There
are several ways to generate "moderate" streams of income with
your site if you offer them individually. This page explains
how to infinitely increase your sites' income potential by
using several types of income generation together to create
the perfect campaign.
1. Sell your primary product or
service.
2.
Offer a companion or
peripheral product/service.
3. Allow
advertising space on your site.
4.
Create residual income
streams with subscriptions.
Read the story of Keith below to find
out how all of these relate to each other.
Think
outside the box.
Just because
you do not have anything to sell - that does not
mean that you do not have anything to offer.
Your
opinion for one is very important; people like to know
how products work in the real world.
Your
experience is another. Are you skilled at something and
find yourself constantly answering questions about it?
Your fame
is a great one. Do you already have a large amount of
traffic on your site and are simply looking for a way to
profit from it?
Remember that
there are multiple ways to secure income online. Your job is
to find the right mix of Income Streams that automatically
grow based on your visitors. Your focus then becomes getting
more and more of the right people to visit the site through
great content and smart marketing.
Here is a simple example
and then we will get to work:
Keith
is a mild-mannered electrician who LOVES his job by day
and spends hours at night looking up Build-at-Home Robotics
websites but has no real programming skill.
Keith wants
to build a site but feels he has nothing to offer and even less time
to offer it. He thinks to himself, "What can I use to
generate income?"
As
stated, Keith loves his job as an electrician and
researching home-based robotics. So there's his
topic. He also, does not
have a lot of programming skills so he chooses a
blog
to be his site style. That's 2 steps complete!
On Keith's
blog, once every 2 weeks, he discusses the latest
build-at-home Robo-Kits
and which ones, he feels, are the best. He also discusses a bunch of other
tech stuff including upcoming events and links to cool
articles and
videos.
1. Keith joins the
Amazon Affiliate Network
for free and is
able to insert a code that allows him to sell Amazon
products directly from his site for a small percentage of
the sales price.
2. He not only sells those Robo-Kits, but he also sells
tool kits, glue, additional kits of varying levels of
difficulty. He even sells books and DVDs !
He starts to
generate serious traffic on his site through his
fantastic marketing campaign
and soon realizes that he is getting a few hundred hits a
day on his site. People are actually buying based on his
recommendations and Keith is feeling pretty confident in his
work. After a few weeks he decides to add more Income
Streams to his growing online empire.
3. He contacts a few local hobby
shops in he neighborhood and shows them the
stats of the visitors on
his site. A few of the shop owners offer Keith $500 a month
to host a few advertisements on his site and give an honest
review of their store and inventory. He accepts. In addition
to that he hosts
Google Ads on his site.
4. Feeling really confident now,
Keith creates his own
social network and with a
few dozen members to start, charges $5 a month membership.
Both of these
providers are great for all types of secure financial transactions.
You will need to sign up with at least one in order to
accept payment from most Affiliate Networks.
In addition,
they both offer great setups if you do actually sell your
own products online or are interested in starting a
subscription service of your own.
RSitez, which is our favorite
privately owned social
networking site,
incorporates your
Google Adsense
account number into their site ads.
Google Adsense in turn pays you through
PayPal.
Google is
still kind of new in the arena, PayPal
is the one most consumers are comfortable with. The registration is
easy and is confirmed with a tiny ($0.02) transfer in and
out of your checking account. Wouldn't want your huge
dividend checks going to the wrong place now would we.
Cost:
$0.00
Difficulty:
It may seem a little complicated but each
step is clearly outlined and this is a very necessary part
of the process. (If you want to actually get paid.)
Click here for
Wiki-definition of Affiliate Networks. There are
several great definitions and explanations of Affiliate Program. We'll let Wikipedia
give you the technical details. The meat and potatoes of it
is - other companies allow you to sell their
products and receive a portion of the profits.
Another great
aspect is that you do not need any type of secure payment or
order confirmation system for your site. All of the
Affiliate Networks take the visitor to their system for
payment, shipment, tracking - everything technical. You do
not have to worry about doing anything except convincing
people to buy that particular product.
A few good ones to start with are
Amazon.com,E-Bay,Half.com,1800Flowers... there is
something for everyone if you take the time to look at your
favorite shopping site for an "Affiliate Network" - link at
the bottom.
The
Amazon
Affiliate Program can be one of your true blue best
friends. There are over a dozen different ways to sell
products. You can offer anything that you can find on
Amazon, right on your site. Talk about hair - sell hair
products, magazine subscriptions, long hair dolls,
professional beauty equipment... your imagination is you
only limitation.
Cost:
$0.00
Difficulty:
Super-easy. Just fill out a few forms and
your done. The trick is finding them. Check the bottom of
the the Homepage of your favorite retail based sites, some
will have a link that says "Affiliate Program". As for the
rest, give them a call or e-mail the support department. If
they do not have one, suggest one.
In any given month
your ad revenue can surpass your product sales because the
person looking at the ad does not have to pay anything. With
Pay-Per-Click Ads, once
a visitor clicks on an ad - you get paid. It's that simple.
The companies listed below offer hundreds of different
advertisers all in one location.
Once you sign
up, you choose the advertisers that you would like to have
access to. Some advertisers approve you automatically while
some will actually take a look at your site before they make
their decision. Do not feel discouraged if you are denied
for a particular program, like we stated earlier, there are
hundreds to choose from. [Remember,
some of the smaller sites are actually more eager and offer
better compensation.]
Note: For
arrangements with shop owners you find yourself - you
will need to set those contracts up yourself.
Oncle is a free reference site for all types
of legal contracts. This is one the we found
Sample Online Ad Contract
but we are not lawyers so please have one review it before
you use it.
Difficulty:
Super-easy. Just a few forms to fill out,
again. You will get used to it eventually. Once you are a
member, scroll through the list of providers and select the
ones that you would like to be partnered with.
There's
nothing better than knowing that you have money coming in
the same time every month. With a subscription service, all
you need to do is provide a worthwhile service or present
worthwhile source of information and people will pay you
every month on time.
Whether
that service includes access to a Social Network or
providing a monthly
newsletter, you will retain more customers by offering
unique information.
Cost:
Social Networks can cost upwards of $25,000 to own and
operate, however there is a new player in the game called RSitez.
They allow
you to own, operate and customize your own Social Network
for less than a dollar a day. The site incorporates your
Google Adsense account and allows you to customize
everything down to the headings of your member profiles.
Like usual, if someone explains it
better, by all means, we let them explain it. There are great
things that you can do with YouTube including generate income.
Check out our
news page which includes a modular YouTube component, coming soon.
is one of the most comprehensive works
on online income generating today. He has a great
