512 Ways to Make Money Online – Mix & Match Content, Monetization & Traffic Models

Instructions: pick one breakfast, one lunch and… oh wait, that’s not right! There’s a gazillion ways to make money online, so many that it can be overwhelming. Unless you can come up with some killer unique idea (Million Dollar Home Page springs to mind), just about any profitable venture is going to need a combination of content, monetization and traffic. You cannot succeed without all three. Below I have listed 8 models for each, put them together and that gives you 512 combinations of ways to make money online!

Content (is King!)

If you want to make money online you need a presence on the web. We call that a web property. This is the content – the stuff you create. This content has to provide value to your visitors otherwise they will hit the back button (or the stumble button) never to return again. Start with the content. Decide what you want to create because this is the foundation of your empire. You can change the monetization models and traffic generation systems but if you want to change your content, you usually have to start over. So think long and hard about what content you want to create.

Monetization

You can have a fantastic website with millions of visitors flooding to it every month but unless you actually monetize it in some way you won’t be making any money! Many people start with monetization. Sometimes it’s okay to start with monetization and fit the content around it. Read my post, the product centered approach for an example. In general however, it’s best to start on the content first and add some monetization as time goes by.

Traffic

Some of the greatest content on the Internet just disappears into a black hole because the site simply does not have traffic. Depending on your content model, you may be able to start working on traffic from day one, or you might have to develop the site first before you send visitors to it. Either way, more traffic = more sales, simple as that.

8 Content Models

1) Blogs

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: None

Blogs have taken off massively in the last few years. With services such as Wordpress and Blogger it is now so easy for anybody to set up a blog in minutes. This has to be the simplest, easiest way to get started with content online. Simply pick a topic you enjoy and know something about and get started. Not only that but if you want to attack blogging aggressively there is so much help out there. Every blogger should read ProBlogger – Darren Rowse is *the* authority on blogging!

2) Resource Sites

Difficulty: Easy – Medium
Cost: None

A resource site is something that provides information about some topic which usually involves some static content. A blog is still a resource but the focus is regular dated posts. A resource site tends to have more static pages but really any kind of website that provides information on a topic can be considered a resource site. If you are fairly new to the web, you can get started with a resource site just as easily as with a blog by using Wordpress. You simply create pages rather than blog posts.

3) Forums

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: None

A popular forum can attract thousands of visitors and drive a tremendous amount of traffic. One thing that differentiates forums from blogs & resource sites is that a regular user to a forum will often visit many times in a single day so this can do wonders for your traffic and has great revenue potential. However it’s far more difficult to build a successful forum than a blog because you rely on other people for its success. You can blog on your own, but a forum with only one visitor is a dead forum! The good news is that there are plenty of free forum creation tools on the Internet.

4) Viral Downloads

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: None

By viral download I mean something that you create, such as an ebook, that you encourage other people to download and distribute. Not all monetization methods work for viral downloads but I’ll talk about the combo’s later. If you know a topic well enough to create a blog you could probably put together an e-book of value fairly easily. However it has to be really good quality for it to “go viral” because if it is poor, people simply won’t distribute it.

5) Expired Domains

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Varies tremendously

This is something I toyed with a few years ago but didn’t have much luck with personally. Now that the Internet has been around for so long there are many domains expiring every single day where the owners simply do not maintain that domain any more. What value is there in this? Well in many cases those domains still get traffic so if you can buy it once it expires you can monetize that existing traffic. This model is somewhat unique in that the traffic part of already taken care of for you, though it usually requires some extra attention if you want it to continue for any length of time.

6) Web Tools

Difficulty: Hard
Cost: Low – Medium

Back in the “old days” web pages were just static HTML. But now if you happen to have programming skills (and that is why I have labeled this as hard! If you’re already a good programmer then it may be easy for you!) in areas such as PHP, ASP.NET, Ajax, Flash, Java, Silverlight etc then you can use that knowledge to develop tools that people can use in their browser. Here’s some examples of tools that I use:

• Body Fat Calculator – Linear Software
• GTD (Getting Things Done) tool – Vitalist
• Google Calendar
• Time Tracking Tool – SlimTimer

The web is becoming more and more of a rich platform for software development. This is in fact that main content model that I want to use for my own ventures. The cost can be free, though database support and new languages usually require specialist hosting. It’s still pretty cheap though.

7) Matching Services

Difficulty: Hard
Cost: Medium – High

What I mean by matching service is providing a site that acts as an intermediary between two parties. For example a dating service, an advertising service, eBay, Clickbank etc. All these kinds of sites provide something that is used by at least two groups of people eg sellers / buyers or merchants / publishers. This is not an easy thing to do and will almost certainly require programming skills. Plus there is often some heavy hosting fees. However there is some serious money to be made if you can provide a service with genuine value here.

8) Web Games

Difficulty: Hard
Cost: Medium – High

Web based games are a huge business these days. There are sites that are doing millions and millions of dollars in revenue from games that are played within the browser and on mobile platforms. Have a look at Big Fish Games. The casual market is booming, people play at lunch times, they play on their mobile devices, this is big business. Of course it’s hard not only because you need the programming skills but because you also need artistic skills, maybe sound skills and there is so much competition out there. Bandwidth costs can also be very high if you are delivery graphic intense games to a large audience.

8 Monetization Models

1) On Page Advertising

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: None

This is simply advertising that is placed on the web page and generates revenue per click (CPC), per action (CPA) or per impression (CPM). Examples are Adsense, Text Link Ads, those little underlines in the text that you see on some pages, and a whole slew of other options. This is usually the easiest type of revenue to generate but unless you are in a particularly high-paying niche, revenues earned tend to be just pennies rather than dollars so it can take a lot of traffic to build a decent revenue. This is a great model to get started with but probably wont be enough on it’s own.

2) Affiliate Marketing

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: None

Using a service such as Clickbank, you find a product that you want to promote (that is relevant to your content) and you make a commission on any sales made. Payouts can vary greatly and as I explored in my article on high paying products it may be worth looking for high priced products with a big payout. There are so many options here, you should easily be able to find an affiliate product for just about any kind of content.

3) Donations

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: None

Certain kinds of content lend themselves to donations – for example, free tools, games, and forums. Accepting donations can be as simple as installing a wordpress plugin these days. One of the nice things about donations is that they give the donator a feel good factor which is not there with other monetization models. Not all sites work with donations – I can’t see a porn site getting many donations for example! Donations are not usually very large so I would recommend it as a supplementary method to use alongside something else.

4) Info Products

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: None

This is different to the viral download that I mentioned in the content section. Here you create an info product with the intention to sell it and make revenue directly from the sales. The viral downloads are tools to use content to draw revenue from other sources. Info products can take many forms such as eBooks, Podcasts, Videos etc and these are nice because you can get started using just free tools, and they can be distributed automatically. The real attraction to info products however, is the fact that once developed, the sales are almost pure profit as it usually costs nothing to duplicate and distribute.

5) Subscription Based Services

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Low

If you can establish yourself as an authority in your niche you may be able to charge a premium for certain content. If this content is made available on a regular basis then you can generate on-going revenue. Here are some example of services I pay for now, have paid for in the past, or intend to pay for in the future.

• Blog Mastermind
• Weight Loss Resources
• Hosted GTD Tracks
• Allakhazam Premium Member

This is another area that I wish to explore myself. It’s one of my favourite monetization models because it can earn money month after month. Of course you have to continually provide some good content or service for your members to keep paying their subscriptions. Costs vary on the content. If you are delivering high bandwidth video it may cost a lot more than email based newsletters for example.

6) Direct Sales

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Low

Selling something directly through your website. I already covered part of this under number 4 (Info Products) but I put that in its own category because it’s easier than other types of direct sales. Let me give you a few examples of the kinds of direct sales you might want to make:

• Reviews – I see so many “Buy a Review” ads on blogs these days
• Direct Advertising
• Hard goods from an existing offline business

These kinds of direct sales can be more difficult because they often rely on having a good traffic base to start with (with the exception of hard goods, but you either have those to sell or you don’t). However this is a case of the rich getting richer. If you already have a successful website that brings in large amounts of traffic you can start charging a premium for direct sales which will often bring in far more revenue than on page advertising such as Adsense.

7) Network Marketing

Difficulty: Hard
Cost: None

My very first experiments with making money online were with a service called AllAdvantage and their “get paid to surf” toolbar. I had a website that listed all sorts of services like this and I signed up other people and built up a large following several levels deep. This is known as Network Marketing or Multi-Level-Marketing. The whole get paid to surf industry was flawed and despite having around 5000 in my downline for AllAdvantage I never saw a single check.

It’s happening all over again! AllAdvantage are back with Agloco and people like John Chow have over 20,000 in his downline. Of course, nobody has seen any money yet. However there are lots of organisations like this that have nothing to do with toolbars that pay you to surf. Its a tough business to get into because you need to be able to build a solid downline and that usually requires recruiting skills. However if you can do that the payouts can be massive as your downline starts to work for you.

8) eBay Businesses

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Varies tremendously

Apparently thousands of people make their living with eBay. Now I have managed to spend thousands on eBay due to a strange fetish for anything related to Commodore 64’s but I rarely sell stuff. There are many ways to make money with eBay and they kind of form a mish-mash of other models. For example, there’s the old fashioned buy low and sell high strategy. Another option is to become an eBay affiliate and promote specific auctions but that really comes under affiliate marketing.

But also because of the sheer amount of traffic that eBay gets, it can be used as a traffic generator. I’ve heard of people using eBay as a distribution method for viral downloads which are then monetized in some way. I have to admit that eBay marketing is a bit of a mystery to me but there is no shortage of info on the web about it – just go and Google for “make money with eBay”.

8 Traffic Models

1) On-Page SEO

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: None

For most businesses search engines are a major source of traffic. This method lends itself more to those content models that are rich in text, such as the blogs and resource sites, as every page of content is a new opportunity to get ranked in the search engines. However even if you are developing a web application you should still have text pages on your site and try to get some of that traffic. There’s plenty of information out there about basic SEO and if you have a little money to spend a good place to start is the SEO Book by Aaron Wall. Be sure to check out his blog while you’re there.

2) Link-Building

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: None

Getting good rankings in search engines first requires the on-page SEO, but when there are many pages competing on the same phrases (as there always are), it’s the more important pages, those with the most back-links that rank higher. You could write a book about link building, as it’s a massive subject in itself. There are so many ways to go about building links and some of the other traffic methods I mention in this section will also result in links.

3) Social Media

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: None

Social media is a hot topic these days. Do it right and you can bring floods of traffic into your site. Do it wrong and you can end up annoying people in the community, being labeled a spammer and getting your accounts banned. I wrote an article debating whether or not it was a good idea to have multiple accounts on social sites when you use social media for niche marketing. An excellent blog on the subject is Michelle McPhearson’s blog.

If the subject matter of your site is well received in popular social media then it may work for you without you having to do anything at all as your visitors submit your sites for you and they gain momentum from there. Nice when it happens but it’s not always that easy.

4) Community Participation

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: None

Within your niche there will almost certainly be blogs, forums and other sites that have some kind of community aspect to them. By getting involved in those communities, posting to forums, commenting on blogs etc you can slowly build a presence for yourself. If you have the opportunity to insert a link to your website (you usually do) then that can of course bring traffic and links. It’s a slow process but it’s a good method for bloggers especially because you are putting your voice out there in the community. If others like what they read they are far more likely to become your regular readers than someone who has just found your site via a search engine for example.

5) Article Marketing

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: None

There are many sites on the Internet whose purpose is to host articles. You can write an article on a subject and post it on these sites. Why would you want to do that? Because you can usually include a link back to your site. This gets you a link, establishes you as an authority in your niche (assuming you wrote a good article!) and can bring traffic. In addition there are many article directories where you can submit the article that you had published. This results in extra back links. It’s a lot of work but it can be rewarding.

6) New Media Publishing

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: None

In the ‘old days’ of the web when we talked about content, we meant text. These days images, audio and video are all content too. Why am I talking about content in the traffic section? Because new media sites such as Flickr and YouTube can allow you to drive a lot of traffic to your sites with clever use of that content. When you upload to these sites you can put tags in, you can add descriptions, links etc. Other people come and search these sites, Google is not the only search medium! These new types of content are reaching out to a new web-savvy crowd, if you can get a piece of that you can have an edge over your competition that sticks to just text.

7) PPC & Third Party Advertising

Difficulty: Medium
Cost: Low – High

PPC (Pay Per Click) when used from the advertisers point of view is a popular method of driving traffic to a new site because it is instant. You don’t need to spend months building back links and working on your community building. If you have the budget you just buy the traffic. I started using PPC back in the days when you could get 1 cent clicks on popular terms. Those days are gone! These days it is very easy to spend large amount of money very quickly so it is worth reading up before you dive in. Similarly there are an abundance of places where you can advertise directly – this is the opposite end of selling direct ad space on your site. Once again, be careful because you can spend a lot of money very quickly.

8) Email Marketing

Difficulty: Hard
Cost: Low – Medium

By email marketing I don’t mean buying lists of email addresses and then spamming them! I mean that as you develop your site you build your own email list and when the time is right you can try to boost sales by promoting certain products via your list. Building a list is not an easy thing to do and of course you must not abuse it or you will drive your subscribers away very quickly. It’s not something you can use very often but it is a very powerful method of generating sales because this is just about the most targeted traffic you could possibly have because everybody on that list has chosen to listen to what you have to say.

Mix ‘n Match Guidelines

My title suggests picking one model from content, monetization and traffic but for best results you’ll want to do a bit more than that if you can. Start by picking a content model. Generally speaking, each new content model would be a new website that you develop. That’s not always the case but to keep things simple, pick a content model and stick to that to start with. Next pick 2-3 monetization options. You might want to bring them in gradually so as not to overload your visitors with obvious ads. The important thing here is not to “put all your eggs in one basket” as the saying goes. Lastly traffic – do as many as you possibly can! You can never have too much traffic.

Examples of Content / Monetization Combos

Blogs / Affiliate Marketing

Blogs usually do very well being monetized by affiliate marketing because if your readers come to trust your writing then when you promote a product through the blog it is not such a hard sell. In a similar way some blogs can do well from donations as readers can become quite passionate about a well written blog.

Resource Sites / Direct Sales

If you can develop a very strong resource site in a particular niche, it becomes much easier to sell things directly – such as advertising space. But rather than putting up Adsense and hoping for a few clicks you can sell dedicated ad spots on your site for a fixed amount per month. This is great because you now have a fixed, regular income which is something you don’t often get from a website.

Viral Download / Network Marketing

The very nature of a viral download means that if successful that download will find its way into the hands of a great many people. If that download happens to promote a signup to a Network Marketing campaign that you are involved in you can build a downline very quickly. John Chow has successfully used this method in his free ebook download. Of course he also promotes his link via the blog.

Web Tools / Subscription Services

This is one of the ways I want to be making money long term. The idea is to develop software tools that work in the browser and provide a basic version free. Then have the option of an enhanced version that has a monthly fee attached.

Web Games / On-Page Ads

Google recently acquired a company that will allow them to launch a system called “Adsense for Games” that will allow game publishers to insert advertising in their games and collect revenue. Read the news story here. I’m not sure of the full details yet and if the games have to be browser based or not. Even without such a system, on-page ads is a great way to support web based games because the gamers are on your web page for the whole time they are playing the game.

A Quick Look at Some Successful Internet Marketers

I’ve chosen a few people who I follow myself and taken a look at how they make money through their publicly known sites. Obviously some of them have sites that they don’t publicize.

John Chow

John Chow calls himself the ‘evil’ dot com mogul. Now John actually made most of his money with another site called The Tech Zone but he decided to use his personal blog as a monetization experiment and he now earns in excess of $15k a month from that site alone. He uses two content models. First of all his main site is a blog but he also heavily promotes his free ebook which is a collection of some of his best articles. This is a viral download and not only brings traffic to his site but also promotes many of his affiliate links directly.

As for monetization, John is a pioneer in monetization models – he will experiment with everything, he’ll push the limits, suffer the consequences and publish his results on his blog. From my list I can see that he uses on page ads, affiliate marketing, donations, direct sales and networking marketing.

Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemoney)

Shoemoney calls himself the Lord of the Ringtones. One of his favourite money making arrangements is to develop resource sites, set up on page ads (he’s a huge fan of adsense) and affiliate products and then drive traffic using pay per click. He’s a big spender in the PPC arena but for his sites he knows what every click is worth and therefore how much he can afford to spend. He also has his personal blog where he talks about his business ventures. This is also monetized in much the same way as John Chow’s blog.

Also, you may have heard of Auction Ads? This was developed by Shoemoney and later sold for an undisclosed amount. Auction Ads can be classified as a matching service as it matched advertisers to publishers. It’s not easy to develop web tools, matching services, games etc but it can pay well if you do it right!

Yaro Starak

Yaro Starak doesn’t have the kind of hype that surrounds John Chow & Shoemoney but he has been making a very successful business for himself over the last few years. He has had many business ventures but I want to concentrate on just two of them – his blog, and his mentoring program, Blog Mastermind. The blog has been going since 2004, which is longer than the other two and he has around half the number of subscribers.

For his content models he has his blog, he also has a viral download which is a pre-seller to his subscription based product – Blog Mastermind. These are all linked together. His download, the Blog Profits Blueprint is an excellent ebook which on its own is far better than some that you pay for but the beauty is that once you’ve read it, it really makes you want to join his mentoring program, which I’m sure is the idea :) He also monetizes the blog with on-page ads, affiliate marketing and direct sales.

Where to go From Here?

This post is already very long and yet I have only just scratched the surface of all the topics I have mentioned in here. I would urge you to explore those that interest you further. There are many things in these lists that interest me and I will be looking into myself over the coming months. If there is anything in particular you would like me to cover in more detail, please let me know in the comments.

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