To make yourself income is the purpose of any online business. It's through your business web site and pages that you accomplish this goal. I've tried to impress upon you that your business web site has to be focused around a narrow theme or niche to receive the most visitors and traffic. It's the same when it comes to making money on your web site. The products and services you sell should focus completely on the theme of your web site.
Every thing you sell through your site, whether through affiliate programs, Adsense, or your own products/services should be specific to your niche. Visitors will come to your web site because it is of interest to their needs and desires. If you have made your site keyword weighted, they want specific information and products from you. The visitors you attract will be targeted and you want to give them the products and services they want. Not stuff that doesn't relate to why they're landing on you web site.
Do you have a product or service to sell? This is one of the most perplexing questions for the newbie online business. If the answer is no, there's a couple of ways to make an income from your web site visitor where you don't have to sell your own products. The easiest and quickest means is to have Adsense, Chikita, or other ppc ads on your pages. These ads are targeted to your web site visitor through your content and keywords so they are very specific to the needs of your customers.
The other quick and easy means is to sell other people's products through their affiliate programs. You will recieve a commission on any products or services you sell through your web site. Both these ways of generating income, PPC or afiliate programs, will only get you pennies on the dollar and you will have to sell quantities or have a lot of clicks on the ppc ads to make a decent income.
Eventually, you will want to sell your own products. In fact, I recommend this. You will make the most money for your dollar by selling your own product or service. And you get to keep all the money earned, not just a small commission. There are so many possibilites out there for your own products and services. You can make a physical product, downloadable software, or maybe ebooks.
Whatever product(s) you decide upon, they will need to fulfill a need, desire, or answer a plaguing question that your visitor needs filled to make a lot of sales. This entails some research. In this respect, I've found that lurking on forums, blogs, and other public discussion sites relating to the niche you're marketing to is very productive. Often questions arise on these discussion sites that will give rise to a product idea that will be the answer to the problem.
I've had the most success marketing my own informational eBooks. I think that the reason for this is that most people surfing the web are looking for information. I focus my web sites on specific information and supply the bare needs through them. This information found on my niche sites is then expanded upon in the form of the ebook that I sell to the visitor. This is a great marketing technique. I give them good information to nibble on and get them to my web site, then "set the hook" with an ebook that exposes all the information they are looking for on that topic. Much like fishing.
Information sells! And informational ebooks are easy to make and distribute automatically online. I believe that ebooks are the easiest means to your own product to sell. They're also quick to make and get up on your web site. But that's my opinion. In some niche markets, software or physical products are more in demand. Your market will end up dictating the products you develop to sell.
eBooks can be made as .pdf files or made with an ebook maker. There are a lot of free and bought ebook makers out there. You just have to choose between them to find the one that meets your needs. I've tried a bunch of them and most have been satisfactory. These days, I've been using Dead Easy eBook Maker. (you can google for it) I like it because I can incorporate audio and video into my eBooks and I think this is an up and coming trend.
Everyone has a hobby or interest that they know a lot about. Here's the place to begin writing ebooks about - What you already know. It's also the place to begin a niche marketing, informational web site. The web site will establish you as an expert in the field, while the ebook will distribute the specific expertise and answers to your visitor's problems and desires.
When you sell a product online, sell it through a sales page. This page is specific to selling one product and one product only. Web buyers shouldn't be confused with a poliferation of products to choose from. You want to sell one at a time. Shopping carts with a multitude of different items are for brand name companies and shopping malls. I would only use them if you have a number of products that are crucially focused around a central theme. For instance, my daughter sells a number of quilting patterns online. Here the shopping cart works as the visitor wants to see what she has to offer and choose the pattern that suits their need at the moment.
In the case of my ebooks, I want a sales page for each one. An example can be found for my grape growing ebook at:
http://www.grapegrowingbook.com . Only one product is sold there. The visitor is specifically looking for a book on grapes and the site is centered around selling one ebook product.
You might notice when you go to that site, the sales page is a sales letter. This mimics the direct marketing sales letters that you so often find in your mailbox at home or post office box. Sales letters are a subject on to themselves. I will say here, that research shows that more people respond to this type of letter/page than any other means (but you can test this to see if it's true for you). Generally speaking, this is true whether online or through the mail. Here again, you should only sell one product through one sales page. Focus will bring results. Don't confuse your visitor with choices to make. If you do, chances are they won't buy.
Whenever you're starting an online business or making your own business web site, marketing and products to sell should be part of your business plan. It's an ongoing process and research on one aspect will lead to ideas on the products you might develop. Always be on the look out. You don't know where your next idea might come from.