A question we do hear a LOT on various forums and by email is the one many a webmaster or entrepreneur deliberates over.  Is it too late to start? the answer to that question could be as simple as No, it is not to late, however that doesn’t really answer the main concerns and reasons for the question and I have managed to get a few other opinions on this for you today.

Many people feel that all the good ideas are taken or that they are earning just a fraction of what is needed to make a full time income online and it is natural to look inwards at times and question your own commitment and ability to come out the other side of a long road, and it is a long road. Granted there are large success stories that have surged in a short period of time but aside from them, the majority of webmasters should be prepared for a 12-24 month investment before seeing good financial rewards from their website or blog.

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There are a number of reasons why adding a forum can be good for your site and also a number of reasons why it wouldn’t help, during the middle of last year I was looking for information on building an aviary and stumbled across Budgerigars with a for sale notice on it’s homepage, nice old article website with around 200 pages so I offered £250 and purchased the website.

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Subscriptions are probably my favourite method of monetization. Sure you need a product or service and it can take a fair bit of setting up but no other method can bring the sustained and everlasting gain that subscriptions can.

Initially you need a service or product, this could be added features in a forum or a club or membership to a website, for my tattoo site I being the unskilled entrepreneur looked for a way to create a service/membership without doing much myself. I contacted a few artists through other websites and asked if they would be interested in building a library of art/images that could be offered for inspiration, the first payment from new registered members would be shared between all of us.

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A lot of new webmasters think the best ways of making money on the Internet is via advertising with Adsense in particular, this can certainly work and be a profitable strategy but there are other Internet business models well worth considering. In this post I’ll scratch the surface of a few, partially for my benefit in looking for ideas for future sites.

Advertising Based
This is probably the most well known Internet business model and is popular with both new and seasoned entrepreneurs. The idea is to build a site that will attract traffic and then monetise it by way of advertising. This is the model use by the majority of blogs.

Example sites: digg, SoftSift, Technorati

Advertising Networks: Google Adsense, Chitika, Kontera

Pros: Easy to get started, sites can require little to no maintenance, income is usually dependant on traffic

Cons: income is usually dependant on traffic, can be difficult to build traffic cheaply, a percentage of revenue is lost to advertising agencies
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First of all, I would like to thank Al and Scott for the opportunity to write a guest spot for Self Made Minds every once in a while. I have known both of them for quite a while and it is amazing to think back to just a few years ago on some of the major forums where we were all just starting out in regards to truly monetizing sites. I am used to my own highly modded Wordpress so please be patient if my formatting is off at all.

With that out of the way I wanted to make a post on continuous improvement. It is an area which is near and dear to my heart and one I feel is overlooked by most of those just starting out. Those who understand it and strive on it are the most successful in everything they do. I often times see people question why a millionaire writes an eBook or even why they do not just sell their valuable site(s) and retire? It is because they are deeply motivated by continuous improvement, not money. You can use that same drive to go from your site making $10 a day to breaking the $100 mark. I personally believe this is one of the hardest ceilings to break. (more…)

I love mini sites!

Definition: A mini site is a small website with a very narrow subject focus and have their own identity often on their own domain name.

Mini sites offer several functions and can be used for PPC Adsense adverts or affiliate sales or product promotion, they tackle one narrow subject with an article and can be a single page or a few pages in size.

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All too often we see complaints about a sudden decrease in adsense and often curse it as one of those things over which we have no control, to be fair I have seen this myself which caused me to do a bit of research on the matter and find a solution.

During January I noticed earnings for a site drop from around $200+ per day head towards $100 which is a large drop and pretty unacceptable so an investigation was needed.

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I previously pointed out one good resource when searching for an older domain to start a new website. Assuming you find a nice domain with some traffic and negotiate it for a good price your going to want to put a website up there.

Now if you can code like Al then that opens all sorts of options, however if your unskilled like myself then you may have to find a way to get a website up on your new domain on a budget and easily. If we are staying on a product based domain like furniture the easiest way to do this would be to use product feeds from affiliate companies.

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At the start of every new website you have to decide on a domain name. Let’s work here on the basis that you want to avoid the sandbox and therefore look for an established domain that has some backlink history, how do you find such a domain?

Finding old domains for your new project can offer quicker rankings if done carefully and possibly good releveant backlinks with the added value of some traffic so finding an established domain in your niche is a commonly used practice for a new venture. A previously used domain may well have had money and promotion spent on it that you can piggy back onto and take advantage of.

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Studying about websites and building them was always going to be done on a shoestring budget for me because I didn’t have any spare money.

Many of the sites I own serve different purposes and have various roles in the whole portfolio to help share traffic or convert traffic to better paying sites and I work in a variety of genres. Today I would like to recap on how one large site was started on a shoestring budget as that is where most if us start.

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