8 March 2007
Passive Income, Monetization and Web Apps
Thanks to Dustin M. for sending my first question email.
What’s the best way to passively use the internet to make $? I work in communications and will probably stick with the field and the government as long as I can since it’s pretty easy so I can use that to gear my income fine. But I sort of have a passion for web development and like to do it in my off time. Now, I would have got into the game earlier had I’d known wtf was going on, but now that I’m here I see many many idiots who don’t know a mysql_escape_string from a mysql_real_escape_string. Anyway, I don’t have as much time as some to work on this so what are some of my options?
There are a zillion ways to make (semi-) passive income from the internet. The “best” way would depend on your interests and talents…. I suppose your definition of passive would come in to play also.
Some of the longest lasting, lowest maintenance income I’ve earned from the internets has been from marketing for a profit share… I suppose some in forumland would refer to this as joint venture-ing. If you do any consulting, look for things you can set up for the business owner that you can get recurring income from without recurring effort. You may have to sacrifice up front fees but it’s way worth it in the long run (if you do your job well).
If you don’t do any consulting, I’d say some of the best passive income would come from ads or membership fees on sites with user-generated content. If you don’t want to spend your time actively adding content or manipulating a site, you need to have other people doing it for you. Think ads on a wiki, paid forums, etc.
Aside from some joint venture endeavors I haven’t had much success on truely passive income by myself. I prefer to aim high and make active income passive by hiring people to do the work for me. I hope this helps.
I run a free media hosting website that gets around 800 uniques a day. What are some good advertising options and some good techniques on placement? Google Adsense is not an option.
Do you have any demographic information on your users? The best way to monetize a site is to try to get into a head of its userbase and find come up with appropriate offers. I would check out AzoogleAds for CPA offers that your visitors may be interested in. Sign up for a few that look good (think free trials, short lead forms, etc.) then set up an ad rotation script and plug them in. I would try both image and text links plugged into a couple spots on the site that would stand out. Give this a shot and let me know how it goes.
I’m looking for ideas for web applications. Is there anything I should stray away from that will obviously fail?
I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to web apps. I would try starting simple with calculators that people may find useful or entertaining (simple financial stuff that hasn’t been done to death? or maybe something silly like Kegulator). If you succeed at getting traffic to them then look for something complicated you could charge for and attack.