Making money from a website

[Peanut]

Any tips on the practicality of this? I have an idea for a resource-type website that would be useful in my community but I don't want to put a lot of time into it unless I know there's some possibility of making money from it. I'm guessing that I would need to publicize it locally to drive visitors? And that if I hit a certain number then I could sell ad space? Is that number hard to attain? Thanks for sharing any experiences with this.

[Tyler9000]

My first impression it sounds like you're describing a geographically localized resource for your neighborhood or city. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If that's the case, then unless your site is extremely popular locally or your topic is a crazy-high-paying keyword like "mesothelioma" it will probably be difficult to generate enough regular traffic to make ads very profitable.

You could always look at selling it as a service, but then you'll also need to figure out the right price and educate yourself on the tax implications. That's way more complicated than it used to be thanks to the rush for every state to define their own tax rates and requirements for digital products, so you'll need to do a little research before getting in too deep.

Other popular monetization methods these days are things like affiliate links, sponsored posts, and paid marketing to your email list. With the right niche audience for the right advertiser, you might be able to make that work. So think creatively about which options could apply to you.

Then again, I'm notoriously lazy about monetizing websites so I'm probably not the right guy to ask.

[Lemur]

The golden age of monetizing websites for traffic was definitely in previous decade. Nowadays...I'm not sure how feasible it is.

[Peanut]

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, initially it would just be my neighborhood and maybe one other where a friend of mine lives who expressed willingness to do the content work for her neighborhood. These are sort of the high-end neighborhoods but it's still a limited population. Ultimately we'd probably have to cover most neighborhoods for it to generate any money. That would take a lot more time and effort.

I don't see maintaining an email list. And I'm not sure what would keep bringing people back to the site regularly. I don't want to maintain a fb-type chat group or similar. Hmm. More thinking is in order.

[Sclass]

I closed my virtual vending machine last year. I picked up a ton of competitors selling similar content using similar SEO techniques. In the past I’d come up at the top of the google search then I’d start seeing these other guys who basically bought my files and distributed them for free while forcing viewers to look at clickbait ads.

Sales fell off a cliff in 2019 as a result. I shut the site down after 13 years. I made $3-4K a year during that time. It was kind of a joke to get a “free lunch”. I literally spent the proceeds on lunch. And I got pretty chubby for awhile in there.

I took a last look at my site which was basically an SEO come on and then a PayPal download file link. So y2k. The game has changed several times since then. Isn’t social media the big moneymaker now? Like being an influencer? It makes me wonder who is actually using Google anymore as a funnel.

Good luck. It’ll be interesting to see what you come up with.

[chenda]

If you have the right personality, a you tube account can do this.