6 Ways to Monetize Your Traffic – Passive and Active

For some people, traffic comes easily. Maybe it is because they’re great writers, maybe the get the scoop before anyone else. Or maybe, people just like what they say. Whatever the reason, some people have more traffic than they know what to do with. Today we’re going to look at the various ways to monetize that existing traffic.

If you aren’t at a level of traffic you’re happy with, check out my 66 Ways to Build Links in 2007.

Passive Monetization

There are a million ways to make money online, but none better than the “set it and forget it” method. In order to create a passive income from your websites, you need to be able to create the content, monetize the traffic and move on to create another passive income stream. About 85% of my monthly income comes from passive sources.

Here are the best programs and methods for passive monetization that I have used. I know there are other great programs and methods, so leave a comment with your favorite.

1. Google Adsense (65% of my monthly income.)

Google Adsense allows you to paste some code into your website and it displays contextually relevant ads. If you’re a good writer and can write about topics that don’t interest you (like vending machines), Adsense could be a good earner for you. I love Adsense because all you have to do is insert the code and move on. Nothing else to do, it is one of the simplest programs, and also one of the best ways to monetize a website.

2. Text-Link-Ads.com (15% of my monthly income.)

Text-Link-Ads.com (aff) is both passive and active. It is passive because once you set it up you don’t have to do anything else. However, if you stop updating your blog/website you’ll start to lose advertisers. At least I always do. Text link sales are an easy way to monetize your blog. TLA doesn’t have any specific guidelines for traffic, but the more traffic the more your links will sell for.

TLA has great support, especially a guy named Drew. He helped me for over a week with a WordPress plugin issue until we finally resolved it. TLA is easy to install and they have plugins for every major publishing platform and forum software.

3. AzoogleAds (5% of my monthly income.)

AzoogleAds (aff) doesn’t have the most affiliate programs, but when they have a program, it pays the most. I use 2 of their offers. This is a set and forget because I use them on webpages, and not through active promotion. Most of the offers I choose are business related. Unfortunately they have mainly CPA programs, and some of their landing pages convert horribly. Others are wonderful. If you choose to start using Azoogle make sure you do your own testing with a few similar programs.

They also have a few programs with a CPA over $50 and not much PPC competition. If you like PPC, you can find a great match at AzoogleAds.

Active Monetization

Active monetization differs from the passive realm because you need to devote time to keeping the income levels high. Usually these include advertisement that you seek out, must approve regularly, or implement monthly.

1. AdBrite (1% of my monthly income.)

I really don’t like AdBrite especially since they started allowing people to advertise on bulk sites. Out of 100 sites that want to advertise on my sites a month, I approve about 2. Out of those two sites, I make very little money. AdBrite ads stand out too much, don’t look contextual, and don’t get many clicks regardless of the ad text.

If I can, I always avoid AdBrite.

2. Sell sponsored posts. (2% of my monthly income.)

I really like sponsored posts. Sponsored posts are great because they are obvious advertisement (people don’t mind obvious as much), they don’t stick out, and they are usually related.

3. Sell your website. (5% of last year’s income.)

I don’t sell many websites, but when I do, I don’t mess with selling any sites for under $1k. Anything less takes too much time and energy. If you have a site with great traffic, or any traffic for that matter (100+ uniques per day), you can find a few buyers pretty easy. I would start with a thread at a few of the popular forums like DigitalPoint. That’s where I’ve found buyers and sellers in the past.

If you decide to sell your website, make sure you know what it is worth to you. Most people will pay a multiplier of your monthly income. For example a site that makes $100 a month will be worth 10-12x usually ($1000-1200). If you are making that much money, but have 1000 unique visitors per day, your site is worth a lot more because someone like me will buy it and turn that $100 into $500 per month. But if you don’t know how to monetize your site, you can still make decent money by selling it.

Those are the top 6 ways that I create an income from the internet. If you have other ideas, leave a comment!