Webupon

I think it’s almost every webmaster’s dream to make their site literally a money-making machine. I know that there are tons of e-books out there that teaches you how to do it, but most of them aren’t free, or doesn’t even get to the point unless you pay for the “extended version”.

Here’s some of the basics in maintaining a good money making website.

First, be optimistic, never go beyond expectations…or even make those.

It’s impossible for some site to just generate a large sum in just one night. And be reminded that this is intended for extra income, do not depend solely for it.

Don’t force traffic. It’s a bad way too, I know it does add a lot hits but it doesn’t look good in the long run. Traffic exchanges, autosurfs, paid-to-clicks and whatever artificial traffic generators out there are a bad way of generating traffic. Why is that? Well, if you are an advertiser, ask yourself, would you advertise in a site that’s generating false traffic? And besides, the methods above are commonly not acceptable with ad publishers.

How to generate real traffic?

Good question. Let’s take a Manga (Japanese Comic) Browsing site for an example. The name itself explains what that site is. So it does narrow down to browsing graphical novels and such. And let’s say Jenny, the webmaster, got a nice piece of comic and uploaded it in her site, and coincidentally, let’s say Tom, does have an interest on reading that certain comic title, he then looks for it in the search engine and voila, he found Jenny’s Manga site. Tom visited Jenny’s site because he was interested in the comic Jenny uploaded. So that counts as a valid real visitor.

Now here’s the crucial part.

After Tom visits Jenny’s site, either, he will keep coming back if Jenny keeps updating the comic, or will tell a friend about the comic that it’s a nice thing to read.

Either way, it’s still good but, if Tom immediately tells his friends about the site, then it’s better. If he doesn’t, sooner or later he will anyway.

In short, put relevant content to your site. Update regularly to keep visitors coming. Even one real visitor is valuable because you can never tell if he/she refers others to your site, or even give you a link.

Having someone link your site to their site or somewhere else voluntary is very good. It’s a good way of propagating your site existence. It’s free advertising.

Don’t even expect a thousand hits if your site is still new and still lacking content though. Just keep putting things in it and will help a lot to drive traffic.

Ok, now that we’ve done the traffic issue, let’s move on making money with your site. Remember, do not think that you’ll be financially stable with this immediately.

Ads

Yes, put advertisements on your site to generate income. But a word of caution. Too much advertisements can slow down your site loading time, or even drive visitors away.

Place ads in moderation, do not stuff a page with advertisements. Make sure that the ads are still following the site layout otherwise it will look ugly and can reduce visitors.

As much as possible, stay away from pop-up ads. It’s annoying, and some people who encounter pop-ups tend to blacklist that site.

Sadly but true most advertisers tend to advertise in sites that receive US, Canada, or UK traffic, the reason may be obvious but publishers have to live with it.

The goal here is to keep putting nice content and hope for the best that more people around the world will check out your site.

Second

You can contract advertisements by yourself, but this one does require at least some establishment and decent traffic before advertisers decide to directly inquire to you.

Selling ad space directly is a good money-maker. You can offer to rent a portion of your page for advertisements or even links on strateging advertising locations like the header, side panels and such. Some sites even offer thousands of dollars for a single ad space but believe it or not, despite the high price tag, advertisers do compete on getting that space even just for a week.

The key to having that high ad space price tag?

That site probably is so established that it’s a commonplace for most internet users, take Yahoo! and MSN as an example. Most Internet Explorer users have Yahoo! or MSN as their homepage. If a billion people opened their browsers at the same time, a percentage perhaps of that traffic would have been interested in an advertisement on that page and probably clicked it.

For starters, get established, at least. And you can start charging ad space for at least 5$ a month or even a week, depending on the traffic your site generates.

Last words:

Don’t even get the idea of leaving your site out there and going back just to reap in the earnings. It’s like a lawn that needs regular mowing, if you leave it, it looks ugly. It’s also like a flower jar with water, if you leave it, the flowers will wilt and the water will be stagnant and unpleasant.

Go there and tend your website.

Image via Wikipedia