generate income

Actually that idea was proposed back when napster fell. Broadband ISP service was sold through the allure of downloads.

Napster proposed a tax on ISPs to cover this but they didn't bite.

But to answer your question many of them don't (make money).

Running certain types of websites can be quite cheap (in comparison with other things).

With 2000 dollars a month I could run one of the 100 most popular sites on the internet (that money would just cover costs, nobody would have a salary).

Thing is, many sites build popularity frst then hope to cash in. Or they are running affiliate text ads and you don't even know it (since they are relevant and targeted you might assume that it's just a related link).

On Able2Know the banner ads make about a buck and change a day. With the cost of running the site in the hundreds and sometimes over a thousand the text ads are pulling the weight.

Think of Geocities, the ads they serve aren't worth much, but the content helps bring people to Yahoo, and geocoties (the domain) is made one of the most popular on the net.

In addition they have a large userbase and at some point they start to offer premium services.

When the IT bubble burst many free services realized that their business model was flawed and they started to monetize their userbase.

They cut services to make the premium services more attractive (think Yahoo stopping POP access for free email accounts..).

Now as to your two examples:

IXQUICK does have money making plans. They charge for inclusion, they have sponsored serach results inserted in their SERPS. These methods are much more profitable than banner ads. Since they are a metasearch (this means they use results from other engines) they have no cost for spidering pages etc.

Napster went bankrupt. In short, they don't make money and will have a hard time doing so, even with anme brand status.

Yup, then you've got other search engines like google who not only make money through adverts, but also from licence fees for its search technology (hundreds of paying customers, including Yahoo).

Does it produce any income for A2K when we click on the Google ads or does that go to Google for matching the ad content with our page content?

Both, butrflynet. But nobody involved wants inflated figures from people clicking ads they never were interested in.

Google AdSense is a PPC model. They ONLY pay for clicks. But please do not click on ads ONLY to support A2K. That would be a fraudulent click and would be unfair to the advertisers. There are strict rules about incentivized clicks and AdSense forbids even a text like "Visit our Sponsors".

It's the difference between CPM and CPC.

With CPM (cost per 100, usually means 1000 impressions) the payments are usually for impressions so they actually WANT the website to do whatever it can to raise the CTR (click through ratio). But with CPC (cost per click) models they want only well targeted traffic and visitors that are actually interested in the ad.

It's probably the future of the ad industry online.

Aha, and Monger answered the question. Google takes a cut (they never say what it is and though I know what it is they forbid me to disclose it).

One of the big gripes webmasters have against their ads is that they simply refuse to disclose the revenue sharing ratio.

Please don't ask me to disclose it because I am contractually bound and will not do so.