So you’d like to make money from a website? In this post I’m going to discuss how my successful Las Vegas Reviews Website makes money. If you’ve currently got a website or are looking to create one, this should give you a good idea of how to start making money from your own website without leaving profit on the table.

So, I’m going to jump right in and show you some screen shots from my site and point out the ways it’s monetized. As you can see below from the home page there are several CPA ad blocks set up.

CPA is short for cost per action, which means you get paid when a visitor performs a specific action. The action could as simple as a click on your website like Google Adsense, it could be entering in a credit card, email or zipcode, or it could be completed with a purchase. Each completed action pays you into your affiliate account.

You can also see that I have posted an opt-in email newsletter form on my front page in order to build a list. Email lists allow you to create a long-term relationship with your potential customers and keep them informed of special deals or helpful information. If you offer something of value in exchange for the visitors email address you can often build a large email list which gives you the opportunity to create a level of trust, brand yourself as an authority and make additional income.

As you may know once a visitor leaves your website they often don’t come back. Building an email list is one of the best ways to maximize the value of each visitor to your site by collecting their email and delivering relevant and useful information. Remember, the trick is to talk to them just like you’s talk to a friend, don’t hit them non-stop with the hard sell of your product or services. Treat them right and you’ll be rewarded.

For my email opt-in I offer a voucher for two free nights in Las Vegas. You can search the leading CPA websites like Commission Junction, Azoogle, Linkshare, Maxbounty or Hydra for offers that you can promote as a reward for signing up to your newsletter. These CPA’s all pay a commission for each completed action. You can also give away a free report or ecourse containing more information as a reward for opting-in.

Some things to remember are to keep the ads relevant to the content on your page. For instance, if you’ve got a website about making money on Myspace. Only post ads for Myspace money courses, software related to making money on Myspace or similar products. This may seem obvious, however it can make a huge difference to your online profit.

As you can see below on my Las Vegas Restaurants page I’m featuring ads related to dining out through Commission Junction as well as content specific Adsense ads.

Frequently I’ve found that the Adsense ads displayed are for the same website and product I’m trying to promote from Commission Junction. However with Adsense you get paid for each click regardless of whether the visitor goes on to purchase or not. It pays to be aware that Adsense may be draining away valuable money you could be making from higher paid CPA ads for the same product or service.

In the screenshot below you’ll see the Las Vegas Hotels page which is primarily monetized through a cool private label travel booking affiliate program.

Whenever a visitor clicks through and books a travel vacation my account is credited with 50% of the profit from the sale. These kinds of affiliate programs can be a real money maker if your website gets sufficient traffic and it is a trustworthy source of information.

On the Las Vegas Deals page you’ll find another type of revenue stream the Ebay Datafeed. Ebay’s affiliate program was until recently operated by Commission Junction, now it’s all handled completely in house from the Ebay website.

Once you’ve signed up to be an Ebay affilate you select from one of the Ebay categories you’d like to display, and then you get a piece of code to paste on your website. Each time a visitor clicks through your datafeed link and makes a purchase you get paid a commission based on Ebays profit from the seller. In addition you get paid each time someone new signs up.

These are the ways the Las Vegas website generates income. Hopefully you got some good ideas about how you can make money from your website using some of these techniques. In the next post I’ll discuss ways to drive traffic to your website using other peoples content. You’ll also learn a cool way to set up your website to automatically post new content daily.

If you’ve got questions or comments, please post them below and I’ll try to answer them in the next post. You can also check out the make money forum for a lot more information about making money with your own website.