How I wanted to make money on the Internet, but I did not make it

For those who are unfamiliar with me: I am the author and creator of the site socioline.ru , dedicated to sociology. From January 11 to January 18, I conducted an experiment: the site worked in a paid mode. At this time, in order to download this or that book, the visitor was required to send an sms-message at the price of about 30 rubles to a special “short” number. The experiment was originally planned for a month, but under the pressure of conscience ended prematurely. Here I will talk about what preceded this experiment, how it went and what conclusions I made for myself. There will be nothing sociological in this article, just general observations and the “kitchen” of the site.

So, the crisis is brutal over the planet, the construction industry (to which I belong to the main place of work) is beating in agony, all dreams of a rich and comfortable existence are flying to hell! In such a situation, the gaze itself turns to alternative ways of making money, or rather, to the Internet.

In general, the content of the site socioline.ru and before the introduction of paid access (and after its cancellation, respectively, too) was not unprofitable. The costs are small: 300 rubles per year for a domain name and 1000 rubles per month for hosting. Due to advertising and selling links, the site brings about 3,000 rubles a month. The net benefit is slightly less than 2000 rubles per month. You can feed the hamster.

With such microscopic costs, more than 40,000 unique posteitel visit the site every month (55,000 people visited our site in December 2008, see the picture). On average, each visitor downloads two books from the site - a total of about 100,000 literature downloads per month. Now imagine that each download will cost, say, 10 rubles ...
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So the idea was born to look at two things: first, how payment systems work on the Internet, and secondly, how much money a specific site like ours can bring.

To accept payments, the sms.zamok service was chosen, since the easiest way was to integrate into the existing site environment (socioline.ru was written in Drupal, but the books were laid out on the site for seven years, without any system). To restrict access, the usual .htaccess rules were applied, which redirected all requests for archive files to a script containing sms.zamka code and issuing the book to the user after payment. Integration of all this stuff on the site took about two hours, while maintaining the ability to disable and enable paid download with one hand movement (that is, you did not have to interrupt all references to books that are just a huge amount on the site).

So, the code is installed, testing has been completed successfully, paid download of books on Sotsiolayne has become a reality.



Immediately, several unfortunate facts opened: first, visitors are in no hurry to download books for money: only 10 downloads have passed in the first days. Secondly, the share of income of the webmaster in the sms.zamok system does not even reach 50% of the payment amount. The Beeline company turned out to be the most generous: at an SMS cost of 29.7 rubles, my share was 19.3 rubles. The operator “Smarts” has become the most greedy: from 34 rubles the price of SMS, only 15 reach me.

In just 7 days of the experiment, I received 102 sms-messages (that is, only 102 books were downloaded - instead of 20,000!), And my total income was 1,647 rubles, which suggests 430 downloads per month and about 7,000 rubles a month. income. Money withdrawal sms.zamok carries out Webmoney purse or on the personal account of your mobile operator. In any case, the transfer of money takes place after the 15th of the month following the reporting month (that is, I’ll see earnings in January not earlier than February 15).



So, using the example of one site, I made simple conclusions for myself: the introduction of paid services, with non-unique content, allows you to save only about 1% of the number of visitors using the site free of charge. In order to ensure an acceptable level of income, a site like socioline.ru is clearly not enough. I will experiment with pornography =)

In conclusion - thanks to all the patrons who sent me angry “Chtozanah” messages in personal mail. Well, thanks to everyone who used the site for a fee. I promise you earned 1,600 rubles to invest in the purchase, scanning and placement on the site of useful sociological literature. Suggestions are accepted.