I have been here for a while lrking around and saw these new forums. I have ahad a question that I could not ask anyone else as I do not know anyone who owns a website. Maybe you can help me.

How does a website make money? I hope you do not mind answering but it is a question that is making me wonder. I am in the process of building a website about commercial advertising and a blog for it, but not sure how I am going to be able to pay for it or even make money.

Now i see a site like yours that generates a lot of traffic and I have to assume it not cheap to host, do you kick up all the money or does google help to offset it? Not trying to be nosey, just looking for real world advice.

Thanks in advance.

John

You are not being nosey and trust me I went through these same issues when creating this site. A lot of people think making money on a site is easy, but it is really not. If you are making your site in order to make money, you better be offering some really really really good services otherwise you may want to rethink your deciscion. We have a decent amount of traffic to this site and still are not near to having our hosting covered.

With that said, if you do not have this great service that everyone will be will to pay money for, be sure this site is being done because of one of the following:

• You have a passion for the topic your site deals with
• You like helping others get free information or help.
• It is fun!

Now to your original question. IF you are not selling a service, then the only way to make money on a site it use advertising. There are a ton of different advertisers out there to choose from. Some are hated more than others.

We use Google AdSense here. You can see the banners for the ads on all our pages either on the top of the page or on the sides of the page. There are other types of ad services out there though. Do a search on it you cant miss it.

Hope that helped to take away some of the questions or concerns you may have had. Feel free to ask more and I will answer if I can, just remember I am still new to this as well

Thanks for the info. I do understand what you are saying. I look at it as if I am going to put a site up I may as well try to do something to help offset the costs.

How does the Google Adsense work?

Just for the hail of it I signed up for one of those free "How to make money with your computer."

Every week a 'hot air balloon' (that phrase fits because it is 90% promotional hot air) arrives in the email. For example today's tip was: "Write Good Headlines". Not how to write good headlines. If you want info on how to do it you pay money.

Mostly this 'expert' talks about affiliates. Some of which are advertisments such as what Grinler was talking about with Google. She includes lots of links to other people's tips. Which is of course part of where she is making her money. She also refers to it as selling other people's items or ideas.

Since you are already into advertising you should have a pretty good understanding of the whole process.

I can provide her URLl if you are interested. For free and I do not get a kickback. Just do not want to use this forum for posting advertising.

AdSense is a click through system. If someone clicks on a link in the google advertisements on a site, then the site hosting the ads gets a piece of the revenue, albeit a tiny piece.

Grin you have a great way of advertising. In case you're interested check it out kind of advertisment. Rather then them dang pop ups, Man I can't begin to tell you how much I dislike pop ups. I will never do business with a pop up company. Nice jobs on the ads. I like how they coincide with where you are in your site. Most of all not HEY YOU CLICK HERE! (Cause you can't click anywhere else. ) Free Info is awesome.

I have a site, Me and the Mrs. built. If you find the time, check it out and let me know what you think. It's my Online Family album, I just expanded it to include my newest young'in and a family section was originally built for my 1st daughter.

www.crosbyhome.com


~Disciple

I think its great. I think the way you did the pictures in the outtakes is very cool.

Cute kids too

So is your site, Disciple. What a pleasure seeing your family as you're growing up.

(instead of loud proclamations as they're popping up)

all your work is evident in a tasteful presentation.

Pop-ups are finally starting to die, due to that fact that almost every major search provider offers free pop-up blockers (MSN, google, Yahoo, etc...)

Windows XP SP2 also offers built-in pop up blocking software, so that should help to cut down on them too.

Just make sure that the company you choose to be affiliated with offers genuine products, as selling malware for them will reflect badly on your site and you will lose more revenue by losing return visitors (the ones you really want).

The link has to be clicked I thought all that had to happen was the page the ad was on just had to be opened, I thought the ads had got away from having to be opened.
Well learned something new today