 For a website that has good content, a good traffic base, and that doesn't mind to butcher its design a bit, advertising might be a good way to monetize all your efforts. General Advertising providers Google became a major player in the industry with it's text-ads (there's even one of the left sidebar of this site!). In exchange of few cents per cliks, an AdSense user lend an area of his/her web-page to google to display their text-ads. While they are highly customizable and easy to update these text-ads represent a very good way to quickly test a market or drive regular quality traffic at a fairly low cost. Yahoo and Microsoft both have their counterpart programs for their search engine. Here's a list of other general advertising programs. It ranges from the most annoying pop-up ads, to the more subtle ones; well, as much as advertisement can be.  Affiliate programs While they might not a simple and quick to setup than the generic ad programs, such program might be proven much more relevant to your visitors. The idea is explained very well in this wikipedia article. For instance, if you're maintaining a book critic website, you might already link to an online library. With such programs, there's it the possibility to share the profits on the sales driven by your visitors. Many are trying too hard to make money out of these programs, and it can blurs the lines between relevant content and hard-sales. We shouldn't forget that content is the primary reason why visitors are coming back on a site site. Here's a list a few affiliateCC programs:
 Custom referral programs While this practice is more common in the world of online casinos or other less recommendable fields, many organization sell and buys traffic using a third party affiliates platform. Companies like CCBill or Commission Junction let web-masters setup or use affiliate program open to other websites owner. |