How to Start an Online Business-Part 3: SHOW ME THE MONEY

In Part 1 of this series you were, hopefully, able to decide on your idea. It’s not as simple as it sounds, is it?

And, in Part 2 you developed your critically important business/domain name (I hope they are the same or very similar.)

Now, in Part 3, you will decide how you will make money. That may seem like a silly question but it can be a critical decision in your success.

Think of your website as a billboard standing above your fruit stand. Your fruit stand is a special one because it has discovered its niche: it only sells grapes.

Everyone sees the billboard. On the Internet this is comparable to all those search engines (like Google and Yahoo) looking at you. The billboard draws people (and search engines) to you. The fruit stand simply sells fruit. The fruit stand represents your retail activity.

Your retail activity generates money: You could be selling fruit or information about fruit but if you are selling, and collecting money, your fruit stand will need to have a website shopping cart. (In our next session we will go over how to design your website for different functions.) Your shopping cart allows the customer to order what he wants, pay the correct amount, and provide information for delivery of the fruit.

The billboard, which is all of your content on your pages, is a little more complicated. It can be a picture of your fruit. It can be your picture because you’re an expert on fruit. It can be about health.

We have these pictures on our Lacteeze Store website,
not because we sell food, but because we sell a lactose supplement that allows people to eat this yummy food.

In addition your billboard is probably going to generate its own money. How? That’s up to you to decide but probably through some type of advertising.

Let’s sum up where that lovely money is going to come from for you.

First, selling your product, like fruit or camera parts.

Second, selling information, either with a product or as a sole endeavor. In our former instance of a camera parts site you could write ebooks on camera repairs, the history of certain cameras, etc.

Third, advertising. Most website advertising comes from three sources: Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, and/or Selling Space on your site.

►AdSense is what’s called a pay per click form of advertising. Google, the owner of AdSense, will find relevant ads for your content and will place these ads (usually just text so that they do not compete with your images). You create the space where you want your ads to run on your pages. A word of advice with all advertising: don’t go overboard so that all your visitors see are ads and not the essence of your site. AdSense Success Stories is a great place to get real life advice from web owners who have walked the long trail. One of the problems I have with AdSense is that there is no way to control what ads are placed. In the instance of our Two Penny Cat site we were frequently having ads of our competitors. On this site we have had ads for companies we would not endorse. Within AdSense you can block specific companies but not types of companies. Some people have made a considerable amount of money with AdSense, however I know of other sites who have removed them because they took up too much space with little return.

►Affiliate Marketing: In this sort of advertising you choose your advertiser, and the ad you’ll put on your page. You are paid when someone clicks on your site button and actually buys something. The affiliate company shows what your percentage will be and how popular the ads are. We use Commission Junction but there are many others out there.

►Selling Ads on Your Website: This is great when you get established as an expert in the field and have large amounts of traffic. I have priced advertising on some of the big sites for our cat site and have seen a range of $50/mo to $1,800/mo. In order to draw this kind of revenue you must be high in the organic listings (the middle listings that you see when you do a search. The paid listings are always on the right side.)

Here are some websites whose design fits well with their advertising:
CamcorderInfo.com
FreeWareGenius.com
ProBlogger.com (He’s able to charge big bucks now for ads–but he had to build it to get where he is today.)
Epicurious.com
BuildEazy.com (Note they have ads on all pages! They are very profitable!)
Greenwichmeantime.com
TeenPartyIdeas.com
ZenHabits.org
Chrisg.com
Petfinder.com
Retire@21.com