Earning an income from your web site by advertising, including some affiliate links and so on, is often proclaimed to be the ultimate dream come true. The truth is, it does require some dedication. It also requires a good quality, themed website (i.e. with a very specific and singular focus).

A site which attempts to cater for every conceivable type of audience and link to several unrelated categories of affiliate merchants is just not going to succeed. Such an approach is also not going to get you very good rankings with the search engines, for reasons discussed on our "promote your website" page.

You are going to have to offer some free goods, because the vast majority of website visitors are looking for free information. If this expectation is met, they are much more likely to follow links to goods and services which they'll need to pay for. See, for example, how we offer free business cards and free advertising on our home page.

Do not be tempted to cram your site with advertisements. Give your audience some good reading material and make personal recommendations on featured products (genuine ones, because honesty is the best business policy).

And traffic is not going to come automatically. You are going to need to promote your website which involves optimising the content, getting good quality links from other sites (link popularity) and submitting it to the main search engines and directories.

Now that we are done with the general advice, we'll discuss some of the best ways of earning money from your website, including some specific recommendations. Our "Referral / Affiliate Marketing" page discusses schemes you can join for free whereby you recommend goods and services of merchants who run affiliate programs. These are the simplest ways of making money, so you may wish to go straight there.

Everyone is trying to get in on the act, however, so you may wish to consider other ideas. If you have your own product or service to sell, then you can of course reap all the profits (i.e. make direct sales) as opposed to just being paid a commission. In that case you'll need a shopping cart facility. We can recommend the realcart, a 5 star rated cart which makes it easy for web shoppers to buy things on line. It's also easy for you, the merchant, to set up. Realcart will help you set up the other components required for e-commerce on the web; the merchant account, payment transaction software and a secure server connection, but if you are looking for a complete e-commerce solution which embraces all these components, take a look at a product called QuickCommerce. QuickCommerce is a five-star rated e-commerce solution which allows small businesses to accept credit cards and checks online.

The next best thing to direct sales is joining a reseller program (also known as a partner program). With these programs you earn a commission selling a product or service.