A few weeks ago I attended a conference where a leading blogger was asked how blogs should make money. His reply was “start with Google Adsense and once you have built up a decent size audience sell display ads and sponsorship”.

It is this blinkered thinking which is stopping many bloggers and content website owners from realising the commercial potential of their sites. There are actually dozens of ways of making money from a good content website.

Here are over 30 ways that I have come across.

Advertising

• Text Ads – short text ads automatically displayed on a page based on the context of the content. Google AdSense dominates the market.

• Display Ads – Banner and button ads displayed at the top or to the side of content

• Video Ads – Short video ads embedded into a page. They can be auto-play (annoying!) or be clicked to play. There is usually an example on the Yahoo.com home page

• In-Content Ads – Ads that are linked to keywords within articles. Learn more at inLinks.com
• Classifieds – User submitted classified ads. Craigslist is the gorilla, but lots of content websites have niche classifieds. Take a look at RockyMountainNews.com Classifieds
• Jobs Board – Paid job listings. A good example is Smashing Magazine Jobs
• Pre-roll/post-roll video ads – Short ads at the beginning and end of video clips. Being trialled by YouTube
• Paid Reviews – charge companies or individuals to review their book, product or service. Learn more at ReviewMe
• Pay Per Post – offer to write posts mentioning a product, company or service for a fee. Can be unethical if commercial interest not declared. Learn more at PayPerPost
• Advertorial – Allow customers to publish their own articles promoting their products or services for a fee. Make sure you clearly mark articles as advertorial to maintain your independence and integrity. Example: Rackspace Advertorial
• Sponsorship – Charge for sponsorship for all or part of your website. Usually fixed price agreements for a fixed period of time
• Directory Listings – create a directory and charge suppliers to be listed, or list every supplier and charge for an enhanced listing. Example: an enhanced directory listing on a financial advisors website

Affiliate Marketing

• Commissions for Actions – you get paid every time an action is completed e.g. email newsletter sign up, trial sign-up, survey completed, etc. For example you can get paid a commission every time a free copy of the Firefox browser is downloaded. Sign up for a Google AdSense account
• Commissions for Sales – you get paid a fixed commission or percentage share of sales value. Learn from Commission Junction
• Lead Generation – generate leads on the website and sell them to prospects. Learn fromApproved Index
• Commission For Events Promotion – promote events in your industry in exchange for a commission on ticket sales. Approach any event organiser

Ecommerce

• Digital Product Sales – sell products that can be downloaded over the internet. They can include ebooks, research, software, reports, music, video clips, etc. Go to Clickbank.com to see dozens of downloadable products
• Physical Product Sales – stock, sell and ship your own products. For exampleCannotStopSmoking.com sells electric cigarettes
• Dropship Sales – sell products that are stocked and shipped by the manufacturer or wholesaler. To learn more have a read of this Wikipedia Dropshipping entry
• Pay Per View – sell one-off access to service. Take a look at The Geological Society for an example
• Pay Per Article – sell one-off articles. A good example is on the RSC Journal website
• Auction Sales – auction products or services from your site
• Marketplace – match buyers and sellers and facilitate payment.Take a look at EditAvenue.com, a marketplace for editors
• Merchandise – If you have a popular site with a loyal audience you can sell branded merchandise. Try using CafePress
• Photo and Video Sales - you can sell images and videos direct from your site or through services like FotoMoto

Subscription

• Paid Membership Access to Premium Content – subscription for month, quarter or year to get access to member-only content and resources e.g. HerbMentor.com
• Premium Membership to Upgrade Free Services – provide an enhanced service to paid members. This can be on a forum, information website, social network, etc. For exampleDNForum.com has a premium membership
• Subscription to a Webservice – enable people to subscribe to a service. Take a look atAncestory.com to see a service that charges for access to research data.
• Subscription to an Online Course – enable people to subscribe to an online course with modules being delivered every week or month e.g. SEOBook.com
• Subscription to Archive Material -  After a fixed time period archive content, then sell subscriptions to this archived data. MarketingSherpa publishes all their articles for free for one week, after which time customers have to subscribe to their archive
• Subscription to a Podcast – Create a regular high quality podcast and sell it for a monthly subscription. For a directory of paid-for Podcasts go to Premiumcast.com

Participation /Events

• Webinars – promote and sell webinars
• Seminars/Workshops – promote and sell offline seminars and workshops
• Mentoring – promote and sell mentoring which can be delivered over the internet, phone or face-to-face
• Consultancy – promote and sell consultancy services
• Franchise – turn products or services into a franchise opportunity and sell franchise via your site. Take a look at Jack Humphrey’s Directory Network Association
• Reseller – Create products that can be re-sold. They can be sold with your branding or you can allow resellers to rebrand

Conclusion

Once you have a loyal audience, making money from your website or blog should be the easy bit! I hope that this list inspires you to be more creative and helps you create multiple revenue streams from your valuable content. You deserve it!

Why you need to hire us for a professional installation

People normally think that website development doesn’t require much skills and it is the easiest job on the earth,  but blog/ website development is an art and it requires lot of skills and quality of knowledge, passions, time to develop the website etc. Professional website designers and developers not only help your readers/customers to stay on your website for longer but they also make them feel comfortable when they get right amount of information on your website. Creating a unique looking and features rich website for each client is a big challenge for the developer and it takes heart strength of a developer to provide the quality

Strange, still reading this article so here are some solid reasons why you should hire a wordpress developer

1. Theme : Theme is the core of your website , it define the look and feel as well as provide the basic layout how your website will look like and behave. A Good theme can enhance your experience.  Lots of beginners choose free themes only to cut the cost, they did not realize that it can hamper their business a lot in future .( How to Choose a Good Theme )
2. Plugins : What are the best plug-in for your requirement, most of the time users choose plug-in from the internet, try them and then remove , Thus leads a lots of code behind them and makes their blog slow and experience a lots of  problem. ( Best plugins for your wordpress blog)
3. Speed V/s Functionality : Speed is a big factor now, Net users are famous for impatience. They does not wait more than 4 Sec. If your site/blog does not opens with in these 4 seconds. Does not matter how much informative your blog or beautifully designed. They just keep on ignoring your blog. ( How to load your website faster )
4. Clean your Database:  You have tried a lots of plugins and themes and their code is now bloating inside your database causing a lots of problem.
5. Backup : This is one of the least bothered aspect of any website/blog. But it can save your life in case of crash/ casualty.
6. SEO : Search engine optimization is the main factor to stand ahead your competitor, A properly optimized and developed blog can automatically bring a lots of traffic to your site.
7. Pictures : How many pictures and how to use them on your blog at a time, what is the best size and type. picture can also bring a lots of visitors also. How to optimize pictures
8. Squeeze Page : It means a lot to your visitor, What is the best methods to define your front page.

These are some reason, if your are still sure you can do all these things yourself, Then you do not need a professional web/ Blog  developer.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activitiesof search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

The acronym “SEOs” can refer to “search engine optimizers,” a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site and site content, SEO tactics may be incorporated into website development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe website designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.

Themes

WordPress users may install and switch between themes. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website or installation without altering the informational content. Themes may be installed by using the WordPress “Dashboard” administration tool, or by uploading theme folders via FTP. The PHP and HTML code in themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations…

Plugins

One very popular feature of WordPress is its rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install; WordPress has a database of over 17,000 plugins with purposes ranging from SEO to adding widgets.