Do you sell anything on your website?

[Monkeyleg]

This is obviously a question for those who have websites.

Do you sell anything on your site? If so, does it relate in some way to the content of your site? How do you handle payments? Do you buy direct from the manufacturer, and ship yourself, or do you forward orders to the manufacturer and have them drop-ship?

The reason I ask is that I get a good amount of traffic to my site. Between 150,000 and 200,000 visitors a month. Henry Repeating Arms just renewed their banner ads for 2007, and at a much higher price than I was paid for 2006. They said that the conversion rate from my site was much better than they get from other sites. And Henry's banners are only "officially" on 17 of over 1,600 pages on my site.

The guy who owns the hosting company for my site keeps telling me that I have a ton of pages that could be making money beyond the $10 a month that each gun shop pays me.

Any comments are much appreciated.

[grampster]

Listen to the guy who should know.  Just don't overdo it.

[Monkeyleg]

Thanks for the reply, Grampster.

I'm going to try to keep bumping this thread, because I really need some serious advice.

There's a forum that I frequent at www.webmasterworld.com, where webmasters talk about everything under the sun--including making money from their sites.

One of the drawbacks of the forum is that nobody is allowed to post the URL's for their sites, and for reasons that should be obvious.

Add to that the fact that many, if not most, of the posters are not from the US, and there's a real anti-gun attitude.

I've spent a lot of time and no small amount of money developing my site. It's turning a profit, but I'd like to see more profit. That's why I'm asking for any and all suggestions.

[bstrambo]

Do you have adsense?  Go to google and read all about it.  The ads are related to your content and you can control who advertises so there aren't competitor ads on your site.  You get paid for every click through. My wife is just getting started with adsense and we are affiliates for a fitness company.

[Marnoot]

Google's enlightened policy prohibits you from using adsense on a site with any the following:

    *  Excessive profanity
    * Violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
    * Hacking/cracking content
    * Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
    * Pornography, adult, or mature content
    * Gambling or casino-related content
    * Excessive advertising
    * Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others
    * Pop-ups, pop-unders or exit windows that interfere with site navigation, obscure Google ads, change user preferences, or are for downloads. Other types of pop-ups, pop-unders, or exit windows may be allowed, provided that they do not exceed a combined total of 5 per user session
    * Excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords in the content or code of web pages
    * Deceptive or manipulative content or construction to improve your site's search engine ranking, e.g., your site's PageRank
    * Incentives (monetary or point-based) to users or third-party beneficiaries for online activity including, but not limited to, clicking on ads or links, performing searches, surfing websites, reading emails, or completing surveys
    * Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles
    * Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
    * Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
    * Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
    * Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods

In other words, a gunshop related site is lumped in with porn and hate sites.

[Monkeyleg]

Absolutely right, Marnoot. I signed up for the Adsense program, and was refused. What's odd is that I see Adsense ads for gun magazines, as well as some manufacturers' online stores. Kimber's site pops up once in awhile in Adsense.

I'm considering running banner ads for either low-priced electronic shooting muffs or low-priced pistol vaults, or both.

My concerns are: the costs of keeping an inventory; the time involved for boxing up the items and shipping them; setting up an online payment system; and tracking orders.

The manufacturer has said that they would work with me on starting out by letting me purchase smaller quantities.

I could start out with PayPal if necessary. Getting a secure connection and a security certificate costs about $600 a year, and I'd rather not spend that until I know if sales are going to be there.

All of the above is why I'm asking questions here, hoping that maybe someone has already been through this and can offer some advice from experience.

[StopTheGrays]

My concerns are: the costs of keeping an inventory; the time involved for boxing up the items and shipping them; setting up an online payment system; and tracking orders.

Will your supplier allow you to have items your customers order from you dropped shipped to the customer? That would solve some of your concerns.

The company I work for does that our servicers when they order parts for their customers, we drop ship them right to the customer and do the tracking for them.

Not all companies will do that so YMMV.

[bstrambo]

I did not know that about adsense, thanks.  My wife's sites are fitness and religious related, so she probably didn't see that either.  Interesting about tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs as well as firearms.  All legal things, not deemed "evil" by anyone in the mainstream.  Weird.

[Monkeyleg]

StopTheGrays, this company doesn't want to get involved in drop-shipping. Or, at least as I understand it, they want to charge a pretty hefty premium for doing so.

I broached this idea with my wife tonight, and she got a bit upset.

"What, now we're going to turn our house into a distribution center?"

Me: "If it can make a decent return, then, yeah."

She started to complain about my messy upstairs office, and then the prospect of more boxes of stuff sitting in it.

There is nothing I love more than having a debate partner just hand me my final "kill points" without realizing it.

I gently reminded her that our entire basement is filled with items that she has either bought from rummage sales, or is preparing to sell at rummage sales, or are just sitting awaiting their fate at future rummage sales. And, when I say our entire basement, I mean it.

The debate was over.

[StopTheGrays]

I gently reminded her that our entire basement is filled with items that she has either bought from rummage sales, or is preparing to sell at rummage sales, or are just sitting awaiting their fate at future rummage sales. And, when I say our entire basement, I mean it.

Must be related to my mother. She was a pack rat and avid HSNQVC shopper. Her house was filled with crap she was planning on selling so she did not want to throw anything away. She had unopened boxes from HSNQVC all over the house--all of it crap. After she passed away I spent more than a few days tossing out the junk. I even took some of it to a friends rummage sale to get rid of some of the more usefull stuff; made a whole $40 on it.


Too bad about the company not drop shipping. I know how your profit can get eaten up by having to ship something twice.

[Vodka7]

My mom used to do the same thing as your wife--she had at least two of every crazy thing you could possibly find in a tag sale in her basement. Until I introduced her to eBay.  And when I say introduced, I mean I basically just saw her on the computer, pointed her to eBay, and said "here, you might like this, maybe you can get rid of some of the stuff in the basement."  My mom is *not* good with computers, but two days later she had signed up for PayPal, was printing out her mailing labels from USPS.com, and had 14 auctions running at once.

It was amazing, and the basement had never looked cleaner (you could even see floor in some parts.)

Of course, eventually came the day of "Vodka, remember all those boxes of comic books you used to have in the attic?"

"Used to?"