Subscriptions – This is what I feel is my stable income and so I try to keep focused on providing a service people want and need I have many sites which offer subscriptions and almost all of them are donationware or contributionware. I never offer a specific product, service, or support. Instead its completely 100% donation based. For a long long long time subscription income didn’t come close to passing my contextual advertising or affiliate income. Now its almost 2x them and continues to snowballs. I have played with various price points throughout the years. I first started off with a one time fee of 29.95. Then after a few months and doing a lot of research I switched to a recurring annual fee of 29.95. I stuck it out at this price point for about 1 year until we had around 33345 members or the equivalent of a million dollars annual reoccurring income. At that point I changed it up to 19.95 for a 6 month reoccurring annual membership. yes its 10$ cheaper initially but for the same time period it actually makes me 10$ more. I find that people really like the 6 month deal for 19.95. This site now is at over 50k paying annual members and I see no reason to ever play with the subscription price point ever again.
Donations- After several people told me to put up a donation button I thought I would try it. I was totally stunned at the response that it has gotten over the years. In donations alone I have been able to cover all of my server costs and then some.
Physical Goods : Depending on what market you are in there can be a huge markup for physical goods. Being that I am pretty heavy in the mobile market I will use that for examples. Most cellular data cables can be bought for under 1$ and if you buy bulk you can literally get them for pennies (quantities of 1,000 or more). I sell these data cables for 20-30$ depending on what model. Yes, I charge a lot more then what people can pay for them on eBay or other places but still people buy. I figure out what its worth to me to sell them and that is how I come to my price point.
Contextual Advertising – AdSense/YPN/MSN : This is the cowboy market. Its fun and profitable but TONS of volatility. Sure you can make 5480$/day and be on the road to 2 million a year for the month of January but then what happens in Feb when you dip down to 1200$ a day. It makes you want to change your entire website… but then is it your website that needs changing or did the market flux… or was it that change you made 2 weeks ago in the global header that is drawing less paying ads. THIS WILL DRIVE YOU INSANE
Affiliates – I have had good success with affiliates like Azoogleads and CJ . I have also heard 5staraffiliateprograms is good also but I do not have experience with them. SE traffic seems to drastically effect the affiliates for me. When I am ranking super well then my affiliate money has gone HUGE through the roof but my subscriptions, donations, and contextual revenue doesn’t seem to be so effective. The same is true for when I fall off search engines. I see a drastic reduction for affiliate revenue but the rest stays the same.
So lets recap:
ShortTerm – Contextual Advertising – Hot or not.
MidTerm – Donations, Affiliates, and Physical goods – Decent sustainable revenue
Longterm – Subscriptions – This is your rock. Will continue to snowball until people cancel.
Ok so now you are running your short, mid and longterm revenue streams? Now go see the experts on how to optimize these:
For Blog specific check out problogger.net
For Contextual Advertising check out Jensense
For Affiliate programs check out dp forums
This is actually a repost/recap
April 15, 2009 at 7:07 am
Kuflu :
Great ideas and Thanks
January 22, 2009 at 12:33 pm
thanks for this article
September 23, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Great article. I actually generate a revenue by building websites. Most business owners dont have the time and techniqual know how to get their own website running and market it. Its a really easy job that i have been doing now for 7 months and love.
Check out my website at http://www.2thefactory.com and leave a comment if you would like.
November 5, 2007 at 10:13 pm
difference between valium and xanax
difference between valium and xanax
September 21, 2007 at 7:15 am
thank
September 15, 2007 at 9:06 am
thank you very good
August 3, 2007 at 5:58 pm
where can i make money really.
June 11, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Shoe, do you sell on eBay at all? What are your thoughts on making money there?
May 29, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Great ideas. Thanks a lot
May 12, 2007 at 7:55 pm
For contextual ads, Adsense is tops in my book and I’ve tried many. Webmasters among you, may still copy and paste large chunks of code, like I do, when adding adsense or other bits across multiple pages of your site. As a software author I made a simple little program to copy & paste large chunks of text, across my whole site. If that sounds useful you’re welcome to download a free copy. The address is on my blog.
May 11, 2007 at 8:11 am
Good post, it reminded me a lot of what you said at the last Elite Retreat. Good stuff.
September 8, 2006 at 3:12 am
hi all:) Its a nice site. And i looking for a friends. Visit my site
http://bowflex-treadclimber.zfdfs.info
Love and music is my life
Good luck
August 31, 2006 at 2:57 am
Hi! Good work. By the way, look my site too
June 6, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Great ideas Jeremy!
May 31, 2006 at 3:37 am
thanks
May 8, 2006 at 12:31 pm
For those with a particular geographical niche traditional advertising works too. Don’t think you only have the networks – go out and find advertising prospects in your own neighbourhood and sell the concept to them – the old fashioned way. Many business websites are pretty enough but poorly seo’d so the biz owner is pulling his hair out to drive traffic to his expensive on-line brochure. Prove that you can do that and you’ll have another regular source of income.
December 13, 2005 at 9:16 am
Master Shoemoney,
Will you share with us what forum software you use?
Can you give any guidance on how exactly you place the donation/contribution buttons on your site? Are there any custom donation hacks for forums you recommend?
Do you use paypal subscriptions?
December 11, 2005 at 4:38 pm
I’d like to ask if you think that subscriptions might perform better than ads on an astrology articles website. At the moment, Adsense rulez, but I really like your subscriptions idea, as it implies a level of trust or collaboration with my readers. At this moment, if a user clicks on an ad, that’s good, it earns me money, but on the other hand that visitor leaves my website and won’t get to read my other articles… And that’s not really stimulating me to write better articles, only better “keyword rich articles”.
So, basicly, this seems to be a great opportunity to write better articles, but the question is: is it also a better financial option?!
December 7, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Right…. all at one site.
December 5, 2005 at 2:50 pm
I offer nothing except usually like a special badge on messageboards that lets others know your a subscriber or “supporter”. For me with what I do its important not to claim ownership to a particular item for resale.
December 5, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Great read. I’ve seen several subscription based models. What do you do on yours? Do you offer extra downloads, access to content earlier, more content, etc?
December 5, 2005 at 12:59 pm
Nice post ShoeBaby! You can add… if someone has a site that gets lots of traffic there is a bit of money to be made with advertising… i.e. adbrite or similar forms of advertising
December 5, 2005 at 10:57 am
Shoe, do you sell on eBay at all? What are your thoughts on making money there?
December 5, 2005 at 9:26 am
Yes, great article. Thanks for the 5 Star Affiliate Programs mention in your blog. I hang out at the Digital Point forums as well as my own 5 Star forums, if anyone has questions about how to increase their affiliate revenue I would be happy to help.
December 5, 2005 at 8:10 am
What types of content are people willing to subscribe to these days?
December 4, 2005 at 11:12 pm
the best way to explain donationware subscriptions is to checkout what webmasterworld is doing http://www.webmasterworld.com/donate.htm
December 4, 2005 at 11:08 pm
Great article. Subscriptions – I never thought about the potential here. But I really don’t get what you mean by 100% donation based. Can you elaborate if you don’t mind? Thanks…