Creating a website or a blog is one of the options people have of earning money online form home. More and more people now see a website as a potential work at home job, either replacing their current job or one that supplements the income from it.

How to make money from a website

The potential of making money from a website has never been easier and more accessible for anyone that creates a site providing value to users. It’s a sign of times that more and more advertising expenditure by companies is being diverted toward marketing their products and services on the internet, away from traditional sources like television, radio, print media, etc.

Is it a viable work from home opportunity?

Yes, it definitely is. There are plenty of people, and a growing number too, that make a living on the internet by creating websites, blogs that provide information that people want access to. The internet is fast becoming the most important medium through which people organise, work and entertain themselves, therefore it is only logical that the money will follow where there is a mass concentration of such activity.

Ways to make money with your site

Once a site is up and running and attracts a lot of traffic, whether it is natural traffic through search engines, from links on other sites, advertising on pay per click or any other means, there are several ways you can monetise a site.

1) Pay per click advertising

The advent of pay per click advertising by Google through their Adsense program and Yahoo through Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) as well as other smaller networks, allow website owners or publishers to show advertising on their sites from one of these popular networks and earn money every time some clicks on a link that appears in the advertising blocks or boxes that are strategically placed by webmasters. The ads are contextual in that they are triggered by the type of content on the page thus increasing their relevancy.

This is one of the best online money earning potential there is because it does not require the user to actually take action following the click (though too much non-action resulting from a site will result in decreasing value of the ads appearing on that particular site).

2) Selling affiliate products and services

If you have a site revolved around a particular niche and contains unique and valuable content then there is the opportunity to run affiliate programs. By running an affiliate program, you are essentially advertising product/services for other people/organisations on your site and earning a share of the sale that a user completes from your site.

- The potential to earn is limitless

- The trick is to have content around a tight niche e.g. a site with information on acne show affiliate links for acne products.

- The stronger the pre-sell messages in the content the higher affiliate sales likely to be. Pre-selling is in effect “selling” with information that is very persuasive and encourages people to take action.

3) Selling advertising space

This is one of the options people have of earning money form their website or blog. They effectively rent out space on their site just like a landlord rents out rooms or a house to a tenant. There is the option of selling text links that appear on the site or banner ads. Both are usually done on a monthly basis and the amount that you can command will depend on the popularity of your site in terms of unique visitor numbers and page impressions and, of course, the subject matter of the site will also determine the price. Traditionally, ads are sold either sitewide i.e. appearing on each page of your site or just the home page. Sometimes, people will purchase links for the purpose of increasing their Page Rank (PR) on Google rather necessarily seeking to get traffic.

You can go about selling advertising via two routes – through a link broker or by directly contacting potential buyers.

Using a link broker

This is the easier and less time consuming option because you effectively leave it the broker to find you advertisers for your site. Of course, they will take a fee, sometimes as much as 50% of the revenue. They usually insert a piece of PHP code on your site that will automatically put the ads up as and when someone decides to advertise on your site.

Going it alone

This is definitely more time consuming but will reap greater benefits as there is no need to pay a fee to a third party.

• If you are going to seek out advertisers on your own, the best way to do it is through popular webmaster forums. Here you will be able to post with your details and such as duration, length, type of advertising you would i.e. link, banner, etc.

• Also, you will find posts submitted by people that request advertising space together with details of what they would offer.

CPM banners

CPM banner networks offer advertising on your site that pay for every thousand impressions of exposure the ads get. This can be a good way to earn guaranteed income for sites that get a lot of unique or returning visitors.

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