Workshop: find the answer to the question
How can I make my site sell?

This workshop has been set up with the intention of trying to answer the question that is on top of most webmasters minds. How can I make my website pay? Even if your site is a modest few pages that deal with your favourite hobby. You should be able to make at least a small income from it.

One of the easiest ways to generate a small income from your website is to join one of the affiliate programs. The best known one is the amazon associates program. You create a link on your site sending your visitors to buy books from amazon. For each book that your visitor purchases you get a small commission. Send them 10 visitors - if each visitor buys a book for $20 - do this every day and you will earn over 10 grand in a year!*. More realistically you may just pay for your site hosting fees.

I was introduced to the 'Make your site sell' affiliate program by Allan Gardyne who edits the Associate Programs newsletter. I have played with a few associate programs with some very limited success, and like most webmasters who want to take their site into the world of e-commerce the MYSS program seemed like what I had been looking for. There are other similar programs out there - but somehow this one got me hooked.

So I subscribed as an affiliate and downloaded the free affiliate manual. This by itself would be worth the price of the book.

You are invited to join me in exploring this affiliate program. If you haven't done so yet - go now and sign up as an affiliate and download all the free info from www.sitesell.com/amcho.html then come back and let me know what you think - send an email to Mike@amcho.com or use our feedback form. Remember this will only work if you participate - even if all you say is hello - at least I will know that there is someone out there taking part.

So to join in do the following:

1. Send me an email to register your interest.

2. Join the affiliate program at www.sitesell.com/amcho.html

3. Then go to the next page of the workshop: Day 1 - initial impressions, goal definition.

I have set up a discussion board on this site, take a trip to www.amcho.com/discus and post a message.

Feedback relating to this workshop will be collected and a digest made available at myss-feedback.htm.

I have starting up a mailing list - no promises about frequency - too many have started up producing good quality stuff then the quality falls off - so I'll only send it out when I have something of interest to say, If you are interested please send a blank email to mailto:subscribe-mailinglist@amcho,com or look at the previous issues

Make Your Site Sell Navigation: [Workshop Home] [Diary] [day1] [2] [3] [4] [feedback digest] contact us: [email] [feedback form]

amazon footnote:
Send amazon 10 visitors - if each visitor buys a book for $20 - if you do this every day you will earn over 10 grand in a year.
These figures are possible in theory but would be impossible to achive in practice. This is the sort of wild projection that is used to promote many a MLM - you can earn a six figure income if the whole world and its mother are in your downline!.
Lets assume that your amazon page is so good and targetted that it receives a thousand visitors a day. You would be doing well if 100 actually clicked on one of your links to amazon. Of these 100 maybe one or two would actually buy the book they clicked on. Maybe another one or two would browse and buy a different book. The rest will click back to the search engines never to be seen again. So of your 1000 visitors you have sold two books at 15% and two books at 5%. There are books at amazon that cost $20 and some cost more - most cost a lot less. Lets assume an average cost of $10 per book - your commission is $3.00 plus $1.00. per day. Not bad - but don't give up your day time job just yet! But you will have to give up watching the TV as you will have to put in a lot of hard work to achive these figures!