Make money without selling anything

I see many web 2.0 website that don't have advertising, dont' sell anything, yet have employees and a good service. How do they make money or do they even?

 

writely
stumble upon
delicious

I don't see anything for sale or any advertising but delicious was bought by yahoo and writely by google. Why is this?

 

Well, there can be many reasons. You know that the web primarily is about offering free information and some sites are just there funded by some parties just for the sake of providing free service or information. Sometimes it is used as a publicity campaign to fuel traffic to their real work. Some might be there just waiting to be bought over by some big corporation and thus the money.

Different people have different agendas. Well, advertising is good and plugging an adsense banners may bring in some money but my experience is that it is still far less than what it cost to put up the site in the first place. I know there are people who claims they are making hundreds of dollars from adsense each day but how much traffic is needed to get that kind of income because not everyone clicks on banners or adsense. I don't typically.

Incidentally, StumbleUpon is supported by paid ads and so on.. http://www.stumbleupon.com/advertisers.html

 

What is a web 2.0 website for crying out loud? Another term to put out with the trash, like Podcast and all these other rediculous terms that serve only to annoy and mean absolutely nothing.

A website is a website.
An mp3 is an mp3.

Pete

 

if you 've got an nice idea, you can always get ppl invest in you. If your site is good enough or you're just lucky, someone pay a few million for your site. Just look at del.icio.us and flikr, they are sold for a few million

 

Well, it is true. It has to have a unique concept and have global general appeal with a good viral following to be successful.

If it is going to be just another 'me too' site, it is definitely not going to help.

 

Hopefully youll get better at it then, no reason to be making less then what your site costs, if your site has minimal traffic you could find a host for 99 cents a month. Theres loads of people making more then that from adsense, but adsense isnt even close to the best out there, cpm kills adsense any day for me anyway. Also think people who arent webmasters generally have no idea that you get paid for there clicks, alot will also think the banner is just a part of your site.

 

True, I am learning as I go along. As far as hosting, it is not an issue since the sites are on my dedicated servers so as far as that is concerned, the cost is negliable. My only cost is design and probably acquiring the content or the site.

Last month, I got crazy and just buy sites because they claim to have potential. This month, I am wising up and taking stock of what I have and what I cannot work with, I sold them.

The thing is that if you scan the Sales Forum, you see some people making a dollar or so a month and trying to sell the sites for several hundreds if not thousands of dollars. I am sure that some of them are just trying to make a quick buck but I am sure that there are those who genuinely spent that much to make the site work but could not for one reason for another. It is indeed sad.

I tried Adsense and CJ but CJ hasn't yield me anything yet and Adsense is at least bringing in anything from 30cents to $2 a day. The trouble about adsense is that when someone clicks it, he gets out of my site. So the thing is that would they click the links on my site or click and adsense.

I want to try YPN but not being in the US, my choices are pretty limited.

 

Don't expect too much from CJ, I spent 3 years waiting for incomes and when I was about to receive my check the site was deducting money because of the many "deactivated" advertisers occuring after the revenue was generated, and leaving me with a ridiculous amount of money that they never paid.

I left CJ for a whole year and applied again when promising "changes" encouraged me for a new try. Another 3 years have passed by and more "deactivated" advertisers, more conditions to join certain programs, everyday changes to policies and no earnings yet.

 

Thanks for the update. I'll give it another month or so and if I do not see anything I will probably bail out from there too.

 

Most "web 2.0" companies have a large amount of venture captial funding, and work on the underpants gnomes business model:

1. Collect Underpants
2. ???
3. Profit!

Seriously, I think most "web 2.0" companies hope to make money by being bought by a big company, 'building to flip'. There are plenty of companies that started without any obvious revenue source - Hotmail, Flickr, even Google that have gone on to be extremely sucessful.

 

As with every advertising campaign, if you stick to reputable, large companies, you'll get paid. If not, it's a toss up.
I make my living primiarily from CJ at the moment, so I have to give it props. Just look for a company with a solid business model, and don't try to sell it the same way you 'sell' adsense ads. People don't need another banner to ignore. They need advice as to why something is for them. They like text. Put those two together and you'll make a decent buck with CJ.
Sorry, don't mean to be off topic, I just constantly see people knocking CJ and feel some obligation to defend it because they pay my rent..

 

You need to do the marketing. That is the tough part. So many great product, but needs people to market them. I think it is the same case here.