It's one thing to have a web site up on the internet. It's another thing to get people to come and visit your web site. Getting traffic to the site has to be done in a number of ways. The best traffic is free traffic. This is done by optimizing your web site to feed the search engines just what they want to see. And this has been what we've been discussing all along.
But this is just the first step. And the most important one since studies show that most people find web sites through the search engines. But often, this is not "targeted traffic". Meaning the people are just surfing the net with no real purpose in mind.
By creating your web site as a narrow informational niche, you have increased your chances that your visitors are searching for your topic or theme. Hopefully, they are interested in what you have to offer for information and will stay on your site and go to the various pages you have put up. While doing so, they will provide you some income by either buying a product from you directly, "active income", or click through your Adsense ads or similar ads, "passive income", to provide you with the money you need to keep the business going.
Most discussions of web site traffic revolve around getting people to a web site. But there is the other side of the issue. Getting the visitor to stay on your site and buy. I've been explaining how to get them to stay by providing relevant, keyword weighted content. But that's not enough. You want income off of the site.
The best way I know to begin making income off of a web site when you're starting out is with passive income. This comes in two ways: Pay for Click ads like Adsense ads (see
http://www.google.com/adsense/ ), Overture (
http://www.overture.com ), or now there's Chikita ( https://chitika.com ) and through affiliate programs that are particular to the content within your web site.
Pay per click ads are the easiest to get started with. You've seen them. They're on almost every web site these days. "Ads by Goooooogle..." has become a familiar sight. If you go to any of my web sites, say www.grapebook.com, you will find these ads scattered throughout the pages.
Why are these poplular? Simply because if a visitor comes to one's site and doesn't like what you have to offer, these ads provide links to web sites that provide products or services that are specific to the content on your web pages. If they click through to those pages you get paid. Just pennies to a few dollars, but they add up if you have lots of visitors and they're clicking through. (they really add up if you have more than one website, each centering on a specific topic)
And you don't have to do anything. No product and you still make income. This is as passive as income gets. Even if you are going to offer a product, you can still make money if it's not for your visitor.
Pay per click ads are tied into the search engines' Adword programs. And they make it so that your visitor doesn't have to return to the search engine to keep surfing for what they're trying to find. These ads also represent your competitors, so why not make some money off of them.
Some web masters center their whole site around these ads. I personally think those sites look desparate for making Adsense money. My rule of thumb is to not look so obvious at first. In other words, don't push them hard on the homepage. Go to my
http://www.grapebook.com and you will see some adsense ads in the navigation menu on the left. They don't stand out. In fact, they were put there to trick the visitor to think that they are part of the navigation and thus part of my site. Only the "Ads by Goooogle" set them off.
But then go to my article index page:
http://www.grapebook.com/grapeandwinearticles_list.html and you'll see them displayed boldly. And if you click on any of the articles, you'll find that each article is accompanied by a set of ads. I prefer to get the visitor into my web site before I start pushing the adsense ads. Especially with this web site because I'm not selling anything on that site. I'm pushing pay per click (PPC) for the income.
There's a lot of politics about ad placement. I'm just learning all of this. Each of my sites has the ads placed in different areas on the page. I'm researching where the best placement is for maximum income. Some have borders around the ads to delineate them from the content, some don't so they blend in. I'll see which work best.
I've diverged onto a tangent about passive income, so I should also mention affiliate programs. (this divergence is because you should have some means of producing income from your site's visitors when they do arrive)
Affiliate marketing is another type of passive income that you will want to get into to generate income from your web site. If I continue along the theme of "travel", I would type "travel affiliate program" into Google to find affiliates that deal with travel. And, I would find that there are literally millions of them. Over 8 million... To me, that seems like too much competition amongst the different programs. So, I would try to narrow my search. Besides, you're already a travel agent.
Everyone needs luggage on their trip, so why not sell someone's luggage for them and make a little money on the side as a commission. There's also plenty of affiliate programs that offer luggage. You could sell lots of different things to travelers through affiliate programs.
Here's how they work. You go to a company's web page that you find on Google under luggage affiliate program. They usually have an affiliate link somewhere on the page, usually the bottom. Let's use "Irv's Luggage Warehouse" as an example. Near the bottom of the homepage you find a link called "affiliate program" and click on it. It takes you to a page that tells you about their affiliate program. In this case, the affiliate program is run by Commission Junction, a third party. It payse a 10% commission per sale and up to 12% on certain offers. You decide to sign up.
You click on "sign up" and you are taken to the Commission Junction affiliate registration page. Just fill in all the information on the form and submit it. You will receive an email immediately with your login username and password. Go the the CJ homepage, login and you can then get your affiliate links to text links and banner links. Simple as that.
You then place the links appropriately on your web pages and anyone clicking on them and buying some luggage will give you earned commissions for the sale. This is all tracked by your affiliate code. A "cookie" is also placed in the computer of the person buying so that if they come back and buy again, you will get credit for the sale.
Some affiliate programs are run through third parties such as Commission Junction, Performics, and Link Share. These third parties give you lots of choices of various affiliate programs to choose from and are very popular because the big corporations use them. But they also tend to give the lowest commissions.
I tend to go more with companies that offer their own affiliate program. They usually pay commissions that are 25-50% or more. Makes it more worthwhile. And their products are usually higher cost so that when you get a 50% commission on a $1200 product, that's a good days work. But you have to be careful with any type of commission deal. I've had some companies never pay me even though I've generated thousands in sales for them. This is one reason that many people go with the third party companies as they research the companies they represent thoroughly.
Another good source for affiliates is through ClickBank.com. This is especially true if you want to advertise some eBooks on the subject your web site deals with. If you want to offer real books on your pages, there is Amazon.com.
The sky is the limit when it comes to affiliate programs. Just google for them and you'd be surprised. One note, I wouldn't put banner links to affiliates on your web pages unless they really fit in and look unobtrusive. I'd stick to text links and fit them smoothly into your page content. I've done both on my web sites and have tracked the click-throughs. Most visitors will choose clicking through a well placed text link before they will the banners. Banners were a big thing in the 80's and 90's. But people got sick of them quickly and became very leary of them. Some of the earliest viruses were also associated with certain banners and this really damaged their image. Stay away from them if possible, you get more commissions that way.
I'll come back to making income later... but now let's get that traffic to you.