too sure. I've recently continued work on mine. Got about a fifth of the engine done now. It takes a lot of time to write a good quality game. But, you can get loyal people that will help you turn a profit in a heart beat. http://www.hyperiums.com makes about $50k a year from our estimates.
If you're writing guides you could use something like Amazon's affiliate program. You could feature books and perhaps other products that relate to what you are writing about. If you're writing information about something that people are required to buy equipment for or buy a book to learn how then AdSense ads may work out okay, but they don't turn much of a profit.
Since they are guides, you could even go as far to create witty t-shirts at CafePress with such phrases as "I learned how to do [whatever] at [website.com] and look at me now!" with cool little designs (possibly humorous depictions of their new-found (yet still a large work in progress) skills. It's a thought.