Making residual income with websites?

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Permalink Reply by Michael Shemwell on February 12, 2012 at 12:11pm

If you want to make money with your sites, you'll have to sell something.  If your sites are very informative (like a blog) and they draw a crowd, you could sell advertising spots or do some affiliate marketing.  Or, you could draw in the crowds with such information and then sell "premium" products like ebooks or some sort of software downloads that would support those with similar interests.

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Permalink Reply by Lee Smith, ND on February 12, 2012 at 12:47pm

Amazon's affiliate program is very simple and they pay fairly decent commissions for sales.  That said, you won't make more than a few hundred bucks unless your traffic is ridiculously high.  There may be some niche companies that you can establish an affiliate program with, for higher commissions based on your industry.

You can self-publish a book (mine is through Amazon at createspace.com) and then you only share the link to the sales page and cash the checks.  (Actually they direct deposit.) 

Electronic products probably represent your best opportunity, and based on your market it may make sense to use eBooks through Amazon of Apple's iBooks stores.  I'm partial to Apple, and plan to use the new software (iBooks Author) to publish an electronic version of my self-published print on demand book with added features.  For you, this could mean adding video content and you could take numerous possible routes: entertainment, training or history of the industry.  

If you want to build an App, there's always the opportunity for repeat annual sales if you do something like a pinup calendar.

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Permalink Reply by Whitney Barnett on February 17, 2012 at 7:44pm

Thanks for the great in site!

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Permalink Reply by Luke Townsley on February 17, 2012 at 8:43pm

Someone on this forum recently recommended Jim Cochran's Free Marketing 101 low and no-cost ways to grow your business online & off.

I'm almost halfway through it and absolutely loving it. And yes, it is significantly influencing my strategy for monetizing my website.

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