Forum Moderators: skibum
I hope this is the right category for this post...
I'm trying to figure out the financial aspects of a couple of sites I'm working on. Either one of the sites could have hefty hosting requirments if everything works out. Most importantly storage capacity. On the extreme end, I could need 250GB or better HD space by the end of the first year.
The nature of the websites aren't really ecommerce, but more of community sites with file upload capabilities, and any business model that charges up front or sells a product would probably drive users away more than anything in the early stages, and I would expect only a small percentage of users to pay a nominal subscription fee once the site is established.
So I'm hoping to get some ideas on how to create a robust ad campaign, find ideas on how to make pay per click deals work, or find out if they even work at all anymore.
I mentioned I have a couple of sites in the works; one site will actually compete in an established market (I don't know if its saturated or not, but definatly established), and for the other site I will take the previous model (if I can get it to fly) and apply it to a different area, but this area will require more hosting resources than the former. I notice the established market uses alot of banner ads, although I don't know the income for these sites, and the second idea, I'm not sure I will have as many targets for ads. But thats probably just out of my inexperience with ad campaigns.
Any insight would be appreciated. I'm not going to elaborate on the specifics of my plan, since I have alot of things to work out yet, but I need help grasping a foundation on the banner side of the web dev world.
I also need to find the most economical way to fulfill my hosting needs. As technical guy, I know I can put together a cluster to handle the hardware load for a good price, but from what I'm finding out, it seems that purchasing bandwidth for my own hosting would be "holy cow" expensive as opposed to dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting. But I suppose that topic is best left for another thread in another category.
I appreciate anything you can throw me here!
Thank you, if anyone does reply!
What was the question?
?
The goal of business is to bring in money, not have lots of users.
All I can say is a business model with no foundation of monetization is not a business but a hobby. Hoping that someone throws you a few dollars 12 months from now is IMO not the best plan. It also sounds very much like the internet startups of the 90s. (lots of users, no one paying)
I'll rephrase my question:
I'm going to put up a website, and I want to have it pay for itself using banner ads and such thats talked about in this forum. I'm new at that side of web dev, and not sure how that might work, or even if it will. Looking for some pointers, or resources to get me started on a beginner level.
What I meant by:
"any business model that charges up front or sells a product would probably drive users away"
...was refering to the idea I'm working on, and if I charge a fee up front, it would drive users away early on. But if they get settled in for free and enjoy the site, they might stay when the community gets larger and I ask for some dough. Hence the reason for thinking I can pay for it with banner ads and such. I just want to cover costs while people start to straggle in, and I find out if its a good idea or not.
How do community sites pay for themselves? what about webmasterworld? If they charged up front here, this place would be a ghost town.
My idea is similar to a forum, but will have a much higher requirment for hosting. I can't do it shared, so it won't be cheap.
"The goal of business is to bring in money, not have lots of users."
My limited understanding of internet advertising lends me to believe that alot of users, would equal alot of page views, which in turn would drum up sales from advertising, and send some money my way with the affiliate thing. If I'm wrong, its because I don't know, and thats why I'm asking. I'm thinking my idea will be focused toward a niche group of people, and I will be able to select affiliate/banner ads appropriatly to bring in money. No?
My limited understanding of internet advertising lends me to believe that alot of users, would equal alot of page views, which in turn would drum up sales from advertising, and send some money my way with the affiliate thing. If I'm wrong, its because I don't know, and thats why I'm asking. I'm thinking my idea will be focused toward a niche group of people, and I will be able to select affiliate/banner ads appropriatly to bring in money. No?
I think you've blurred the lines between AM and CPM/PPC advertising.
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Affiliate Marketing:
You get paid only when a user from your site visits a merchant and purchases a product. If you have a billion visitors and none of them follow the links to the merchants you have affiliate relationships with, you don't get a dime.
The key here is that a user has to buy a product. Generally you get paid a percentage of the total sale, or receive a flat fee per sale. There are other technicalities like the length of time in which a person must purchase a product after coming from a link on your site, etc etc, but those are really just details.
If you send thousands a visitors to a merchant via links, but none of them buys anything, you don't make a dime.
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PPC/CPM:
With PPC you get paid every time a user clicks on a link to an advertiser. It doesn't matter if they purchase anything. Usually you sign up with a service such as Adsense or Fastclick, and they automatically match you up with relevant advertisers. They take a cut each time somebody clicks on your ads, and you get the other few pennies.
CPM is a variation of PPC -- you get paid a few pennies every time a pageview occurs in which a banner/link to a merchant is present. Generally these do well on high traffic / untargeted sites such as jokes, politics, forums, etc.
If you had a billion visitors to a site with a lot of CPM advertising, both you and the guys that run those "click here for 1000 smiley faces" sites would be living it up in on your own private islands. Assuming, of course, that your shared hosting provider didn't drop you after all the thousands of GB of transfer every minute.
