What is the purpose of a business website?  The answer is obviously to ultimately generate revenue.  If you sell products or advertising directly from a website then it's very easy to see the bottom line.  On the other hand if the purpose of the website is to generate leads, customers, or to give a company an online presence, then the bottom line is a little bit harder to see.  "Your Website's Bottom Line - Part One: Direct Revenue" will focus on generating revenue directly through the website.

E-commerce:
We will first discuss how to generate revenue directly from a website.  There are basically two ways this is done.  The first is obviously to sell products through e-commerce.  If one wishes to sell a product through their website they have a number of options.  One option requires getting a merchant account, gateway, SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate, e-commerce hosting, and an e-commerce website.  This option is very expensive for someone looking to occasionally sell products through their website.  Merchant accounts retain 2-3% of the sales price plus an additional $0.10 - $0.40 every time a transaction is made.  On top of that they usually charge an application fee, setup fee, and a monthly statement fee.  The costs of SSL certificates and e-commerce hosting have been greatly reduced in recent years; however these are just more unnecessary expenses in some cases.

Another option for the smaller e-commerce site is to use PayPal for credit card processing.  At the time this article was written the standard transaction fees through PayPal are 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.  This is only slightly higher than some merchant accounts.  The last e-commerce solution we will talk about is eBay.  This can be the most cost effective way for your website to sell products online.  You must be extremely careful when selling a product online no matter what e-commerce solution you use.  Protect yourself by researching what steps are best to take before you attempt any of these

Publishing Advertisements:
Another method for generating revenue directly from a website is by publishing advertisements.  Many websites' only source of revenue is the commission they earn from placing advertisements on its' pages.  There are many different types of advertisements in which a website might earn revenue from.  One of these advertisements is called pay-per-click.  Nearly all search engines place "sponsored links" in the search results which will usually charge the advertiser a certain amount of money every time a web surfer clicks on their advertisement.  These pay-per-click advertisements are not only limited to the search engines.  There are many companies that will allow you to apply for an account and place these types of advertisements on your site.  Most of these companies will pay you around $0.02 - $0.10 per click.

There are also advertisements that will pay you a commission if you refer a visitor to their site.  This visitor doesn't necessarily need to purchase anything.  Some websites will pay you if they just submit their e-mail address on their website.  If you're lucky enough to have a website that brings in a few million hits per month then you can skip the options just mentioned and work with advertising companies that will give you much better options.

The bottom line for generating revenue from your websites will always depend on the amount of traffic to your site whether you're looking to place advertisements, sell products, or entice potential customers to do business with you.  Look for "Your Website's Bottom Line - Part Two: 24/7 Sales Rep" by Jason Frey.

Growing up in Las Vegas, Jason first started designing websites in 1997. Then in 2002 he started his own web design business called Innovative Cut. In 2004 he was married and renamed the business Raja Tech to reflect the union of him and his wife Rachel. The web address for their web design business is www.RajaTechLV.com.