How to earn money from a free website? | The Coffeehouse

turrican
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance! - Albert Einstein

If you offered a free website, How would you earn from it? beside advertisement. What are your thoughts on this?

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Depends how popular the website was, and if I felt I needed to monetise the site, at risk of alienating my visitors.

I think advertising has gone as a way of making money from websites; I feel that when a site's is really popular (i.e. more than 40,0000 pageviews/day) you should offer some kind of paid subscription service, a la Fark or SA; these pay significantly more than advertising and gives your users a feeling of the need to do something on your site to compensate for the money spent.

turrican
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance! - Albert Einstein

In reply to W3bbo

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 1:00 AM

So you think if I setup a phpBB or something and customize it a little, will I get 4000000 visitors?

bhahahhahahaha... I just all respect for your words. They don't mean anything to me anymore from this moment.

Cupiditas
Chris Hawkins

In reply to turrican

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 1:25 AM

If someone you do not respect says something that is true, does it make it less true?

turrican
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance! - Albert Einstein

In reply to Cupiditas

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 1:57 AM

In this case, yes. In general, no.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to turrican

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 1:25 AM

He's not saying that. He said that Fark and SA get 40,000 pageviews a day, and any forum that gets as many visitors as they do could also, like them, offer paid subscriptions.

Sabot
My name is Dave Oliver. I'm a Technical Architect.

... sell something.

Dr Herbie
Horses for courses

In reply to Sabot

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 4:15 AM

A simple 'please make a dontation to support this website' button can work.

But if you get more than, say 40,000 hits a day, you could try a subscription service Smiley

Herbie

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

Basically the only way to make real money from a website is to have it become so popular that someone will buy it from you for big bucks, like what happened to startpagina.nl (that guy managed to sell his site to a publisher for Fl.30,000,000 (about €13,500,000)).

Ion Todirel
buuu

In reply to turrican

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 1:25 AM

> So you think if I setup a phpBB or something and customize it a little, will I get 4000000 visitors?

why not, the content is way more important, well of course you may have scalability issues but that's not what you asked

turrican
Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance! - Albert Einstein

In reply to Dr Herbie

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 4:18 AM

The problem with subscription is that if "free" makes visitors to visit the website, when you remove the "free" factor, they might just stop visiting it alltogether.

Perplexed

RoyalSchrubber
One. How many time travellers does it take to change a lightbulb?

In reply to turrican

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 1:25 AM

with that alien thread you came just before dovella and spectateswamp in my book, so... can you even explain that thing?

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to turrican

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 5:41 AM

Then don't remove the free factor.

jh71283
Throw new System.Beverage. OutOfCoffeeException()

In reply to turrican

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 1:25 AM

turrican said:
I just all respect for your words.

Ironic.

VB Man
Year of the Linux MCE.

This turrican tucan cat seems to know everything. Interesting.

jamie

In reply to VB Man

#Nov 23rd, 2008 @ 2:59 PM

sell something digitally obtained

see - www.istockphoto.com

used to use gettyimages and corbis (gates ahem)
but they want 300 bucks an image... istock is $20 for best res ( 10 credits)

i say let getty and corbis die ...