Questions about building a website

[opinder]

My husband and I were in a discussion last night about creating a website and trying to generate income from it.
We heard about "pay per click" on your website but how does it work? Do you just create a website and post different ads on the website and those ads pay you for everyone that signs up or clicks on the ad?

I hope my questions are not to confusing :dunno:

Please let me know if anyone can help with this.

Tonya

[justinpowell]

Tonya:

In short, pay-per-click advertising means the advertiser pays the publisher whenever a user clicks through the ad. For the advertiser, pay-per-click can be a good proposition since displaying the ads usually costs them nothing until someone actually clicks through. The pay-per-click pricing model can apply either to a banner ad or a text-based ad, although pay-per-click text ads appear to be the more popular.

Google is the leading provider of text-based pay-per-click ads. They offer two flavors: AdWords text ads appears on the Google site; AdSense ads are syndicated to third-party web sites. Both systems look for keywords on the web page to display relevant ads.

From the sounds of your message, you're interested in participating in AdSense. You can go here to get more information: http://www.google.com/ads/index.html With AdSense, you split the pay-per-click revenue with Google.

The key to successfully generating revenue is to build a large amount of targeted user traffic. Your site should target a specific niche and provide a range of content. Use relevant keywords early and often in your content as it will serve two purposes: these keywords will better enable search engines to send you relevant visitors and the content of AdSense ads themselves will be determined by these keywords.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to send me a PM or e-mail if you have any further questions.

Justin

[opinder]

Thanks for your help!
I will take a look at the link.
Do I need to find a product that I want to advertise?
How long does it usually take to get your website up and running? I have no experience at all in building a website but I am always up for a good challenge! I hope I don't sound dumb asking these questions! I am jsut really looking for something to generate a little income so I can stay home with my daughter. Daycare expenses are out of control!!!! I had to take the day off from work because she was sick all weekened.
Sorry TMI.

Thanks so much for yor help again!

[justinpowell]

The answer to both of your questions is "it depends".

Before you build your site, you need to decide whether you want to sell products or if you want to generate revenue through advertising. If you want to sell, you can offer your own products or do what's called drop-shipping. Drop-shipping is where you have no inventory, but you take the order online and have a wholesaler package and ship the product for you.

Generating revenue through advertising requires a fair amount of user traffic. Since you only make a few cents per click in a program like Google AdSense, you need to generate enough 'clicks' to get adequate revenue. This of course requires a big enough user base to generate those clicks. However, this revenue might be a good supplement to other efforts you have.

Another method to generate revenue is through affiliate programs. The idea is similar to pay-per-click: you become an affiliate to an online retailer, agree to show their ads on their site, and whenever someone clicks through and makes a purchase you get a percentage. You have the same challenge as other advertising methods: getting enough relevant users to your site.

So, a good starting point may be to ask "what do you like to do?" or "what are you good at?" If you have a hobby or prior work experience that you like and are good at, that may be a good topic for your web site - particularly if there is a good audience of people that would appreciate your experience. Then, you'd have a good chance of building a user base of highly interested visitors. You'd also have a greater chance of success in selling products and/or generating advertising revenue. You should be prepared to spend some time before your user base begins to reach critical mass -- although it won't happen overnight, spending some effort to get the word out will start showing results.

With regard to building your site, there are countless ways to do it and the timing will vary depending on which you choose. If you select a host like Homestead that offers template-based site-building tools, you could be online the same day. However, if you want to build the site yourself, it may take several days to a couple of weeks depending on your experience and how big your site is.

I apologize for speaking in generalities. If you have an idea of the subject you want for your site and how you'd like to generate revenue, let me know and I could provide some more specifics as to how you might want to approach it. Hope this helps.

Good luck!

[kleobell]

Tonya,

Another great resource I found is a site called www.internetbasedmoms.com. Lots of information about affiliate marketing and PPC and starting an online business.

[opinder]

Thanks for the advice and resources guys! :lol:

Justin I have taken your advice and started thinking of things that I like to do. I have something in mind and hopefully with the boards help and some good planning I can make this a success.
If anyone has anymore advice for me please let me know!

Tonya

[justinpowell]

Great! Keep us posted and let us know how we can help.

[Debbi]

Good luck, Tonya. One of my clients has a decent monthly income from Google ads - they can really work on a site that gets a lot of visitors.

Keep us posted!
Deb

[opinder]

Thanks Deb!

[opinder]

Thanks Deb! :lol:


Tonya