Affiliate Products
If you haven’t created any of your own products or don’t have the desire to create one then becoming an affiliate may be a great choice.
As an affiliate you gain a commission by recommending products to your readers who use your link to purchase a product.
Commissions can range anywhere from 3% to 50% or higher. It really depends on the affiliate products you choose.
Some affiliate products offer a one time commission while others offer a monthly commission on products and services that have recurring fees.
If you’ve found a great piece of software or a book that your readers might really enjoy then referring them through an affiliate link can be a great way to help everyone. It’s a win, win, win situation.
Not only do you help your readers, but you also help the person or business that took the time to create a great product and you help yourself as well.
I love recommending affiliate products I use and have found great success with and I know that recommending them to readers that had no idea they existed can help them succeed in their businesses much more effectively and efficiently than if they didn’t have these tools.
In fact you can view some of the affiliate products I use and recommend in my resources section if you like.
Create an Ebook
Ebooks are digital books which can be downloaded onto computers, kindles, iPhones, and various other devices.
Creating ebooks that solve problems, keeps the reader engaged and brings them closer to their goals can be an excellent source of income, especially when you grow an audience that wants and expects you to create great products.
It also creates a great sense of fulfillment to know you are helping others.
Being able to ask your audience questions and survey them to find out what they want to learn about will help make it much easier to target what you will write about in your e-book.
I’ve seen ebooks sold for anywhere between $20 -$97 per download.
It really depends on your audience and what their willingness to pay for your product is.
The more people like, trust, and respect you, and the bigger the problem you solve, the higher the value of you ebooks will be.
The more annoying, painful, and daunting the problem is the more your audience needs good solutions.
The most important thing to do is to listen to them so that you can find out what is worth writing about and what isn’t.
You can also create free ebooks and place links to affiliate products in them, but please choose to use products that are helpful to your audience and don’t litter the e-book with tons of unnecessary affiliate products.
Most readers will be happy to use your links, but not if you are making it the most important part of your e-book.
Your ebooks should be based on solutions, and/or entertainment depending on your readers.
Remember, your ebooks are here to help others. The more you help others the more you profit.
Create Audiobooks
Audiobooks are a great alternative format for those that don’t have the time, patience or ability to sit down and read your content.
It allows them to digest your information while being able to accomplish other goals or activities.
Personally when I used to commute long distances audiobooks became one of the only ways I could learn since I couldn’t read while I was driving.
Now I find audiobooks to be a great way to learn when I don’t have the energy to focus on a book or computer screen.
Remember, not all audiences are created equal. Some like the visual appeal to your content and prefer videos, others like to read, and some love audiobooks.
Hardcover books
Blogs have become a powerful resource for those who love to write hardcover books and for those that are looking for an audience and platform to share their ideas with.
Whether you’re looking to promote your book through your website or trying to come up with the next book to write, content marketing can help you spread the word and direct your readers to the books you sell and the website you use to promote them with.
If you haven’t written any of your own books you can become an affiliate and make a commission by referring others to books that you really enjoy.
Sell Entertainment and/or How to Videos
Creating videos that are useful, entertaining, and informative is not only a great way to promote your content, but also a great way to help those that use your content.
If you have a website devoted to comedy having some funny stand up videos may be a great way to keep others entertained while creating an income for yourself.
If you’ve created a how to website then having good quality step by step videos may appeal to your audience.
You can also do seminars with a live audience and sell the videos to those that didn’t get a chance to see your seminar.
There are tons of ways to create, promote and sell video’s if you choose to make that a source of income.
Membership Sites
Membership sites are usually composed of premium content in the form of videos, audio, and written content.
Some membership sites have created communities that allow you to share your common interest with others, learn from one another and gain additional insights that a standard website does not offer.
Some site also offer webinars, software, and one on one sessions for those that become part of the membership.
It’s really up to you in deciding how you want to build your site.
What makes membership sites a great income stream is that you can charge a monthly fee to allow others to gain access to the most useful content you have and give them a community they can belong to and grow with.
Adsense
Adsense allows you to place advertisements on your website that work on a pay-per-click or per impression basis.
This means that when an individual clicks on an advertisement you collect a small income from that click.
This method of income generation may or may not be worth the cost of using the space on your site due to the often very low amount of income collected from this method of income generation and the possible annoyance it may bring to visitors when it is overused.
If you do choose to use Adsense on your website choose ads that are closely related to your content.
Some sites have seen great success using Adsense, but if you choose to use this as a strong source of income it is very important that you learn as much as you can about ethical, moral and useful ways to use Adsense in a way that best helps your visitors and your income.
Paid Advertising
If you run a successful website that generates a decent level of traffic paid advertising may work for you.
Paid advertising is often based on a monetary agreement you make with a particular company to allow them to advertise on your website.
You may choose to agree to a pay-per-click basis, by how many of the clicks convert to sales, or by offering a solid monthly rate regardless of clicks or conversions.
Paid advertising differs from Adsense because you are setting the agreements and terms on your own and are able to choose your financial compensation in ways that Adsense cannot.
Unlike Adsense however companies have more power in choosing which sites they want to work with and you are choosing to make agreements with those companies on your own instead of having a system that has the agreements, legal aspects, and monetary compensation in place.
You can undoubtedly make more money with paid advertising versus Adsense but you must take into account the pros and cons of each and decide which method works best for you if you plan on making this a source of income.
Paid Forums
Paid forums allow individuals to communicate with one another, spread ideas and even collaborate with each other in the form of messages.
These messages can become separate topics that readers use to learn from and teach each other what they know about a specific topic so that they can improve their own interests.
This is great for people looking to interact and get direct feedback from each other.
While a website can be a great source of learning, a forum allows those individuals to speak to each other and build a community of support.
Some forums are known for building communities and relationships that can be well worth the monthly premium paid to join them.
Just like joining a gym can help get you into shape, a good paid forum can help your readers grow and become better at what they are trying to improve.
Paid forums may also appeal to those that don’t like being bothered by people and businesses that aren’t serious about that topic, and can help deter spammers since they aren’t usually willing to pay a monthly premium to spam the forum.
Paid Newsletter
Paid newsletters can be sent via email or in paper format.
They can be special reports, recent developments and strategies, informative visual graphs, current news, and plain old text.
Newsletters usually contain very useful information that readers are willing to pay a premium to get, and can be very detailed containing 10 pages of content or more.
These letters can be sent once a month or more depending on the person delivering the newsletter, but beware that these type of letters typically need to offer a lot more than a than you standard content and have a willing audience that wants to purchase the newsletter for it to be successful.
The more helpful your newsletter is to you audience the better.
Paid Webinars
When you become seen as an authority and gain followers that want to see you live and ask questions you can use paid webinars to both help those who want to learn from your insights and yourself in the form of monetary compensation.
Webinars are very popular on certain types of work because it gives people the opportunity to communicate with you directly and get your feedback immediately.
Webinars can also offer detailed, helpful information that you won’t find on the website.
Creating Software
You can make a substantial income offering software products related to you niche.
If you’re good at creating software you can do it on your own.
Some businesses choose to outsource, work with a team, or partner up with a software company to develop software for their business.
having great software products will help strengthen your brand and create a stronger relationship between you and your readers/customers.
Some examples of software can WordPress plugins and themes, music software, iPhone applications, and video editing software.
There are many different types of software that can be created for your business if it fits the needs and wants of your audience.
Physical Products
Physical products are often sold through e-commerce sites such as Ebay and amazon, but you can also create your own site to sell products as well.
If your really into created or selling physical products than this may be a niche you would like.
One difference between physical products and digital products such as ebooks is that physical products usually need to be shipped from one location to another while ebooks can be downloaded directly.
Also with physical products you have to pay for various costs from shipping, to housing your products, and refunding defective products.
Sell Your Website
As your site becomes popular and your audience becomes larger you may have the ability to sell or flip your site for a profit.
Websites such as Yahoo, MySpace, Audible and iStock photo have sold for millions of dollars.
While few websites get this type of glory it is good to know that websites that garner a lot of traffic can be sold or flipped for a small profit if you are so inclined to do so.
Article Marketing
Article marketing can serve two purposes.
When you create articles for some of these websites you can earn a percentage of the profits on articles you write that generate an income (typically Adsense revenue) and 2nd some websites allow you to link back to your page which can help increase traffic to your site and help increase your SEO efforts.
article writing may be more beneficial for creating additional traffic through links in your content, but you can also gain a small (usually very small) income off of the articles you create as well.
Freelance Work
If you truly enjoy content creation and marketing then you may like freelance work.
Being able to work with other businesses and people and get paid to create content for them could be a great way to get your name out and give you some flexibility to choose topics, projects and clients you want to work with.
Some freelancers even get paid to temporarily relocate to other area’s to do work for a particular website or business, such as hotel resorts and foreign countries, but understand that while you have the freedom to choose your clients they also have the right to choose who they want to work with.
Both your skill level and the condition of the economy of your particular niche can play a large role in whether you will find lots of work or none at all.
Share any other money-making strategies I may have missed in the comments.
This post is part of the content marketing and online business series.