WEbsite and Income Generation therefrom

pog it

I had an idea for a website at the weekend that could help a lot of people but as I do not have my own product to sell on this site, Im wondering how do you generate the income.

Take Daft for example. How have they made so much money from their site? I know they charge you a one-off 1.50 or something to set up an account if you are advertising a room for rent- is this how they build up profit, or is it more about generation of profit from the ads from estate agents and big property sales?

Would appreciate any info in general.

MOH

IMO, in general, you'll make money off a website through selling a product/service, or ads.
Ads might be affiliate links, google ads (adsense), or selling space on your site directly to a company for a banner or sidebar ad. I wouldn't think you'd get a lot selling banner space directly until you can show a large amount of relevant traffic.
Aside from the obvious, selling a product/service could also include charging people to access premium areas of the site, or for additional functionality.

Easiest way to get started might be setting up a google adsense account, unless you can find a relevant affiliate product you could promote (in a non spammy way).

kenbrady

pog it wrote: »

Take Daft for example. How have they made so much money from their site?

I know they charge you a one-off 1.50 or something to set up an account if you are advertising a room for rent- is this how they build up profit, or is it more about generation of profit from the ads from estate agents and big property sales?

Daft haven't made as much money as people think.
Daft make money by charging people for a service to advertise property forsale/rent on their site. They have over 180k properties X price (€20-€100).
They also sell advertising space.

To make money you can sell advertising space on your website to people.

pog it

Thanks for your views and ideas dudes. Yeah I guess I'll have to wait until my site is at the standard I would like and has generated lots of traffic and then look to selling the banner space.

Has anyone any idea of costs of Google Ads? As in ads for your site on Google search results pages? I read couple of years ago that the costs really have the potential to escalate if you don't know the ins and outs.

MOH

You just need to keep an eye on them. You can set daily spend limits anyway.

There's a couple of useful tools in adwords that will give you estimats of traffic numbers and ad positions based on whatever cost per click (CPC) you're willing to pay.

CPC really depends on how competitive the search term you're bidding for is - if loads of other people have ads aimed at the same term, the price will go up. If no one else does, it'll be cheap (though you might ask why nobody is bidding on that term, is there any traffic in it?).

Your max CPC is the most you're willing to pay per click. How much you're actually charged also depends on how your ads have performed in the past. If there's a high click through rate, google assumes you're genuine with properly targeted ads of interest to people, and your CPC will come down. (Your previous click through rate can also affect CPC in new ad campaigns)

So you should keep an eye on it to see how your ads are performing - paying a bit more initially to have your ads appear higher might increase your click though rate, and lower your CPC in the long run.

But once you set your max values to something you can afford, your costs can't escalate beyond your control.

fintan

pog it wrote: »

I had an idea for a website at the weekend that could help a lot of people but as I do not have my own product to sell on this site, Im wondering how do you generate the income.

If people who do sell the product have an affiliate programme you could make money that way by sending the referrals.

Andy_Black

Hi Pog it,

Check out Yaro Starak. He has an online blogging course and a membership site course. I'm working my way through both. He's all about generating loads of good content, getting traffic, then "monetising" it. His freebie ebooks are excellent.

As for Adwords, the previous comment was spot on about how you can keep costs low. I've written a few Adwords/website articles on my own budding blog too.


I hope that helps.

Andy


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