Referral income

You are the middleman, and you earn money by referring customers to others. This method gets a bad reputation from others who are more experienced with selling their own products and services directly. Why? Because the finder's fee is so small compared to selling stuff on your own. But don't let that stop you from getting started. Today you are earning pennies, but tomorrow you are earning dollars and beyond!

Too much hype I suppose. But you really...

Market research/information

Do you run a website or blog with content that is especially interesting to a certain target market? If so you can easily make more money by charging for access to view your market intelligence data. One example is to rotate a fresh list of content each day, but if anyone wants to view something older, you can charge a small fee to access the archives. I've seen this method used a lot by online newspapers.

Another idea is really something...

Transaction commissions and fees

The famous example we can probably all relate to is eBay. The company makes billions of dollars on tiny fees charged on each transaction when you setup an auction, and again when you finally sell your item. But how can you apply this idea for your own purposes?

Let's start on a smaller, local level with my wife's example. She teaches music lessons and many times answers questions from parents about what kind of instrument they should...

Product and service sales income

Pick a product or service to sell on your website or blog, markup the price, and earn enough money to pay for your expenses. The remainder is called profit. Sounds simple, but some people come to a halt at the beginning by asking what product or service could they possibly sell? Don't think too hard about it, the answer could be right in front of you. And how much of a markup is selling something that was basically free to you? Pretty big I suppose....

Profile income

Now isn't this really the heart of marketing? Unless you select mass broadcast to advertise your product, you have to figure out who is your ideal customer, and target that group like a laser beam. Websites that have asked for permission and carefully build profiles of specific customer target groups are in a valuable position to earn new revenue. The key here is permission, or opt-in/opt-out, before you do anything with this data. Your customers trusted you enough...