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I have an idea for a website which I think will generate traffic. I want to put the material itself on the website but minimize taking care of the advertising which is how it's supposed to generate revenue. Is there a way to have the web-hosting company do that? (For a fee, of course.) If not – how do I do it? Do I need to write a contract with each advertiser? How is this done?

Googling hasn't helped much so far. (Maybe I'm using the wrong terms.)

Ideas?

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I started using AdSense (and Flattr, and Amazon,...) but they didn't work for me. If you site addresses a niche market the best thing you can do is selling your ad space yourself (I wrote about my experience on this here: storiesfailedentrepreneur.com/2011/12/04/… ) – Jordi Cabot Jan 19 '12 at 19:39
if you "can" generate enough relevant traffic to the site then the advertising is not something that you would want to be minimal on with regards to any necessary work in serving the right ads to your audience, especially if this will be the main revenue stream, i suggest seeing if you can get enough traffic first, if things look good and the visitors are coming from where you hope they should, to consume the material that you provide then from that point i would look at the adverts work needed, also you will want steady traffic, not traffic spikes to generate a steady income. – user14718 Jan 19 '12 at 19:54

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Advertising is a very weak and difficult revenue model. You either need LOTS of traffic to make it pay off (for something like Adsense), or else you need highly specialized traffic and profitable affiliate relationships.

To answer your question, the quickest and easiest way to get started is by using Google's Adsense. You just place their code on your page and they will scrape it and decide what ad to show (called contextual advertising). As I said, you will need a ton of traffic to make this truly pay off.

The second way is to seek out affiliate advertising that closely aligns with the audience your website attracts. There are three types of affiliate programs: pay-per-sale, pay-per-click and pay-per-lead. Each program has its own model and payment schedule. The affiliate world is huge, but you could start with places like Amazon, Google, Commission Junction, Linkshare, ClickBank, Affiliate.com, etc...

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Thank you for your help. I tried following some of the links you provided, am I correct in assuming that I would be an "affiliate"? (in clickbank, for example.) – Startup1 Jan 19 '12 at 15:56
"Advertising is a very weak and difficult revenue model." – Do you mean there is a better way to make money from a website, or only that I shouldn't get my hopes too high? – Startup1 Jan 19 '12 at 15:57
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Yes, you would need to set yourself up as an affiliate which means you're selling other peoples' stuff and making a commission. And yes, I meant both; that there are better ways to make money (like selling your own products and services) and that you shouldn't get your hopes up too high. – JonDiPietro Jan 19 '12 at 16:15

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