| What could be better
than having your own cool new website? Well, how about if it helped
to pay for itself? If your site is popular it might even generate
some extra income for your classroom or your school. The way for
your site to generate income is to allow companies to place small
advertisements on your pages which try to entice your visitors to
go to their website next. You begin
by signing up on an advertising agent's website to become what's
called an affiliate. This is a very simple process and it is free so
don't let the sign up scare you off (but as always exercise caution
with your personal information). There are many programs out there
but Google's AdSense is one of the best and most popular. Once you
are a member you will be given simple instructions on how to insert
the ads or links into your
web pages. And that's pretty much it.
So what kinds of things can you
expect to see advertised on your website? Well, Google's famous
AdSense program uses a very clever program to look through your
website to determine what it's about, and then displays only ads
which are most likely to be of interest to your visitors. Basically
all the hard work is done for you. Then, when a visitor to your
website finds the ad interesting and clicks on it, your account is
credited with a few cents. This is called pay-per-click advertising
and has become extremely popular on the internet. Although a few
cents per click may not seem like a lot, try to imagine how many
times these ads might get clicked on during a month...
100...1000...10000...more? What ever the number is, it's bound
to help you cover the cost of your website.
The key to maximizing your profit is
to let people know about your website and to attract more visitors.
The easiest way to do this is through search engine submissions. As
you probably know, search engines are internet websites which index,
or catalogue, the internet. The more search engines that know about
your website, the more visitors you are likely to attract. You can
do this yourself by going to the search engine's websites (such as
Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, etc) and looking for a link that says
"Submit a Site", or "Add your URL", or something similar. There you
simply type in your website's domain name (ie. address) and in a few
days they will add your website to their index. There are even
places on the internet that will do these search engine submissions
on your behalf. You just enter your website's information once and
they will submit it to dozens of search engines at once.
Good luck and we hope you get as much
enjoyment out of your new website as we do out of ours. |
