Who NEEDS a website?

Who NEEDS a website is only part of the question because almost everybody could use a website but more importantly you need to know what the goal of your website is.

There are basically five purposes for websites. They are:

• Advertising
• Branding
• Sales
• News/Information
• Fun

Advertising and Branding work almost the same way but with advertising you are trying to direct the visitor to a sale or a product or service. This can be your own product or service or it can be someone else’s product or service where you receive a commission. This is commonly known in the Internet Marketing community as affiliate marketing.

Branding is just getting your name out there for people to know. You can do this to promote yourself, a business, a product or just about anything you can think of.

Sales is pretty much self-explanatory, you are trying to sell a product, again this can be yours or an affiliate product.

New/Information again is self-explanatory you have information that people need that you can provide from one central source. This can be as varied as letting your family know what you are doing to promoting concerts at your venue. This can also be tied to the advertising, branding and sales. By providing quality information you can entice visitors to come back more often and subtly direct them to your products or services or your affiliates products and services.

Fun is simply where you have something that you enjoy and you create a website because you enjoy the topic and talking about it. These types of sites range from joke of the day to nematodes that promote healthy growth in grape vines and everything in between.

Now let’s talk about the number one reason people put up a website, this isn’t the purpose of the website but it is the end goal, MONEY!

All the types of websites listed above are capable of making money. How much they can make depends on what you are offering and how well the website is built and promoted.
Right about now you might be wondering what type of website can make you the most money, advertising, branding, sales, news/information or fun?

Actually the best websites include all the various types of purposes with one main purpose.
The most profitable are the ones that have their own product or service to sell as their main purpose and use fun, news/information, branding and advertising to keep people interested in their site and coming back for more.

In future articles we will discuss topics that you need to know to maximize the profits from your website, what to look for in a web design and if requests are received we will tell you what you should look for in a specific niche.