I get emails all the time from people asking all kinds of interesting questions; once in a while I post them on the blog or in my newsletter.
This time around someone wanted to know about earning ad revenue with a website:
Me and my business partner have currently set up a new site and we are wondering if you have any advice as to how we should start to make it earn us money. Do we build up the trafic first? or do we get the paid for links & ads first?
MY ANSWER:
The life-blood of any site (that those that depend on ad revenue,) is the the traffic. I’ll even go a step further: the value of a site is the traffic and the quality of the traffic. I think you guessed the answer by now … but just in case, you need traffic first.
Once you have traffic, people will contact you to buy ad space. I get lots of request and refuse the vast majority. Why? Killersites.com gets over 1 million+ pageviews a month of very high quality traffic.
Hope that helps,
Stefan Mischook (The Web Design Heretic)
I have been designing sites for a little while now, and am getting pretty decent. With a good percent of local businesses in my area looking for Websites and Web Promotion, I started up my own little company.
I have a site up and have done some of the basics for getting it traffic. I checked the page and tried to make it as “SEO friendly” as possible, submitted the site to the 3 major engines, and some minor ones. After that I submitted the site into review in some general directory listings, followed by some more specific ones.
Anyhow, my hits have almost doubled over the past month since I’ve begun this. I am just curious as to what I should be doing next. I’ve considered some pay-per directories which promise leads, and ads such as front-page ads in some of the major directories. Those are pretty expensive ventures.
Being a designer yourself I am sure you have been through this yourself. I am just curious as to what you think is worth the money, or are there better avenues for me to explore.
Thank you for all the wonderfull advice you offer here. There is a plethora of information which I read up on as often as possible.
Take care,
Robert
Fractal Media
Word of mouth advertising is typically best for new web design firms.
I would continue to build a strong local client base and built your portfolio. Once you’ve have something to show, you can pursue online marketing more aggressively.
I am trying to do that, it just seems not a lot of people want to shell out cash for a website. I am not expensive in comparison to other firms who are in my area, as a matter of fact I have done similar designs for nearly HALF their price, I think I need more practice on my sales pitching etc..
We go with traffic first. Then the advertisers come to you.
John,
http://www.blog.sellitbuyit.ca
If you search on internet, u will get many adnetworks which accept yur registeration as u apply, but none of them will pay u. Best way of earning is increasing yur webtraffic and also joining good ad network e.g. YPN, allinfobarn network, Chitika, kontera etc for earning initially.
Xiang
I hope you hire a technical writer to edit your content! “Me and my business partner have currently set up a new site and we are wondering if you have any advice as to how we should start to make it earn us money.” — “Me set up a web site”?
karla,
That was a question put to me by someone .. not my writing.