Advertising (Adsense) Site

On the whole, this type of business plan is the easiest to implement.  Don't be misled, it still requires nurturing and periodic attention.

If your business plan calls for advertising as your major source of revenue, the key is to generate as much traffic as possible.  In order to generate high traffic volume, you must have valuable, unique content.

Advertising rates are generally determined by two factors:  1) the number of people who either view the ads or click on the ads (i.e., traffic), and 2) the level of competition and profit in the business being advertised (determined by content).

Traffic:

We address the traffic issue in considerable detail, elsewhere.  Here we'll give an overview sufficient for you to plan your business.

Getting a high number of visitors to visit your site takes time.  Most first time visitors will come to your site as a result of finding your site in a search engine as they are searching for a keyword or key phrase.  Some may find it by clicking on a link to your site from another site.  Some may come to it by responding to your own advertising or press release efforts.

It takes time (usually months, at least) for the search engines to be fully informed about the pages on your site.  It might take months more for the search engines to believe that your site is important enough to move your site very high in the rankings.  If your pages are tens, hundreds or thousands of pages back in the search engine results, people will not find them.

Fortunately, there are ways to hasten your movement toward the top of the listings, which we shall examine in the section about search engine optimization (SEO).

Content:

There is a cliche' in Internet marketing circles, "Content is King."  This is not only an accurate description of high traffic sites, it is also a blueprint for success for any site for which advertising sales is to be the chief source of income.  Content can be in many forms--articles, cartoons, audio podcasts or video.  Whatever form it takes, it must be what your prospective visitor is looking for.

Using my example begun in other sections of this web site, if your niche is inexpensive horse riding attire, you might have articles about what qualities a rider should look for in a riding boot.  You might have photographs of various types of riding helmets.  You could offer videos of an equestrian fashion show.

Later, on your site or on a new site, you may branch out to articles about assessing horse boarding facilities or how to equip a stall.  But first you must fully master your niche, before you begin to broaden it.

The Internet's appetite for content is insatiable.  You need to continually add content to your site.  Each addition increases the opportunity for a new visitor to discover what you have to offer.

Revenue:

You may hope that eventually you'll have sufficient traffic that companies will want to advertise their products on your site in order to reach their potential customers.  In the beginning, especially, it is probably best to rely on contextual advertising, the largest supplier of which is the Google Adsense program.  I explain contextual advertising on the next page.

In addition to this section, be sure to explore the web design section of the site.