Making money from a website. Easy right?

[sam_r]

Ok,

I'm starting a website purely as a hobby with a friend. I wont go into much detail yet but it has a novelty value about it. Its pretty childish, doesnt sell anything but could be a unique idea that would attract traffic.
The users would be male and 17 - 26 year olds (ish). So quite a targeted viewer.

The question is how do you make money from a website that sells nothing to the user?
What are the options, advertising? Is there any other ways of earning?
Another thing, what sort of traffic would you need to get to ensure some decent cash?

I'm not that clued up in this field and would like any tips/advice please.

Sam

[jamesuk28]

Advertising is really the only option to generate revenue, or maybe selling merchansise like Ted does on here.

As far as traffic is concerned for a decent advertising revenue you would be looking at big figures, as a guesstimate something along at least 250,000 to 1 million hits a month and say 10,000 visits per month. But if you attracted a niche market say Hedgehog lovers then a hedgehog merchandising company would be interested for far less.

[schueymcfee]

You could affiliate for companies and earn commission off that for each sale they make.

If your target audience is young males, then how about having a shop that is full of gadgets and TVs and games consoles? They click on the product, make the order with the actual company, the company ship it out and take the money and then at the end of the month pay you a percentage of the sale, anything from 2-10%.

Or if your website is full of information, how about setting up some related tests, that are interesting for the visitor which they can play about on, but they need to sign up to get the results and other extras for say £3?

[sam_r]

Thanks for the replys.
Just to get an idea then, What could one expect to charge for an advert (for example a banner for a month) if you could get 1 million hits per month. All the viewers being young males so advertisers like Lynx, Nuts, FHM etc could target.

I give a shop some thought - thanks.

[D-Angle]

Advertising sounds like your best bet, and the easiest way to do that is with Google AdSense and affilliate links. Try these two links:

www.cj.com
www.google.com/adsense

[slapmatt]

Another vote for Google AdSense. It's very easy to set up, you're under no obligation to use it on every page and it can be designed to fit in with the "look and feel" of your site.

[Glocko]

Google Adsense said:

Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages

Edited by Glocko on Friday 6th October 15:25

[tigger1]

Amazon used to have an affilite thing where you could send people their way and get 1% for everything they bought.

I might have made up 1%, but it was along those lines.

[c0nn0r84]

Hi mate,

I work for Europe's leading search engine marketing company. Your best bet, as we have touched on here, would be to have ads showing content that would relate to your target audience. This exit traffic can certainly earn you some money.