How can I generate revenue from my website?

People starting informational websites often ask how they can generate revenue from their websites to help pay for their efforts. Each industry and topic area is different and your specific one needs to be researched to understand fully the revenue generation possibilities.
In general, though, there are 4 methods a website owner can use to make money on their website. They can sell advertising space. This is the most obvious one. The value you can charge for advertising depends on your sector and the companies you target. Next there are search engine feeds. All of the major search engines and some minor ones will allow you to put their search box and listings on your website and share in the revenue generated. Google's adsense is the most popular, but searchfeed and revenuepilot are also options. Google's program offers other options but that is a different article.
The third method is selling text links. This is a practice that is frowned upon by search engines, especially google, but it still goes on and is a viable way to earn revenue. Once your website has reach a PR5 and above you can sell 10 -20 links. The final method is to use affiliate programs. Just about every major brand has an affiliate program and several places like commissionjunction and clickxchange allow you to join and choose from 100's of programs.
What is an affiliate program, you ask? This is a system where a business allows you to show their ads on your website for a fee. The fee can either be a cost per click, cost per impression, cost per sale, or percentage of a sale. So, if you have a website about pets you can run ads for pet supply stores and receive money when someone clicks from the ad on your website to the advertiser's website. You can even do this for Amazon and target books and products that compliment your website's content.
About the Author: Rodney Ringler is President of Advantage1 Web Services, Inc., which owns a network of Web Hosting Informational Websites including HostChart.com, ResellerConnection.com, FoundHost.com, ResellerForums.com, and HostingKnowledge.net. Rodney has over 15 years industry experience from programming to internet marketing.

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