How do Websites Make Money

World wide web has considerably widened its horizons to near infinity. There are millions of websites in the world, with vast amount of information, pertaining to all the walks of life. The world of Internet is so intriguing and tempting that many a times a layman who uses these websites is fascinated by the way Internet works, and is often left wondering how do websites make money. Frankly speaking, not many people out there really know how do websites make money, but regardless of that making money from websites is quite a lucrative business. In fact there are many ways a website can fetch some wealth for you, ranging from the most common means such as advertising to least known means such as monetization widgets. Below are some popular ways of making money on the Internet.

PPC Advertising Networks
In Pay Per Click advertising (PPC), the website owner gets registered with a PPC network and pastes some code snippets on his website. The PPC network then serves contextual advertisements, in text or image format, relevant to the website. The owner will earn a specific amount of money every time some website visitor clicks on these ads, and hence it is known as Pay Per Click method.

CPM Advertising Networks
The process of Cost Per Mile (CPM) advertising, is quite similar to PPC advertising except that the owner of the website gets paid depending on the number of page views the ads on the site generates. The phrase Cost Per Mile refers to the cost of 1000 page views. The amount you earn ranges from $0.10 per 1000 page views to $10 per 1000 page views. This method of earning through a website is ideal for websites having a high page views per visitor ratio.

Direct Banner Advertising
In direct banner advertising, the website owner sells his own advertising space. This is one of the most lucrative method of earning through a website as the owner is free to determine his own rates for the space, and more importantly there are no middleman commissions. Some of the most popular banner formats used in the world of advertising are

• 728×90 Leader-board.
• 120×600 Skyscraper.
• 300×250 Rectangle.
• 125×125 Button.

This method of earning through web is ideal when the website audience is big as it helps to get qualified advertisers easily.

Text Link Ads
In this method of making money online, the owner of the website can sell text links by using his website as the platform, or use specialized networks such as the Text-Link-Ads to automate this process. Once very popular means of Internet advertising, the method lost its value when Google declared that it will penalize those websites which sell text links without the nofollow tag. But still this method is followed by many websites, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally.

Internet Affiliate Marketing
Internet affiliate marketing is one of the most popular method of earning on the Internet. In this process the website acts as a merchant who is willing to let his affiliates sell their products through his website directly or indirectly in exchange of some commission. The process is also referred to as Cost Per Action (CPA) or Cost Per Lead (CPL) based monetizing of the website.

Monetization Widgets
The use of monetization widgets is the latest trend of earning money through a website. In some cases the service is utilized under a PPC advertising, while in others it is used as text link ads. Widgetbucks and SmartLinks are two of the most popular monetization wizards.

Premium Content and Private Forums
In some websites, the owner gives the visitor the access to a part of the website for free, and charges a sum of amount to access the other parts of the website. This part, wherein you need to pay the premium membership fee, is the premium content part. Yet another means is the private forums, wherein you need to pay a membership fee to access and become an active member of the forum. The membership, which costs a specific fee, allows you to access certain features which free members are denied.

Paid Surveys and Polls
There are some services which pay the owners to carry out some surveys or polls on their websites. The website owner has to register with the service provider, and choose the type of polls or surveys he is willing to run on his website. These services most often work under Cost Per Mile method.

Pop Up Advertising
Pop up advertising is the most common and lucrative form of advertising on the Internet. But its major drawback is that at times it can turn out to be quite annoying for the website visitors, and lead to negative publicity. Pop up advertising has also suffered heavily since the advent of pop up blockers.

Other than these methods of earning through a website, you can also earn by indirect methods such as selling books in e-format or hard copy format, selling templates, starting a consultancy service or e-mail advertising and newsletters. Just having a website or a blog is not really enough, it can be advantageous to have a website that helps you to earn some money. Lastly, effective website business optimization can help in online money making by ensuring good ranking. Now that you know how do websites make money, you can monetize your own website and go on to earn some much desired moola.