Costs and Earnings - An Overview for new Webmasters

[emp]

Hi there.

To make a profit in internet marketing requires a close eye on all the factors related to your costs and earnings.
Those can get overwhelming, so I thought I'd share a list with you.

I made this list on my way to create a software to track my affiliate endeavors. Due to time restraints, bad coding kung fu and the complexity of the matter, this software has not been created (yet).

The list might serve as a reminder and inspiration, though.

Costs

• Domain registration - Price will vary greatly (registrar, privacy yes/no, Top level domain). Normally pay once a year.
• Hosting - Price will vary greatly. (Shared / Private server, company). Payable from once a month to every two years.
• Development - Depending on if you do this yourself or outsource it. Will be a 1 time cost at first, might become irregular cost, price vatries greatly.
• Content - if you decide to buy content, irregular cost, price varies.
• Offline Advertising - irregular, price varies.
• PPC Advertising - Daily cost.
• Individual advertising - Advertising bought on ther sites. Irregular cost with big variance in price.

Income possibilities

• PPC ads - Classical Google/Yahoo/MSN advertising. Irregular, have to reach a threshold. Time to payout varies.
• Affiliate sales - From Viagra to Amazon. Irregular, you have to reach a threshold, time to payout varies.
• Advertising networks - Networks that show ads on your site.
• Individual advertising - You sell ads to fellow webmasters or local business. Irregular, price varies.
• Memberships - Selling memberships to your sites. Once a month, quarterly or yearly. Needs a system.
• Direct sales - Selling stuff on your site. Irregular payments, you need an ecommerce system of some sort.

Remember, profit is income - costs.

::emp::

 

[sleepylee]

Absolutely right, and easily forgotten

Good points there, and that's a healthy reminder. The main thing, always, is to make records. Record everything you're doing.

What a lot of people seem to forget is that their time is worth money; you've got to ask if that £100 (or whatever) of 'pure' profit from AM is worth the 25 hours you put in to get it. It depends greatly on how you value your time. Everyone is different.

Writing content, site setup and administration, link building - it's all your time.
It's absolutely necessary to think about this when you're working for yourself (and indeed there isn't any way around it - if you're not making enough money in your 40 hour week to support you and your family, then you'll be able to see that pretty quickly), but especially when you're starting out and running AM along with a 'regular' job, valuing your time might not seem as important.

Get to it!

 

[Hillyer]

One thing that peolpe don't always realise is that a lot of the time, you will most probably lose money before you make money. Don't be deterred by this as it's how it works. If you are sure about the investment you are making, then it is likely that you will end up breaking even within no time at all.. and then the only way is up

Yeah, s'pose you won't lose a fat load of money when you are starting out with the cheaper stuff, like a domain name and a cheap host, but regardless of how large the expenditure is at the beginning... it is more than likely that you will get your money back + more if you work hard with it.. and do everything you are advised to do here on WF.

Well, that's my contribution.. But i'm still a nobody in the Interweb world.
- Nathan