Become an affilliate with several stores or product companies. An example would be on your photoshop tutorial page include a link to popular photoshop add-ons or other related software on Amazon using their affilliate links.

Maybe find a broader affilliate like NewEgg and put their link up and tell people to get there to shop, you would get 1 to 2% of the total amount they spend if they got there from coming to your site if you were a newegg affilliate.

I'm kinda new so thats all I have at the moment, hope it helps and good luck to you!

try adding a premium tutorial section.

OR

Only giving away the first few steps for free and they have to pay a one time membership fee to unlock the rest of the tutorial. Also give them access to your entire database with the one time membership fee.

Hows about offer 1 on 1 coaching clinic ? :-D

Hi Philipp,

I am a newbie at online marketing and learning this the hard way. My goal is not to make a lot of money while doing nothing, rather to have a decent income but without a boss telling me what to do everyday...

Yesterday I saw with the google tool that there were a lot of queries for online tutorials, with little competition. I went on my domain name provider's website and saw that the keywords with exact match .com were available, so I impulse-bought 4 domain names.

Then I realized the catch : the average CPC is 0,05 $... And I spoke with a friend who has more experience in this business and he told me that people looking for free tutorials are tech savy and ignore ads. Also I'm thinking, the software companies usually provide online support for beginners, so people looking for free tutorials are penniless torrenters.

Did you reach some progress in past months with your tutorial site? For info I'm targetting the French market and language so I dont think we would be competitors.

What do you think of video tutorials with the video hosted on youtube?
I see that most tutorials are text, even though with adequate software it's not too hard to make video tutorials. I guess the reason is that video tutorials are harder for good SEO. Also if the video is on youtube, the actual time spent on the tutorial website would be very short.
That's why I was thinking of a combination of detailed text tutorials with watermarked youtube videos that illustrate the text content (with the watermark being the tutorial website adress).

I wanted to start with a tutorial for a well know software to produce music. It's a software I personally use and like, so I could easily make a tutorial for it. Then I would somehow hard-insert ads in the video, probably not as an ad but as part of the content. For example using a mic and saying wow what a great mic it goes perfectly well with this software, if you buy it from my site you get a discount...

Lots of thoughts and not sure if this project is worth the time invested. It's really about time since the initial money cost is low.

If you read this long post and have some feedback, please share it, thanks a lot!

The simplest way to monetize it is with adsense program or click bank products.

Darn, they beat me too it. Try CPM ads.

Just be sure to put them on a part of your page that doesn't get a lot of action. You don't want people clicking them since you're already getting paid per view.

You wan't to maximize your profits by getting the CPM money and getting your visitors to also click on an adsense ads or making a purchase.

Also be sure to break your articles into multiple pages to boost those page views.

More bang per visitor! BAM!

I can't believe that nobody has advised the obvious!

BUILD A LIST!

It's as simple as offering free advanced lessons to everybody that enters their email address.

Actually, I can believe that nobody has given the right advice. I sometimes cringe at the threads that I read here, there, and at every IM forum.

psst... see post three.

I could be wrong but people looking for free tutorials are not looking to buy anything. They're looking because they already bought something and don't know how to use it.

I once made a Squidoo lens listing free resources on the internet. To my surprise this lens actually brought in some money in the form of commissions.

What I did was to include a link to a free tutorial on a little known way to do niche research. The video was a complete lesson in itself but also was a part of an IM program and was part of their sales page. These people viewed the video tutorial and then bought the program.

Now this is from just one link. If you sprinkle those types throughout your site you might start getting some sales.

Just make sure that whatever you're linking to is a complete tutorial in and of itself and not just a 'teaser' with no relevant content.

If you like providing free help, good for you. I think there might be possible way to make money still.

1. Just like many iphone apps, have free version and paid version of same topic tutorial.
2. Add affiliate links in part of tutorial, not just on side.
3. Add donate button, like buy me banana or buy me coffee, something like that. You can set one up via paypal easily. If you get lot of traffic, some may donate. I have.

Good luck and thanks for providing good free tutorials.

Lots of interesting ideas, thanks all!

I have one more newbie question : I bought 4 domain names : "tutorial-programX.com", "tutorialprogramX.com", "tutorial-programY.com", "tutorialprogramY.com".

Should I make 4 websites (maybe using spinning), 2 websites (one for each program), or just 1 website that regroups everything? Because I think I've read somewhere that one big website is better than 4 smaller ones, for SEO.

A site making money with both free and paid tutorials is:

Software training online-tutorials for Adobe, Microsoft, Apple & more

Take a look there, and you might get some good ideas about one way of doing things.

Also, take a look at google. If google instant is on, type in "tutorial" and you will get some idea of what people are looking for. Google wonder wheel can also provide ideas.

Marvin

Besides of Adsense maybe you can build a list as what the other folks suggested or maybe allow your readers to register an account with your site for them to comment on your tutorials. CPM ads can help too.

Andrea

Youtube videos is the best in promoting tutorial websites..

Hmmmmm.....they are programmers, right?

Now, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I think there is something alll programmers need: computers to program on.

Now, what else do programmers need?

Software to program with perhaps?

Energy drinks for those all nite coding sessions?

Maybe a backup service....so when the computer crashes, the work doesn't get lost?

Fill their needs, and you can line your pockets.