Marketing 101- Making Money from a Website- PHPBeginner Case Study

Marketing 101: Making Money from a Website: PHPBeginner Case Study

Last updated: 6/16/2002; 10:19:37 AM

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Marketing 101: Making Money from a Website: PHPBeginner Case Study

We all want to make money from our website. Making money from a website is __hard__. This article talks about a few ways that one website that I am quite familiar with, www.phpbeginner.com, might choose to make money from their site.

DISCLAIMER: I'm an author for www.phpbeginner.com as well as someone that considers Maxim (the founder of the site) a friend. This was written, however, not for him but as a critical way to examine this all too important and overlooked topic.

Traditional Money Making Tools for Websites

The two traditional money making tools for web sites we know and find all too ineffective include:

Advertisements
E-Commerce Referral Links

I know quite a few people that have sites, that get real traffic, that have tried both of these options and found them lacking. So what we are going to do is return to the very, very basics and examine this topic in view of those basics.

Question 1: What Do You Own?

You can't make money unless you own something. If you own something then, perhaps:

Someone might want to buy it
Someone might want to rent it
You might want to sell it (not everything you own is something that you are willing to sell).

This brings us to the question of what a website might own. Typical assets a web site "owns" include:

Content i.e. the information on the web site
Readers (not really ownership) i.e. a group of people that come back regularly or somewhat regularly
Authors i.e. the people that create the content for the site
Metrics i.e. the data about the audience. Market research data can be quite valuable to the right person.
Interactive Services i.e. HotMail is an interactive service. So is MapQuest.

Question 2: What Are You Selling?

So now the question becomes that out of the possible items that you own, what are you willing to sell.

For most web sites I would stongly urge them to consider implementing a self service ad sales system.

Question 3: Who's Willing to Buy It?

Question 4: Can you be an Intermediary?

Question 5: Can Your Costs Be Cut Dramatically?

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go into the publishing business: PHP Beginner Volume 1

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