Tracy Brady Cartoons

MONETIZING YOUR WEBSITE: Part 1 of 2

As a website, page, blog owner one consideration you may have is how to make money from your site.

Apart from accepting tips and donations, another way to make money from your site is by becoming a merchant; and becoming a merchant is by far the most challenging channel for making money of them all.

Despite the fact that online businesses are very competitive and notoriously low yielding, particularly if you run a webcomic site, operating an online store can give you the satisfaction of earning an income and the distinction of being able to call yourself an entrepreneur.

Many agree that the first thing most merchant entrepreneurs consider when they think abut opening stores, is not “How much will it cost to do so?”, but rather “What will I sell?”, so that is where we will begin.

Deciding on Your Product Line

Many bloggers and webcomic artists find measured success in selling items that include:
Original pieces of Art, collections of their work (webcomics, novels, poetry books), Hats, clothing, apparel, sports gear, utensils, kitchen ware, household accessories, pet products, dried food items (coffee, nuts, berries), calendars, confectionary, perfumeries, stationary, toys, electronic games, educational videos, entertainment videos (short films, music videos, animations), e-books, and subscriptions to exclusive content.

Be innovative as you decide on what your store will stock.

One artist even charged his site’s readers $20 to draw caricatures of them in person. His first buyers were viewers in his city, but soon he began receiving out of town and international requests to draw via webcam too.

While you definitely should be creative when deciding on your product, you don’t have to be when considering how to get a “Buy Now” button for your site. How so you ask?

Setting Up Your Online Store

There are many options online for setting up merchant services to process payments over the internet. One particular service I find most helpful is offered by Paypal.com

There, virtually anyone with a valid email address may sign up for merchant services that will allow them to charge fees for products or services offered on their sites. Paypal in turn, charges the user (merchant) for a percentage of the cost of the items sold for using their payment processing service. It is a quick easy solution for starting your first store and simply entails you signing up, setting up and then copy and pasting the computer generated HTML code of your new “Buy Now” Button onto your site.

So now, with where your new payment button will come from and what your merchandise might be just about settled upon, your entrepreneurial thoughts can now turn to the important matter of what it costs to start the store, which we will tackle in Part Two of this article.