There are many ways to generate income with your personal website, many with very little effort. Here is a comprehensive list of ideas for your use, along with a list of young successful entrepreneurs. Good luck!
1. Pay-Per-Click Advertising Networks
My absolute favorite is Google Adsense. To use ppc advertising networks you simply sign up with the company, copy and paste codes onto your site, then sit and wait. Each time someone clicks on an ad the company displays on your page you earn a small amount of money. Sounds good right? The more traffic you generate on your website the higher your chances of people clicking the ads, so more people = more clicks = more cash. Other ppc advertising networks include Yahoo Publisher Network and Bidvertiser, along with many others easily found in search engines.
2. Tip Jar
Is your website especially helpful to others? Does it supply information people may really appreciate? You may want to consider adding a tip jar. Paypal.com allows you to add a variety of buttons to your webpage, and a tip jar is one of their free services. You can use a standard button, or even get a little creative and add a picture of your own (e.g.: “Fear change, leave it with us!” or “Buy me a beer!”) It’s easy to use, and can only help.
3. Cost-Per-Mille Advertising Networks
This is similar to ppc ad networks, except instead of being paid each time someone clicks an ad, you are paid by the number of page views that ads you display will generate. Websites that offer this to you include burstmedia.com and advertising.com.
4. Direct Banner Ads
If you already generate a lot of traffic to your website you may want to cut out the middleman and make deals directly with the advertisers. The catch? You have to find them yourself. The benefit is that you can set your own rates and you tend to have a better cash flow and more relevant ads.
5. Generate More Traffic
How can you make money without any traffic? You can’t. There are several ways to generate more traffic. First of all, if you haven’t already submitted your webpage to major search engines like Google and Yahoo, do so ASAP. It could take several weeks to get your website crawled and indexed, and until then people will not have a way to find it! If you have already done that, you may want to consider Google Adwords. This program allows you to place ads for your page on other people’s pages for a very low fee that you can determine yourself. I have even had success only paying one cent for ad placement. If you are not willing to dish out any cash you could always ask others to post a link to your website on theirs. Promise to promote theirs as well. Ask your friends to share your page on social networking sites. Post your link in forums. Have good frequently updated content that will build a loyal following.
6. Bookmark Button
Add a “bookmark” button to your webpage. Make it easy to find again! Being in a list of favorites definitely heightens the chance that a person will return, and possibly even recommend it to a friend later. There are many websites that offer free and easy ways to add a bookmark button to your page including addtoany.com and addthis.com.
7. Affiliate Marketing
This type of marketing involves advertising someone else’s product in hopes they buy it off your website giving you a percentage of the profit. If for example you had a dieting website, you might consider marketing weight loss pills, diet plans, and exercise equipment. This way to earn money is also very simple, but must be very relevant to your page to have success. You can find this option at websites such as linkshare.com or clickbank.com.
8. Sponsored Reviews
These are the internet version of using popular names and word of mouth to sell products. If your website generates a good amount of traffic (especially if it is a blog) you can write reviews for companies that are willing to pay. Websites for this method include payperpost.com and reviewme.com.
9. Premium Content and Private Blogs
If you have very valuable information you may want to consider offering additional information or a private blog for a particular fee. You could charge a one time fee, monthly, or however you feel appropriate. Another possibility would be to charge customers for a special newsletter or an ebook, etc.
10. Paid Polls
Just like hosting ads on your page can generate income, so can hosting polls and surveys. Companies like to know peoples opinions, and you can offer it to them by hosting their poll on your site. Try vizuanswers.com.
11. Selling Your Website
If you feel you have a desirable domain name that already generates traffic, it could be worth money. Some companies and individuals would rather purchase a website with a clever name that doesn’t require them to generate their own traffic for more money rather than starting fresh. If you check with the host of your domain, chances are they may have a marketplace to sell and buy domains. If you are really good at this you can continue to make names and pages and sell them for much higher than you originally paid.
12. Quality Content
If you have taken advantage of placing advertisements, polls, etc on your website the most important key in making money is to have great content that is frequently updated. This will consistently keep up your traffic and cause more views and clicks of your page. No one wants to visit a boring website over and over, or pay for information that isn’t helpful, so make it good!
Remember to be patient. There are many people that succeed at making an income from their websites, but there are many more that do not. Some people to take note of:
Millionaires Under Age 30
Ashley Qualls age 17 has a net worth of $4 Million dollars. She owns the website whateverlife.com. It started out offering layout codes for MySpace backgrounds. She added more and more content, generated tons of traffic, and then started placing ads on her page. It took off, and left this teenager very wealthy.
Rob Benwell age 23 has a net worth of $3 Million dollars. He owns the website bloggingtothebank.com. It offers software to make money blogging that obviously worked for him.
Alex Tew age 22 has a net worth of $3 Million dollars. He owns the website milliondollarhomepage.com. He sells each pixel of his website for $1, and with 1,000,000 pixels, that’s a lot of cash. He is currently sold out of space.
Here are a few others-
Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook – age 23 – $700 Million
Andrew Gower – Runescape – age 28 – $650 Million
Blake Ross and David Hyatt – Mozilla – age 22 – $120 Million
Chad Hurley – YouTube – age 30 – $85 Million
Angelo Sotira – Deviant ART – age 26 – $75 Million
John Vechey – PopCap Games – age 28 – $60 Million
Alexander Levin – WordPress – age 23 – $57 Million
Alexander Levin – Image Shack – age 23 – $56 Million
Jake Nickell – Threadless – age 28 – $50 Million
Sean Belnick – Biz Chair – age 20 – $42 Million