| For a content site, there are few options available for monetization beyond ads I run a number of content sites in my niche. They're all monetized through promoting my software, which means that even if 97% of the people who come to the site never pay me money I'm still sitting pretty. In my case, the software antedates the content sites, but one could just have easily made the transition from publisher to software vendor as the other way around. (Or hired someone to make you the software, or made an arrangement to white label previously-existing software, etc.) This doesn't help if your content sites are pitched at a market which does not pay money for goods and services, of course. Incidentally, the economics of advertising your own product versus CPC ads are quite compelling. I routinely pay Google $2 CPMs for inventory on 3rd party sites, so let's accept that as typical in my market. Of that $2, Google keeps a buck or so, so the content publisher sees less than $1. My own effective CPM (sales / visits * 1,000) bounces up and down depending on what flavor of search terms I'm doing well on, but for many of my content sites it is in excess of $20. As much as I'm indebted to AdSense for giving Webmaster Welfare to the folks who send me a lot of my traffic, I'd have to be insane to put it on my own sites. As an added bonus, its easier to get a link to a site that doesn't have AdSense plastered all over it, because it can be seen as non-commercial even if is essentially one gigantic ad. (This was somewhat surprising to me, but there you go.) |