Your Website Strategy

4. Making Money

Even if your site is mainly aimed at improving communication with your customers, it may offer revenue-raising opportunities.

4.1 You can sell products and services direct from your site.

• Once set up, a website is a cheap and efficient method of making sales.
• Margins can be unusually high, because there is no wholesaler or retailer involved.
• The best sellers are commodity goods, such as CDs, that can be sold at reduced prices, reflecting low overheads.
• The web is ideal for selling things that buyers find hard to track down.
• Items that can be sent digitally can be sold and delivered directly eg music, software, images and investment information.
• Service industries can also sell online.

4.2 If you draw a large, commercially interesting audience, you could sell advertising.

You will need perhaps 10,000 visitors a month to make this worth considering.

• Web advertising is sold in banner sites - strips of space on the screen with instant, click-through links to an advertiser's site.
• To display banners and track performance statistics, sites need to be equipped with special banner ad management software.
• Advertising rates are generally £25 to £50 per 1,000 displays of a banner ad.
• Contact a specialist online ad agencies if you think you have an audience to offer.

4.3 If customers trust your information, you may be able to charge for access to your site.

• Visitors pay by monthly subscription, or leave credit card details so that you can charge them for their use of the site.
• Charging for access will reduce the number of visitors. Consider starting as a free site and later charging for access to your most popular and valuable pages.