How do you make money with a website?

by David Mullings
This is not a post telling you how to make money on the web, it is asking how Caribbean entrepreneurs are generating money from websites and whether or not their plan is to merely cover some costs and make a little extra money or to generate significant money from the venture.The most common methods are:

• display advertising (banners, buttons, video, etc.)
• Google AdSense
• affiliate programs

I am curious to know which methods are the most popular and whether or not real revenue is being generated (more than US$1000 per month). Realvibez.com has focused on display advertising because we know that we can sell our inventory at good rates compared to a click-thru program like AdSense or an affiliate program. I won’t divulge revenue numbers but we have advertisers spending between US$1000 and $2500 for campaigns on the site, usually a combination of CPM and sponsorships.The more we can all share about what works and what doesn’t, the more we help to push the industry forward because as more web entrepreneurs generate revenue, more jobs are created and more investors become interested.With that in mind, what monetization methods are using and how are they working for you?Footnote: There are two Jamaican entrepreneurs who are right now making a decent bag of change from their websites and are considered gurus in this business, they are Sandor Panton who besides running Top5jamaica.com, is a search engin optimisation expert who’s worked in Canada before settling back in Jamaica. He has a couple hundred sites under his management. Then there is Leighton Scarlett, who has sites like caribsingles.com,thelovevine.com and is coming out with other interesting projects.Footnote 2: Johnchow.com(Canada) and shoemoney.com(US), problogger.net(US) are three sites run by guys who own sites that tell others how to make money online and themselves makes six figures in US dollars from these very sites.