Website Startup Guide - Mix And Match Your Advertising Offerings

There are literally thousands of people out there right now who want to
start their own online business. The problem is where to begin and how to
get started.

Oh sure, they know they can buy a domain and a web hosting account, but that
is not the problem. The hold up is that they don't know what to sell on
their websites that will allow them to make a nice income to supplement the
income from their regular jobs.

Day and night, people browse this World Wide Web looking for a hint or an
insight that will point them in the direction of the next big thing on the
internet.

Let's be honest. Most people who want to start an online business are only
looking for enough extra income to pay an extra car payment or to buy some
clothes for their kids. Not everyone is looking to get rich online.

Looking For Something To Sell

Most people online who are looking for an opportunity to make money look
first to common themes of products they already buy.

If you go to Google and type in "flowers" for your search, you will find 339
million pages found. If you take the same search to Yahoo, you will still
find 202 million results. With that kind of competition, why would anyone
want to try to break into that industry as an online entrepreneur?

Suppose the next thought takes the aspiring entrepreneur to "jewelry"? A
Google search will turn up 551 million to Yahoo's
261 million pages. Again, why would someone try to tackle such an
overcrowded marketplace?

On top of that, as part-time entrepreneurs looking for some extra money,
they don't have the time or resources to try to knock heads with these major
corporations who run the competing websites in these markets.

Add to that the need to handle actual products and product fulfillment, and
your part-time start-up entrepreneur really starts to lose interest. People
tend to shy away from product fulfillment related industries. Their homes
are already crowded enough without adding retail products to their space.

Something To Sell That Does Not Require A Warehouse or a Huge Investment

It is at about this time the opportunity search changes gears.
There are many forks in the road, and the road you choose can be as hard or
as easy as you make it for yourself.

Where to go from here:

1.Digital products - E-books and Software 2.Product Drop-Shipping
3.Affiliate programs 4.On-site Advertising

Let's look at each one of these individually:

Digital Products - E-Books and Software

We all have some kind of knowledge to share. If you determine that you have
some kind of knowledge that you can share, then there is likely someone out
there in the world who would be willing to pay you to obtain that same
knowledge.

E-books are an ideal way to disseminate this information. With the e-book
format, there are no printing costs, since your book is stored as a digital
file. Self-publishing a digital ebook is not nearly as hard as you might
think it would be.

Software is a similar beast. Since it is a digital product, you don't have
to cover the costs of packaging and distribution. You can sell your software
online, cutting out the middleman, keeping the extra profits for yourself.

Product Drop-Shipping

Some wholesale companies will allow you to buy products from them on a
piecemeal basis. Of course, the cost is a bit higher than what it would be
if you bought products a pallet at a time, but the convenience to you more
than makes up for the additional cost.

The "drop-shippers" allow you to sell a product to your customers, and then
you can take the money you collected from your customer to the drop-shipper.
The drop-shipper will ship the product directly to your customer.

In some cases, the drop shipper will even put your own custom label on the
outside of the container, making the fact that you used a drop-shipper
completely unseen by your customer.

To find wholesale companies who offer drop-shipping services, check these
folks out: http://www.vasrue.com/dt/t.php?id=167

Affiliate programs

With an Affiliate program, you can register with a seller, and the seller
will give you a unique URL that you can use to promote their products or
services. When someone uses "your affiliate URL" to visit the seller's
website, the seller will track that person until the visitor leaves the
site. (Some Affiliate sellers will drop a cookie on the computer of the
visitor, and if that person returns to the seller's website within one year,
then you will get credit for that visitor returning to the seller's
website.) If the visitor buys a product or service from the seller, then
your account will be credited for bringing a buyer to the website. This will
result in your earning a commission for bringing the buyer and seller
together.

On-Site Advertising

Both Google and Yahoo's Overture services offer an option to webmasters to
carry their advertising on your website. When someone clicks a link on your
website and visits the advertiser's website, then you would get paid a small
payment for having connected the potential buyer to the seller's website.

This is a type of advertising that pays you when someone visits the seller's
website. Contrast that with the Affiliate program, which pays you when
someone buys a product from the seller's website, and then you can see the
fine line difference between the two types of advertising.

How Much Can You Make Utilizing On-Site Advertising?

Truth be told, there are a lot of people on the internet who makes tens and
hundreds of thousands of dollars per month --- yes, I said, "per month" ---
using only Google's on-site advertising program, called Adsense. The rest of
us make hundreds or thousands per month.

The truth is that with Google's contextual advertising program called
Adsense, your income is based on what the advertisers are willing to pay for
your traffic and how much traffic you can generate.

The Profit-and-Loss Factor for the Advertiser

It is a matter of profit-and-loss for the advertiser. If the advertiser pays
one dollar for a visitor, and every 35th visitor buys what the advertiser is
selling, then the advertiser is getting one buyer for every $35 spent. If
the advertiser's profit margin is enough to afford spending $35 to acquire
one customer, then the advertiser will feel his advertising is worthwhile,
and he will keep on coming back for more advertising.

If on the other hand, the advertiser is only earning a gross profit of $20
per transaction, then he or she will have a hard time justifying the $35
advertising expenditure.

This is why you will find that most Google and Yahoo advertisers are only
willing to spend 25 or 50 cents to get one visitor to their website.

And then depending on a number of factors, you will only earn 30-50% of the
gross revenue that Google or Yahoo earned for that visitor.

Taking the lowest case denominator approach, 30% of 25 cents is roughly
eight cents that you will be paid for each visitor that you send to an
advertiser.

Some of these guys who are knocking down ten thousand dollars a month are
actually doing so at eight cents per click! What is their secret to success?
They are getting thousands of people to visit their website everyday.

The Profit-and-Loss Factor for the Affiliate Seller

On the flip side, let us take a look at the same scenario for the Affiliate
seller. Instead of paying for visitors, advertisers are paying for actual
sales.

The Affiliate seller knows his or her margin well enough to know that they
can afford to pay anywhere from 2-50% of the actual transaction amount to
the person who referred the buyer to their website.

The Affiliate seller is not paying for advertising on a gamble, instead,
they are paying for advertising on a sure thing.

It is not unheard of to earn $20, $50 or $200 on a single Affiliate sale
transaction.

If you are able to convert one person in thirty-five to buyers of an
affiliate product or service, you could conceivably make more money with
less traffic, than the guys knocking down the big bucks with Adsense.

Mix-and-Match For The Greatest Success

This is really important to your bottom line. If you fail to heed my advice,
your website may fail to survive.

Unless you are the owner of a product or service sales website, then you
will be relying on the various advertising opportunities to survive.

You are best to mix-and-match your offers for the greatest success. Yes, do
set up Google Adsense on your site, but also set up Affiliate programs on
your site.

You may sell a few products each week, and the sale from those products
might make a good income for you. But, for the people who arrived on your
site who are not interested in your main offering, give them another
advertisement to click on before they leave. This way, you can get the
Pay-Per-Click advertising revenue from those people who chose not to buy the
products and services that you are selling through the Affiliate programs.

Diversification Is Your Key To Success

Don't let yourself be fooled by the idea that you can be profitable with
only one product or service offering or advertising revenue generator. Many
people have entered this medium with a Made For Adsense (MFA) site, and many
of those people have gone out of business in just a few months.

Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Or else, when you fall, you will
have nothing to show for all of your hard work.

About The Author: Ramon Sanchez, writes E-Business articles for Online Cash
by Vasrue Read more E-Business information here:
http://www.vasrue.com/dt/t.php?id=168