This is where we start to push our paradigms a little bit.
When operating a quality web site with lots of helpful information
on it, you want to be rewarded for all of your hard work,
don't you? This approach to making money online is a little
different from the ones we just went over in that you are
offering fantastic content … but no one is paying for
it. The content offered on your site may not be something
that would lend itself to being purchased by your visitors.
They may value it very much and would hate to do without it,
but it might not appropriate to ask those visitors to pay
for it directly. So how the heck are you going to make a living
giving stuff away? It’s okay, don’t freak out.
I’ll explain.
When you watch your favorite television program, you don’t
really pay anything to watch it, do you? I know, I know, wise
guy, you pay your cable bill if you have cable, but this doesn’t
really count. The money that you pay for your cable only goes
to your cable company. You also pay for your online access,
but the websites you visit online don’t see any of that
money, do they? Of course not. It’s the same way with
television programs. They are actually giving their shows
away to us for free! So how the heck do those people make
any money? Well, of course we all know they get their money
from commercials. Burger King, Honda, and Pampers all know
that there are thousands of people tuning in to these programs
that could see their products, so they pay the shows thousands
or sometimes even millions for the opportunity to display
their wares.
Don’t underestimate the value of all of the eyeballs
that navigate your site. In the same way that companies value
an opportunity to plug their products on TV, they are also
aware that this same opportunity is available to them online,
usually at a much lower cost. Think about it. How many of
the sites that you visit are you paying for? Don’t you
usually make use of sites that are free for the most part?
Don’t you often see advertisements on these sites in
the form of banners or pop-ups? These pop-ups can be annoying,
but if you realize that this is how these free content sites
make their money and still offer you great content for free.
Makes it a little tougher for us to get quite so annoyed with
these ads when we realize it is the small price we must pay
to access free good quality content, doesn’t it?
These eyeballs that wander through your site are indeed a
precious commodity in and of themselves. If you are able to
attract enough traffic to your site with terrific free content
and can demonstrate this to potential advertisers, you can
offer ad placements from others on your site and make money
from this. We’ll go into this some more later on, but
definitely keep this in mind.
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