This content required Adobe Flash Player 9 or higher

OK, so you have a web site of your own. Big deal. Now you have to start making money with it. How? There are a number of things you need to do to turn your web site into a revenue generator. Assuming you already have a product to sell, you need an ecommerce provider to handle the financial transaction.  Many Internet Service Providers will provide you with bundled web site hosting services which will include some form of ecommerce.

Fees will vary. Check monthly shopping cart and per transaction fees to insure you are not giving away all of your profits to others.

Two popular ecommerce service providers are Clickbank and PayPal. Clickbank is very popular among online marketers because it not only provides you with a means to accept payments, but it also provides you with a complete affiliate management solution at no additional cost. For a one-time $49.95 set-up fee, Clickbank will enable you to sell a maximum of 50 different items and provide you with a means to market your products through affiliates. Clickbank handles the transaction, sends you paychecks twice a month, and also sends checks to any affiliates generating revenue for you. 

PayPal works a little differently. There are over 70,000,000 PayPal account users, and it is the preferred form of payment with many people who use eBay. Opening an account with PayPal is free. You can link it to your bank account and credit card to make online payments and transfers a breeze. PayPal gives you the ability to send and receive money via email. You can also make mass payments to your affiliates with the click of a button. Both services are very friendly and take a percentage of the sales transaction. Clickbank is the more costly of the two services, but both are very secure. 

PayPal users may also be interested in PayLoadz. This service provides you with a secure server to store your electronic products and an affiliate management infrastructure similar in function to Clickbank. 

PayLock Generator is another great add-on tool that enables you to quickly create a variety of PayPal buttons to handle single item sales, shopping cart sales, and subscriptions to membership sites and ezine subscriptions. Best of all, you can create encrypted links to help protect your PayPal information.

Lastly, for those people looking for an alternative to either Clickbank or PayPal, you may want to consider PayDotCom. it incorporates the best features of both services and its fees are very affordable. It enables you to accept payment from either PayPal or StormPay and provides you with promotion through an online marketplace and affiliate management services.

Should you decide to sell many items and want to manage your inventory better, having your own shopping cart is the best way to go. VIP Shopping Cart is an economical and powerful software solution.

Manage Your Sales Data

Once your site is set to take payments, you'll want to track your sales. For Clickbank users, nothing beats CB Extract. This tool enables you to download all of your sales transactions and then graph it to see exactly where you are succeeding and where you need to increase your marketing efforts. It also maintains databases of email lists of customers and affiliates. Likewise for PayPal users, there is a very helpful product called PP Mailer. This tool enables you to tap into your PayPal history file. It downloads your data and allows you to analyze it through a number of different reporting options. In addition, it enables you to manage your email lists of customers do you can continue your marketing efforts. This is invaluable and a true time-saver.

Protect Your Affiliate Links

If you will be trying your hand with affiliate marketing -- promoting other people's products for a commission -- then there is one product you should learn about. Covert Affiliate was designed to cookie your web site visitors invisibly with your affiliate information. In this fashion, even if they buy a product you are promoting at a later date, and if your cookie is still active, then you can receive credit for the sale. Affiliate link theft is on the rise. Web surfers have gotten savvy and are always looking for ways to cheat you out of your affiliate commissions and pocket it for themselves to purchase products at a discount. Using Covert Affiliate, you can cookie people without them even knowing they have been cookied, so when they finally make the purchase, your commission is protected.

Improve Your Sales

Increasing your sales is always challenge. One way to do this is by using dynamic pricing. There are a number of tools and services and ebooks which can help you to determine the best price point for your products. One of the best ebooks written on the subject of improving online sales is Michael Nicholas' Order Button Triggers. This ebook takes you down the path of a prospect and gets inside their head to try to figure out what makes them buy or abandon your site.

Make Your Price Sell by Dr. Ken Evoy is a combined ebook about pricing strategy and online service that helps you to figure out the mystery of finding the perfect price for your product or service. 

Dynamic Pricing Generator by John Delavera is a very clever little JavaScript that creates dynamic PayPal buttons. You determine a start and end point for your selling price, and the number of days it will take for the price to reach the end point. Then with a few clicks, this tool will create a PayPal button whose price changes in real time. This really helps motivate fence sitters to make the purchase while the price is still low. 

Another fun way to inject some interactivity on your site and provide some price flexibility is to use Price Spinner. This tool enables you to create a carnival wheel with different prices, and gives your prospects the chance to spin three times for the best price. It's like bringing the Price Is Right to your web site!

Monetize Your Site Through Advertising

Every page on your site has spare ad space. Use it. Every bit of it. For years I was skeptical about Google AdSense, but after reading Joel Comm's AdSense Secrets, I became a believer. Within a few days of adding Google's code to my web pages, the revenue start coming in day after day. As I learn more through Joel's ebook and supporting newsletter, I continue to apply new techniques and tweak my ad integration. Within a few months, I was generating consistent income -- enough to cover my monthly phone, Internet, cable, cell phone, toll-free number and other operating costs. Considering it costs you nothing to incorporate Google AdSense to your web pages, you'd be foolish to ignore this additional passive income.

Other Options

There are many other powerful tools available to help you generate more money online. Check out Clickbank Profit Feeds Generator to learn how to add new Clickbank advertising to your site and increase your chances for earning affiliate commissions while you sleep. Watch this site for new ways to ecommerce enable your site and to generate increased revenue.