Generating a revenue stream

A few months ago, a site with contents that had value to the Embroidery
community was in danger of being lost forever, because of problems with a
free host. So I volunteered to host it on my site
(http://Tashambra.SewEmbroider.com) for a while, until the problems got
straightened out. I soon got an email saying in effect "Thanks, I've
decided to give all the contents to you".

I'm happy to make the contents available, but paying hundreds of dollars per
year for the privilege hurts. The site uses about 8GB/month bandwidth, and
gets about 31,000 hits/day. I'm planning to revamp and enhance the site,
and do a little search engine optimization. I could get tons of traffic, by
installing additional content, a Forum, chat room, Tutorials, calculators,
database lookups for thread colors, pages & email for each small vendor,
etc.

Great, that brings more traffic and costs me more. I'm now looking for a
way to convert some of the traffic & hits to a small revenue stream, to help
pay for the site. I'll investigate selling some embroidery products that
I'd be proud to offer on my site. I don't have experience with Ecommerce
sites, but installing OSCommerce or something similar, with a credit card
processing system, doesn't seem too difficult.

I'd appreciate suggestions for generating a revenue stream. Nothing too
garish, obtrusive, or irritating. But profitable would be very nice!

Any suggestions and/or tutorials for a low-budget, first-time Ecommerce site
& credit card processing would be greatly appreciated.

---
Jack Hobbs

Take a look at...

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.worldpay.com" target="_blank">www.worldpay.com</a>
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.protex.com" target="_blank">www.protex.com</a>

For payment gateways so you can process credit cards.

Many Thanks,
Antony Chesworth
_______________________________________________________________
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.ekmpowershop.com" target="_blank">www.ekmpowershop.com</a> - Easy to use shopping cart for just £19.99 a month



"Jack Hobbs" <jhobbs.DeleteThis@chartermi.net> wrote in message
news:xmv3b.3201906$mA4.438481@news.easynews.com...
 > A few months ago, a site with contents that had value to the Embroidery
 > community was in danger of being lost forever, because of problems with a
 > free host. So I volunteered to host it on my site
 > (http://Tashambra.SewEmbroider.com) for a while, until the problems got
 > straightened out. I soon got an email saying in effect "Thanks, I've
 > decided to give all the contents to you".
 >
 > I'm happy to make the contents available, but paying hundreds of dollars
per
 > year for the privilege hurts. The site uses about 8GB/month bandwidth,
and
 > gets about 31,000 hits/day. I'm planning to revamp and enhance the site,
 > and do a little search engine optimization. I could get tons of traffic,
by
 > installing additional content, a Forum, chat room, Tutorials, calculators,
 > database lookups for thread colors, pages & email for each small vendor,
 > etc.
 >
 > Great, that brings more traffic and costs me more. I'm now looking for a
 > way to convert some of the traffic & hits to a small revenue stream, to
help
 > pay for the site. I'll investigate selling some embroidery products that
 > I'd be proud to offer on my site. I don't have experience with Ecommerce
 > sites, but installing OSCommerce or something similar, with a credit card
 > processing system, doesn't seem too difficult.
 >
 > I'd appreciate suggestions for generating a revenue stream. Nothing too
 > garish, obtrusive, or irritating. But profitable would be very nice!
 >
 > Any suggestions and/or tutorials for a low-budget, first-time Ecommerce
site
 > & credit card processing would be greatly appreciated.
 >
 > ---
 > Jack Hobbs
 >
 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->