Best Way To Make Money With Weather Site

Hi Everyone
What is Best Way To Make Money With Weather Site?

Hello,

I don’t know if others will have any input but my motivation for my site was simply to provide weather information for my family and friends and if others found it useful then great…

IOW I have never had any expectation of making a dime from my site…

-Bob

Unless you’re providing an essential local service that no-one else provides, you’re unlikely to be able to charge for access to your data. So unless you have weather hardware or software to sell on the site, that seems to leave just normal web site click-through type advertising or sponsorship by local businesses. I doubt if either of those will make you very rich though.

i have seen people have added a paypal donate if you find this data usefull button…

Like Bob, I set it up for info for myself or anyone who may be coming to the area.

I certainly ignore such buttons and often don’t return to the sites displaying them.

Our website is just a hobby, as is the weather page on it, and it would never occur to me that it could be a money making enterprise. That must take all the fun out of it, especially as you will be answerable to your customers, who may have high expectations.

I don’t see how you can, as there are many ways of getting weather info on Larnaca, including from LCA airport using the LCLK.TXT Metar, and that is free. Ask yourself, what service can I offer surfers that a) they cannot get elsewhere and b) is worth their paying good money for? If you want to make money, forget about weather and start a porn site with unique ultra-hot videos :smiley:

I think the greatest problem you’re going to have is the fact that there is very little weather on Cyprus.

For instance, let me give you the 5 day forecast without consulting any sources:

Sunny on days 1 through 5 with a high in the lower 20s. (Winter weather? HA!)

Hold on… let me check my forecast…

Yeah, I should be a weather forecaster for Cyprus.

Going to be tough to charge for the obvious.

Here in the states, there are so many free sources of weather that it would be virtually impossible to get anyone to pay for it. But as many have pointed out, the vast majority of us are doing it for personal satisfaction (i.e. a hobby).

The only viable way is through click-through targeted advertising, such as Googleads. However, you need a steady stream of visitors as you’ll only get something like 1-5% clickthroughs, with anywhere from couple cents (maybe double digit cents if you’re targeting is good) per click generally, so you can do the math to figure it out. Googleads has a $100 minimum payout so if you can’t reach that level, you’ll never get paid. To get a steady stream of visitors you need to offer visitors a reason for visiting your site, not just once, but to come back often. Weather sites are hard to do this, since there aren’t too many people who are genuinely interested in your weather conditions to come back frequently – as mentioned, there’s plenty of other mainstream weather sites that allow for much easier cross-city weather data lookups. You therefrore need to add some kind of value to your site other than just raw weather data.

2cyprus,

Like the rest of the respondents to your question I have set up my weather web site purely for myself, my friends and relatives plus as an additional source for the local volunteer bush fire brigades (if they wish to use it).

I suppose that Cyprus being in a reasonably popular tourist area you could try tying in with tourist organisations, hotels and the like; though I suspect that you would have to make it much more than just a weather site to convince others to pay for your product (e.g. links to historical sites, accommodation, tours and so on).

There is every chance that these areas are already well and truly covered by the tourist industry so you could be whistling in the wind - still, a bit of research and lateral thinking might (and I do mean might) result in some sort of income. Of course, even if you do manage that, it’ll be a site which includes weather information rather than a weather site per se and will involve much more work.

Good luck. If you do manage it then you’ll at least pay for some of your equipment and web costs.

My station was setup for myself, because I wanted to know what was going on.

Then I thought since it wasn’t going to cost me anymore to have it displayed on a website, I might as well put it up on the web.

As an afterthought, I stuck some banner advertising on the weather site, on the off-chance I might be able to generate some business for myself… I don’t think my weather site has got me any business, but that doesn’t matter to me, because I am very happy that it appears many people like the site, and that’s a better feeling than money can buy me. :slight_smile:

Weather Station = $400.00 Visa
Weather Display = $70.00 Visa
Weather Display Live = $25.00 Visa

Your neighbor says Wow I been telling all my friends about your weather web site and they all check it everyday! <== Money can’t buy :slight_smile:

-Bob

Very well put, Bob…I like it! :slight_smile: :wink:

–Tim