If you see top sites at BuySell (by their traffic and rank) you will notice that most of them are websites that offer free stuff. And believe me, these free sites are making a lot more than most of the “make money online” blogs (including mine).
The strategy is the same old strategy: offer free stuff, increase the traffic and then sell ads.
Most of the sites that have priced their advertising opportunities competitively are making quite good money.
For example, look at this site that offers free vectors. As you can see from the screenshot to the right, all the slots on the site have been sold out.
So the site is making at least $1150 per month – that is the income that comes only from BuySell, not including direct ads and sponsorships.
Your next project
So, your next project (one of many projects that you are launching) can be something like these sites. Sites that offer free stuff. Free templates, free themes, free icons, free graphics, brushes, vectors… etc.
Free stuff is also very easy to market. You can load some money to your StumbleAds and let it run for a few months. You can set the limit to few bucks a day and let the stumblers do the rest of the job (read how to promote your site with stumbleupon here). If the site offers quality stuff, many bloggers might blog and link to it too. You got the idea right?
So, now we have two projects already; one is Windows7 that we talked before and now this “Free Stuff” project :) What do you say?
I like this model, it seems to be more viable than the Windows7 one
I went to check FreeVectors.net out, thanks for pointing them out to us all. They got loads of really dandy free stuff and don’ty hit you too hard with the ads either. It serves to illustrate your point well, Ades.
Another great niche is free tutorials. Free dreamweaver/photoshop/AfterEffects are usually best.
Nice post here thanks for share
I love this idea. I wish I had something free to offer.. but I’m sure many others do. You can offer your free items and expertise and earn money through the advertising? Genius! That’s a lot of money that the site can bring in too
Free stuff will always work and especially if you know how to promote it right. Most bloggers offer a lot of free information but it is just not the same thing.
As for windows7 I am running it right now and I am absolutely loving it. I’m not going to pick up the idea (simply don’t have the time) though.
/Mikael
Those are some impressive numbers, do you think pagerank comes into play here? How long can you build up a steady stream of traffic I wonder? Thanks for the article.
People are always attract when they heard that its free they want to have its also a good idea to have traffic to site.