Web Development Guide for
beginners, intermediates and advanced users

Earning money through a web page is not easy and you should consider getting a popular site that gets over 100 unique visitors per day before attempting to make money unless you're content with only a few dollars here and there. This article will explain the main methods of earning money through a web page and their advantages and drawbacks.

Table of Contents

1. Advertising
2. Sales
3. Affiliate Programs
4. Donations
5. Other

Advertising

I'm sure you have seen an advertisement on the Internet, usually filled with junk unfortunately, well these can be put on to your web site and visitors who click on these advertisements earn you money. I have chosen pay per click programs that look at your content and provide relevant text links. Pay per click banner ads works by a company paying you to put your ad on your site. More common are established sites that get paid to put ads on their site and then they allow you to put the ads that they get paid for on your site and you get a percentage of the profits from the advertiser.

That may not have made sense so here is an example:

Magic Beans Inc. pays Ad Land to have their ads seen.

Ad Land lets you put the ads for Magic Beans Inc. on your site so Ad Land gets money from Magic Beans Inc. Now because you helped Ad Land by showing the ads, they will pay you a percentage of what they got from Magic Beans Inc.

Like the names? Hope you understood that. Now the companies who pay to have their ads shown don't pay you money for just showing an ad which could be hidden, so therefore they pay you by the amount of clicks you get from the ad so the more (different) people who click the ad, the more money you get for the ad.

Google AdSense (http://google.com/adsense) is my recommended choice for ads as they provide ads relevant to your site content, they are text links and the text and background of the ads can be changed to suit the theme of your site. This allows for ads that blend in with the site to increase its appeal to your visitors. There are many other programs but their reliability cannot be confirmed - scammers are around lots of places and there is no guarantee you will be paid.

Other reputable similar programs that offer text link advertisements that can also be customised to blend in with your site:

Note: The following links open in new windows
TargetPoint
BidVertiser
Clicksor

I would like to mention again that this is not recommended on sites that are new that don't generate many visitors as the money earned will not be very significant and not worth it considering the annoyances they may cause but that is a suggestion, there is nothing stopping me from letting you do this, unless... I'm joking :P.

Sales

What's simpler than getting money in exchange for goods and services? Do you have anything to sell; are you skilled in web development and web design and wish to related services for a fee?

This sounds simple but the fact is the task is hard - firstly to market your products and then to find your first sales, this is difficult as customers who are willing to pay for goods and services will go to more reputable sites or businesses. If you are selling a service, create a portfolio, start to make a few sample products and perhaps offer to do something for a business for free to add credibility to your site.

Also, you may want to note the competition, there are many people selling many different things and there are people who sell scrunched up paper by calling them 'Origami Boulders'!

To get more success, sell something unique, for example, clothing won't sell very well because of the countless businesses that offer it. Selling a novelty T-Shirt with a funny saying or something on it may. I recall seeing a site selling T-Shirts with text like "I pwn n00bs" and similar ones, I found it amusing and the site appears to be doing well.

Affiliate programs

These work by you putting a description or an image of a product of a company and when your visitors click on it, they get taken to the site of the company who owns it. If the visitor buys the product you get a reward, for example, a 20% commission of the sale price. There are many companies offering affiliate programs and they are usually free. I would stay away from these for the reasons below.

The problems with these is that the user usually has to make the purchase in that session (before he/she closes the browser) otherwise it doesn't count as you referring them there. Also, the money you get from this is not much, unless you choose specific products for a targeted audience. Why? Because there are many people who don't want to buy online, let alone the products you choose. I would stick to the above two methods.

Donations

Ask for donations, if you have quality content, chances are that there will be people who find the information useful and there are users who will reward you with donations. Don't ask for donations as this can deter those that are willing to pay but just give the option. There is a tip about how to not make asking for donations a negative for your site.

Other

There are other methods but the above three are the major ones. Watch out for other methods that claim residual income with no work as they may be scams and remember if something appears to be too good to be true, it probably is. You may find yourself put on a spam list and end up receiving hordes of junk mail instead of the money they said they would give you. Just a note: Promises mean nothing from strangers on the net.