tag writes:  

Many of us get excited about a web site. My uncle has had many. I know, I am the one that puts them together for him. He is a well known author and writer, gets in the newspaper all the time for his books and writing about different things. He even has a weekly commentary that goes all over the United States. Ryan Orr is pretty smart. He doesn't know a thing about web sites.


You cannot throw up a web site and expect hundreds of thousands of hits each day. It is just not going to happen no matter how sweet your site is. If you are selling things it is even harder to do. I point out every few months basic things a web site needs, mostly content. Without it people have nothing to see. There is more to a web site than that.

You have to plan one. If you are buying a domain name, and renting server space, you better think way in advance. Do you think it will pay for itself? It won't. Do you think you are going to get rich off of it? You probably won't, at least for the first couple of years.

If you did not pay for it for the year, how are you going to pay for it in three months, or six months because the money you think will be there, will never be there.

How much time are you willing to invest in it? The average web guru spends about 20 hours a week working on it, providing content, keying it up, making graphics, and learning things to improve the site. The ones that make money spend a lot more time than that.

If you are selling things how will you pay for advertising? Just because you have a good product does not mean people will come. A few sites may let you advertise once or twice, and if that fails are you going to give up?

A web site means some time of long term commitment. Usually the first few months things go pretty good, but no sales, at least not enough to keep you alive. Then it drops off. The second year should be a little better. It could be great if you invested time into the site. Did you trade lots of grade A banners with other sites? Did you purchase impressions on low cost sites with a good amount of hits?


Do you have give away items as well as those you are selling? Why should someone come to your site when they already have the things they want? A good example of time commitment is http://dhggifts.com . This site has great php programming if it was a porn site it would be famous. The code was written by the owner of http://kewlio.net at a cost of over $2,000. I put up the actually pages that you see, but the coding was done by an expert. This site offers great deals on items to all points of the globe, but it's first year it hardly moved. The second year sales began, and many web masters are making a fortune on it.


Another site example is http://rwpbooks.com. They made an agreement with dhggifts to sell books, which works great for people with book sites, they actually earn money, some earn hundreds per month. They both worked with http://am-nuke.net to develop a block for selling. I of course shipped that block out to brother phpnuke sites.

It took time and commitment for all three sites working together (about six months) before their system was ready, and now, a year later many web masters are making money from them all.


Amazon.com is another site that offers good things for web masters. You will not get rich from any of them, but having affiliate links to those type of sites will bring in an income every few months to web masters doing their job. This is in addition to any thing you are selling on your own. If you can afford it, then getting affiliates and paying fair would be a good way to promote your own products(s). Your only other alternative is advertising. However, advertising your affiliate program, is lots less expensive, and web masters are more prone to support it, than promoting a single product. Keep that in mind when you are working on your site.


Web masters will help promote your affiliate program a lot faster and easier than promoting a product or services that may or may not be there in three months, and if you have a two or three tier affiliate program like dhggifts.com uses, other web masters will promote it vigorously.


Keep in mind, whether you have a free site, pay site, for sale site, or a combination of one or all, you need the start up money and capitol to keep it going for the first couple of years. When dhggifts was frustrated, Dan at kewlio.net said just hang on, you have too much invested into it, and sure enough Dan was right. They had the hits, but no sales, now when they have a hit, it is almost always a sale.


To make your web site grow, make a long term commitment of over 20 hours per week, and triple what you invested for a year into the site for advertising money. If you are selling, create a multi tier affiliate program, and promote the program, not the products. Don't listen to anyone say sit back and watch the money roll in, always be promoting your site. Use the income from affiliates you put on your site for the upkeep, maintenance and promotion of your site. Only keep the money from your actual sales.Note:
Tag Craig is a 15 year-old php nuke web master at http://am-nuke.net. You can see many of his other articles for web masters in their forums. He specializes in web site creation for major sites around the world. He has had over two years experience building solid sites that are still going strong.