| The way I see it, blogs, websites and free apps will continue to thrive with: - Affiliates (already popular) - Selling collateral products, such as books, merchandise or premium memberships (already popular) - Native advertisement (on the rise) - Sponsorship (on the rise) - Crowdfunding (on the rise) - Micropayments (in it's early days) Those monetization strategies can be used singularly or all together, which will also give a good revenue diversification. The more natural substitute to traditional advertisement is obviously native advertisement and sponsorship. Those two alternatives require a more direct connection between publishers and advertisers/sponsors, leading to a completely different - less scalable, less optimized, but more effective and user friendly - approach to marketing and monetization. So in conclusion, blogs/sites won't die with the decline of advertisement. |