Celebrity Websites: Making Money
Because we do not live in the utopian world posed by Lennon in "Imagine," we all want to make money to move upward within the social environment around us. There are three reasons why you may read my posts - because:
- You want to see what I have to say about your favorite celebs
- You want to get more visitors to your site
- You want to make more money from your celebrity website
Every post in this weblog relates to #s 2 and 3 either directly or indirectly. If you have any type of revenue stream already set up, then #2 will usually translate into #3. So, you should have already learned a few things over the past few posts to help you out already. So this may be the first post directly relating to generating revenues from your celebrity site, but it is really the ninth to provide you with at least some information.
The Bare Bone Basics About Generating Revenue From Your Website
1. Create a website
2. Place income streams on the site
3. Get people to come to your site
Okay, that's it. Good luck to you - go out there and make millions.
Of course I am just kidding. Each of these three items need to be explained in much, much further detail. Then, because it is not not an exact science, after what you read here and elsewhere, you need to try and try again. [You should be reading as much as you can from as many sources you can. Although you may see many different theories, you need to do what is right for you and your website or blog]
Today, I will share a few thoughts on the above items and will not go into much detail here. Other posts will be forthcoming that will help to round out the details.
Create a Website
Build it and they will come -- well, first you need to build something and worry later about getting the people to come. First, are you an absolute beginner? Then maybe you want to start out by using one of the free website programs, such as at www.Geocities.com (it is where I built my first website almost ten years ago). If a blog is more your style, try www.blogger.com (which is what you are looking at now) or www.Xanga.com. There are also other options available (which I will cover at a late date) if you perform a search for "free website" or "free blog." If you are a little more advanced, then create your own website with one of the many programs available such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage.
What kind of website should you create? -- One that you will enjoy building. The first real "ecommerce" website we built was www.GiftIdeasPlus.com, a good website, and exciting to build at first, but not really based on a lifelong passion of mine. The site is updated from time to time, but not as much as needed. The site that received the most visitors by far is our www.PopStarsPlus.com site -- which was created solely for fun without any though of real revenue potential. However, it was about celebrities and all of the stuff we liked, so it flourished and we are not bored of it. So, go ahead, build a site about a subject you like. [Start with one, then later on, begin to build other sites for other subjects you have a passion for].
Now that you have a website in place, you need to find a way to make money with it.
Place Income Streams On The Website
A website in of itself will not make money. You either need to sell items on the site (and set up an online store), set up affiliate relationships or place advertising on the site.
For those of you starting with your own sites, many of those services have tools that allow you to place some of these revenue streams on your site with very little difficulty.
Selling your own items -- To do this, you need to set up an online store. They can be started up for fairly little money from services provided by places such as www.Yahoo.com, www.GoDaddy.com and even www.eBay.com. This could be the most challenging way to earn income on the web, but if successful, the most rewarding.
Affiliate Relationships -- This is basically placing text, banners and product images on your site that link up to a third party website such as www.Amazon.com or www.Posters.com. The catch is that you have set up an agreement with these places so that if someone is directed to their website through your link and they purchase something, you get a percentage of the sale. No warehouse, no store, no customer interaction needed - just remember you are only getting a small percentage of the total sale. For some affiliate money making ideas, Click Here.
Advertising -- The most common form of advertising these days is by ad banners. You may see many of these on the websites you visit, even this one. If you look towards the top of this page, you will see a small ad from www.Google.com, these "AdSense" ads have become very popular as of late and the way you make money is from people clicking on the ad. These ads are set up so they have some type of relationship with the content of the page so your visitors are more likely to click on it. Over the past year, a number of competitors have also appeared that do the same thing. Other forms of advertising include selling space on your site to place a banner or ad. [Note: www.Blogger.com gives you an option to set this up when first creating your blog]
Get People to Come to Your Site
The first two steps are comparably easy next to this one. The site with the greatest content on a particular subject may not be found if you do not "help" people to find it. People usually "find" your site from one of three different means: word of mouth & offline advertising, links from other sites or search engines.
Word of mouth & traditional offline advertising -- Does "Do You Yahoo?" sound familiar? Did you read that on the web -- no you probably heard it on the radio or television. This was a way for the online company to get people to their site. Most people & companies do not have that type of ad revenue, but there are some things you can do, such as handing out business cards to every person you meet or handing out flyers in your local area. If your site is good, those people will tell other people, who will tell other people . . . well you get the idea.
Links on Other Websites -- Get a link to your website on other related websites. For instance, if you have a sight about reptile grooming, try to get your link placed on other reptile or reptile grooming sites. Depending on where and how the link is placed, you may actually receive some traffic from this link. Many times you will need to trade links with the site, so be prepared to place a link to their site on your own page as well.
Search Engines -- I can spend the next several days writing about this, but what it comes down to is that most of the time your site will be found through searches on the search engines. There are a great number of strategies to consider, but for this introduction, at least do the following: (1) Submit your URL (website address) to the major search engines (Google.com, MSN.com and Yahoo.com) and whatever other search engines you can find (do a search for "Add URL") (2) Try to update your website regularly (3) try to get links to your website on as many related websites as possible. These are the bare bones here -- for those with a little more knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization), you are probably laughing, but this is good for the beginner.
If you have any questions, please leave your comments below.
Until next time . . .
I.R.
