Autonomous Industry

TweetSift through the ideas below, which will grow with time, so remember to come back or subscribe to the RSS feed.  They are ideas that business’s, communities based on any topic, blog writers and many other aspects of websites employ to help bring in extra revenue.

This list does not include the services and tools which can help build funds through fan based donation services.

(registration, installation and routine parts of monetization ideas will be added soon, got any ideas? Add to Forum or note sections needed for each part here)

Pay Per Click Advertising Networks

PPC is Pay Per Click, so you will receive revenue with every click some one makes on an ad on your site.  Sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website.  Network will then serve contextual ads (text and images) relevant to the website and each click earns you a certain amount.  The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website but most importantly, on the click through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC).  Your click through rate depends highly on the layout of your website combined aesthetically with the ads..  Ads placed above the banner or bleded with content, tend to get higher CTR’s.  The CPC however depends on the niche of the website.  Mortgages or financial products and college education are good examples of profitable niches.

The source of traffic can also effect the CTR,  organic traffic (from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something and tend to click on ads more often.  Social media traffic on the other hand presents low CTR’s because they are tech savvy and choose to ignore ads.

Here are a few PPC Advertising Networks

• Google Adsense
• Yahoo Publisher Networking
• Bidvertiser
• Chitika
• Clicksor

CPM Advertising Netoworks

Cost Per Mille(thousand visitors) behave similar to PPC networks, except you get paid according to the impressions (page views) that ads on the site will generate.  CPM refers to the cost for 1,000 page views monthly for any one website.  If you were to display an ad banner with a $1 CPM this would generate you $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, position of the ad and the format.  The better the network the hgiher the CPM rate.  This is due to the fact they have access for more advertisers.  Some tips on placing these types of ads, (As bove with PPC, the closer to the top of the page the higher your CPM will be like wise the bigger the ad you use).

The services you choose to try your hand at advertising can hand out from $0.10 to $10 for a 1,000 page impressions.  CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio.  An example of which works like this are forums, as a lot of the members return over and over again.

Here are a few networks which deal with CPM advertising;

• Casale Media
• Burst Media
• Value Click
• Advertising.com
• Tribal Fusion
• Right Media

Direct Banner Advertising

This is the most lucrative method of advertising something on your site because you cut out the middle man.  With this your saving on commision and you can make your own rates.  Banner formats can be chosen by you too, 125x125px/300x250px/728×90/126x600px and so on.  The downside to direct banner advertising is that a big audience is needed to get qualified advertisers.  You also have to handle your payments between you and the advertiser.  Thankfully, upon finding direct advertisers you can utilize the following sites.

• Linkshare

Text Link Advertising

After Google declared that sites selling text links without the no follow(Links on any website have attributes for bots which tell them to follow the link on to see where it goes or not to) tag would be penalized, this monetization method became much less popular.

Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, some using no follow and some not.  The advantage of this is that its not intrusive and you can sell text links directly through the website or use specialized networks like text-link-ads and text link brokers to automate the process.

• Digital Point
• Text Link Ads
• Text Link Brokers
• TNX
• Link Worth

Affiliate Marketing

You need to find a merchant (business owner) that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a comission.  Sometimes this is called CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPL (Cost Per Lead).  Here you could have music gear businesses which use affiliate advertising selling their products, microphones or drum sticks on your website where you specify.

They work out how many people have followed their links on your site and finished with a purchase, you will then receive a percentage of this sale or however they work it out.

How to find suitable affiliate programs;

• Dreamhost
• SEOBook
• Comission Junction
• Click Bank
• Azoogle Ads
• Link Share

Monetization Widgets

This is one of the latest trends in the monetization of website’s including widget bucks and smart links.  The methods of their advertising changes from service to service but the principle is the same, some under PPC schemes, others like text link ads and others even leverage affiliate links.  The difference to other services is they work as web widgets.  What this means for you is that it’s more versatile for those who are using them.  It just makes it easier to plug and play on any site you own.  So just like a soundcloud player widget, you embed their widget and let it work its thing.

• Widget Bucks
• Scratch Back
• Smart Links

Sponsored Reviews

Pay Per Post pioneered this model then refined it by sponsored reviews and review me before expanding the paid blogging model.  Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics.

• payperpost.com

RSS Feed Advertising

Website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this content distribution channel, indeed feedburner already has this running.  Once signed up you can start adding/displaying CPM based ads on your feed footer.  Bidvertiser has started with a PCP scheme via your RSS too.  Some blogs opted to sell banners or messages (sponsored) on their feeds too.

• Feedburner
• Bidvertiser
• Pheedo

Sponsors for Single Column or Events

What about thinking about companies to sponsor single events?  There are many business’s online and blogs which are trying this.  You have single columns or events on which you can source companies to sponsor them individually.  This method increases the monetization options for website owners while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience with reduced commitment.

Premium Content

Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free and charge for access to premium content and exclusive tools.  SEOMoz is a good example, popular blog that gives wide range of info covering SEO topics.  Ontop of that visitors can decide to become premium members $48mo.

Private Forums

While the internet is populated with free forums you can also make a private one where members can pay single or recurring fee to join.  SEOBlackhat charges a $100 monthly subscription fee from its members and they have tousands of them.  Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership or other service subscription you will have to have the content behind it.

• Vbulletin
• SMF
• PHPBB
• Vanilla Forums

Marketplaces

Sitepointhave refined and pretty much began the online marketplace within its already set structured website.  Some websites and blogs however are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.  Depending on what niche your website is and adding a marketplace that allows your visitors to buy sell and trade products could work well.  Over time you can begin to charge a small fee for new product listings.  However there are no standalone software packages as of yet so coders would need to be hired to do the job for you.

Paid Surveys and Polls

Services to pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your site.  ‚‘Vizu Answers‘ work on a CPM model and you can easily add there services to your website or blog.

Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

Techmeme pioneered this idea but somehow it has not spread to other websites.  The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column and on the sidebar they have a section “TechMeme Sponsored Posts”.  On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way.  They charge $5000 for one spot and have six of them in total.