The 3 Main Categories of Online Income Streams
There are countless ways to get people to visit your website. You can buy ads, scrounge for links, contribute to other sites…The list goes on and on. Many of them are free, many aren’t. The more specific the market, the easier it will be to cater exactly to what your users want, and this is very important in drawing visitors to your website.
But how do you make money once you manage to get people to your website? There are a dozens of ways, but most fall into three broad categories:
- Affiliate Marketing. This is where you receive a commission for referring people to another website. You don’t need your own website to do this. All you need to do is get people to visit the “affiliate” company’s website. If they purchase something, you get paid.
- Sell your own product. There are so many kinds of things you can sell, and so many ways to sell it. You could sell anything from e-books to wood-working plans to exercise videos. Generally, the more focused your site, the better it will sell. In fact I know of many million-dollar-earning website that sell just one product.
- Sell advertising. The internet has blossomed some amazing technologies which make it incredibly easy and profitable to sell ads on your website. Programs such as Google Adsense automatically place ads matched to the content of your site, and earn your anywhere from a few cents a click to a dollar or more. I’ve earned as much as $4 for someone clicking on one ad just once. Internet advertising has moved far beyond banner ads!
My very first website made money through affiliate marketing. It would direct people to a website which sold just one product - an ebook about how to get your baby to sleep soundly all night long. This product sold extremely well — and amazingly it was sold on just a one page website.
Nowadays, you’ll notice most websites have several different income streams. This means one site could be making money from selling advertising, promoting other company’s products, and selling their own product. Even Amazon.com sells advertising on its website. I’ve found blogs which have Google ads, promote products through affiliate marketing, sell their own e-books, and ask for donation. (In fact, on one extremely successful blog, donations account for 20% of revenue!)
As an excercise, visit several of your favorite websites and try to identify all of the income streams. If you’re feeling adventurous, try and think of additional ones they could add. Do they have text ads? Banner ads? Do they sell e-books? Do they link to other websites where you can buy something? Are they asking for donations? Some websites even get paid to talk about a certain product. Internet marketing is often extremely subtle, blended carefully into a website. What can you find?
There are tons of clever ways websites are making money. It can truly be fun to search for them, and its an incredibly valuable learning experience.
0 Comments to “The 3 Main Categories of Online Income Streams”
No Comments. Send your comment.
Leave a Reply