How Do I Monetize My Website?

You: A Web Strategist
You’re an individual who is responsible for the long term direction of a website, and meets the requirements of business, community, and technology. Part of your role is to keep your website profitable, even if it doesn’t generate direct revenue streams.

Situation
As you plan out the direction of your website, there are multiple ways to bring your web strategy to fruition, I’m listing out these methods below.

The Many Forms of Monetization using the Web:

Marketing
What’s Marketing? Everyone has a hard time describing this activity but I’ll break it down for you with my definition: The activity of bringing products and customers together.

Advertising
The most common form of monetization for websites is Advertising, it works great for media sites, blogs, and other news and media sites. For the corporate web strategist, their goal is to get ads on these sites. ConversionRater has listed out the many forms of advertising including:

• Contextual Advertising
• Display Advertising
• Targeted Advertising
• Text Link Advertising

Sponsorship
I’m calling this out as separate than advertising as often sponsors are infused into website or media as part of the experience. One example that often comes to mind is the infusion of the ScobleShow and Seagate brand. Robert mentions the brand uses the products, and displays the logo on a variety of media he creates. Please note I’m a former employer employee of PodTech, so here’s a few other examples: Chris Pirillo’s live stream show is sponsored by Dell and others, a perfect fit. Recently, Ask a Ninja of Federated Media created some customer shows to promote blades of steel, a cross over and viral marketing campaign.

Paid Content and Advertorials
Often in magazines and newspapers we’ll see advertorial sections that –at first glance– appear to be editorial of the publication. These paid content areas likely have useful or valuable knowledge being shared, but at the same time will guide the user towards a marketing direction. Media websites can offer these advertorial sections to their websites, allowing marketers to publish content. Transparency is required, don’t even think of trying to slip one over your users, as when they find out (they always do) a rebellion will occur.
Thanks Andy Beard via comments

Syndication of Content
By repurposing content from other channels, or displaying your content on other websites can result in residual revenue in micropayments or fixed pricing. Displaying content feeds from other sources can result in content providers paying money to the provider.

Affiliations
For many websites, providing recommended links to partners can be steady stream of links and revenue from commission. Amazon’s book recommendations program is an example of this. It’s important that the website be fully transparent about the relationship of the linking and recommendations. Companies that aggregate content and distribute to other companies can receieve a micro-payment for such activities, for example: Mozilla’s Firefox generates regular amounts of micro-payments from users that use their search bar in the top right on the browser.

Donations
I put this under the Marketing bucket as the same types of activities are required to obtain donations from groups or individuals. This common method requests money be given to a cause, in return goodwill is shared from recognition (or badges to be placed on website) tax benefits, or knowing that one has supported something they believe in.

Conversion
Not all websites make direct revenue, although Marketers can bring prospects closer to the sales point. In some companies, those that bring qualified leads get paid, a dollar amount is defined for those leads. Websites can generate interests from marketing activities, contact sheets, qualification activities that eventually result in sales. Although indirect, don’t overlook this powerful form of revenue generation.