Over the last two months, I have been reviewing a large number of websites, and I am very surprised to find that so many monetization options exist. If you read most of the money making blogs, you will find that they contain similar content, but if you check the websites of companies which also have an offline presence, there are many other ways which can also make a lot of $$.
Though there is a lot of glamor attached to receiving VC / Equity funding , there are many disadvantages too. One of the registrars I uses DomainSponsor as the parking feed provider. They claim that they have not received payment from DomainSponsor. Yesterday there was news about the change in the management of OverSee , the parent company for DomainSponsor, which had received significant amount of funding recently. If you take money from anyone, you also become accountable to them.
After a particular stage, if you are a small biz and profitable, money does not matter. But for survival size does matter, if you are very small, it is easier for competitors / other companies to sabotage or cripple your business in hope of “acquiring talent” and get a good deal . They indulge in a lot of dirty tactics, but thanks to their PR agencies, they have a good image in the media. So, in a way you are forced to grow.
Though PPC is the most common form of online advertising, it is not very effective as conversion rates can be as low as 1% . For most other forms of advertising, only a fixed monthly or one time fee has to be paid.
One of the reasons why there are very few really big internet companies here is the crab mentality. Not only are the big companies unable to innovate, they spend a lot of time and money harassing smaller companies. They think that the smaller companies will go bankrupt and they can “acquire talent ” cheap. But they do not realise 2 things
Adsense decline in October 2008
It seems that the easy Adsense income is finally drying up. CTR has fallen by more than 25% and income is also affected. It will be the big websites with millions of page views which will be affected most. Small sites have lower overheads, so it will depend on how they are run.
Till a year ago, I thought the internet was a very safe place to do business, since I keep a low profile and do not interact with anyone.
But after some of my websites were subjected to DDos attacks for months and other forms of sabotage, I realised I had many online enemies, who had a lot of money to spend on this ewar. The only way to counter or make your enemy attacks harmless is to be extremely unpredictable.
This week I received payment for my first domain leasing deal. The price I had quoted was low for the traffic I have, but at least a start. The companies leasing the domains are off line companies , usually magazines , so processing the payment takes time. You have to send a formal invoice to them, processing can take 15 days.
The advantages of dealing with offline companies is that they are usually willing to pay the price you are quoting, since their business expenses are usually high. Also if you sell things online , at least 25% of the sign ups are scammers and you suffer due to fraud. Offline, trust is important, so most companies will be reliable.
This is a better option for .uk domains, since selling of a domain name is expensive and a time consuming process due to Nominet rules. The seller has to first pay a fee, before the change in registrant is implemented.
More traffic = more load on your server.
But it does not necessarily translate into more money.
The listing of Entrecard at Sitepoint is the reason why cash flow is so important for any business.
When I started with Adsense in 2003, the earnings for a website would be appear in the stats almost immediately. For the last one year, I have noticed that for new websites , even if I generate 1000 impressions, I will not get a single click. Where are the clicks disappearing?