I go to various webmaster conferences and all anyone talks about is ad sales. Advertising is discussed as if it’s the only way to make money online.
Don’t get me wrong, I founded AdBrite because I think advertising is a great way for webmasters to make money and acquire customers. But whether you choose to publish with AdBrite, Google, an inside sales team, or anything else, ad sales should be just one weapon in your arsenal.
For example, shortly after launching AdBrite on Fuckedcompany.com, FC was bringing in roughly $10,000 per month from ad sales. That was great, but I knew it had the potential for more. After some thought, I looked at what I had: lots of users submitting news stories and rumors, with only a few stories making it to the public website. I knew that the unpublished stories might be valuable to someone. Remember, there are so many people on the Internet that, chances are, someone is willing to pay for what you throw away.
So I built a simple system where users could pay a monthly subscription fee to read the unpublished news & rumors. A completely new revenue stream, unrelated to ads.
At its peak, FC had around 1,200 subscribers paying $75 per month, for total subscriber income of $90,000 per month. Coupled with $10,000 monthly from AdBrite, and a few thousand from merchandise sales and affiliate deals, FC quickly turned into much more than a platform to display ads.
I told this story at a conference a couple of years ago. One of my friends told me that he had also decided to “sell his garbage” (in my words, not his). He ran a magazine and was bombarded with press releases all day. His solution? Cull the press releases for information about venture funding, add value by compiling the most complete venture capital database on the Internet, and eventually sell the company to Dow Jones — Wall Street Journal publisher.
I hope this has inspired you to get creative and make more money from your website. Many AdBrite employees run websites that make money in creative ways, I hope you do too!
