Copyright 2002 by Richard Seltzer
Originally published by Wiley. The rights have reverted to the author
Please post your reactions/comments/suggestions at Blogging about Books
http://www.samizdat.com/blog/?cat=10
Required assignment:
• use HumanClick
• join Amazon affiliate program
Electives:
• join more affiliate programs
The basic version of software (which runs on your PC) is free. You go to www.humanclick.com, download, and follow the installation instructions. You designate which page(s) you want covered. They have a way to automatically add their code to all your pages, or you can elect to put it on some but not others. In that case, they provide you with code that you need to copy and paste into the pages where you want it. That is relatively easy if you are using NetScape Composer or an older version of Word. Just open the page, View source, and paste the code where you would like it to appear. Then return to edit mode, saving your changes, and add whatever explanatory text you'd like before or after where the HumanClick graphic appears. If you normally use Word 2000, save a separate copy of your page, then to try to avoid the nightmare of automatically generated code, open this new copy in WordPad instead of Word. There you will see all the confusing code that Word has generated for this page before. Don't panic. Look/search for the familiar text of your page and paste the HumanClick code where you guess it should appear. Save the document, then open it as a local file in your browser to see how it looks. If you see the HumanClick graphic, you are in good shape. Experiment repeatedly until you make the graphic appear where you want it, together with text to help visitors understand what it is about and to encourage them to try it.
Once you've added the code and uploaded the new version of your page to your Web site, whenever someone goes to that page, a bell goes off on your PC, prompting you to launch HumanClick. At that point you can prompt the visitor to chat: you click the chat icon in your HumanClick toolbar, and the visitor sees a HumanClick image moving left to right across your page and back again, with the invitation "click to chat". Even if you don't send out such an invitation, the visitor sees a static HumanClick linked image that flashes "Need help? Click for a real person." If someone asks to chat, another bell goes off.
By way of the "Info" tab, you can glean a few clues about the visitor:
• the person's Internet host (which may be an indecipherable number,
but may include a telltale company domain name, or a country code)
• the page this person looked at most recently before coming here ("Referrer")
• how long he/she has been looking at this page, and
• how many other pages at your site he/she has just visited.
If the visitor came to your page directly from a search site, you can even see what they were looking for there (buried in the Referrer URL, you'll see the query terms).
You can use their management capabilities of the software to arrange for different people to cover different pages at your site.
If you need to leave your computer for a while, you can indicate either than you'll be "back in 5 minutes" or that you are "away". In either of those cases, or if you are offline, the visitor sees a different prompt -- an invitation and form to send a question or comment by email.
I've found HumanClick a very effective way to turn visitors into leads and customers.
Normally visitors see Web pages, and if they can't figure out what they need from what they see immediately, they go away. And, you, the Web site owner, never know that there was a problem or an opportunity. Now you have an alternative.
There is an enormous difference between an experience where the customer (unbeknownst to the vendor) picks up and looks at goods and messages, and one where the store people are aware of what the customers are looking at and can intervene.
In the old Web environment, you only had a lead if someone registered, or filled out a form, or initiated a transaction, or sent an email. And you had to depend on the pre-packaged content at your site to intrigue them and motivate them to do something.
With HumanClick, every page view is a nibble, and you or your people can immediately engage visitors in text chat to get them to nibble more, and eventually to hook them.
My HumanClick chats have been like fishing expeditions. Only about one in 10 or 20 visitors to my marketing page chooses to engage in chat. (I need to come up with better ways to encourage them to give it a try). But when they do chat, the conversations are almost always both interesting and valuable. In the best instances, I've hooked people, who if they were just looking at the static Web page would probably have moved on without contacting me. Other times I've had very interesting and informative conversations with people from all over the world.
So far, my most effective HumanClick sessions have been with people outside the US. The most memorable conversations were with a marketing manager for Cisco in Peking (at 3 AM), a freelance writer in France (who I then helped redesign his Web site to take full advantage of his content to attract traffic), and managers at El Norte, the largest newspaper in Mexico. Such chats sometimes turn into free sample consulting sessions, where I learn the interests and concerns of the prospective client, and the client gets a sense of my work style as well as how I might be able to help with the problem at hand. As a follow up, I now offer for-a-fee consulting through text chat rooms that I set up on request and through a voice chat room I've set up for free at Excite.
The range of what you can do to interact with customers keeps growing. In some cases, the free services are all that you need. In other cases, the free version gives you the experience you need to decide on a professional solution. In any case, now is a good time to experiment and figure out new ways to grow your business.
Affiliate programs are a form of "viral marketing" -- one company giving individuals and other companies incentives to help drive traffic to its site and spread the word about special offers. The company running the program wants you to add links from your pages to its pages, and also would like you to add related content to your site and do everything you can to draw attention to those links and encourage visitors to click on them. The incentive might be cash or credits of some kind. The link might be a text link or a linked graphic button or a banner ad or it could even be a form, for instance for search or automatic translation, that adds a useful capability to your pages.
Eventually, you might want to set up a small-scale affiliate/incentive program of your own, and personally recruit likely prospects. For now, you should join one or more affiliate programs of other companies, to get experience and insight into this phenomenon, while generating revenue or earning other benefits.
Amazon is a good place to start. They were the first company to set up a large, successful, affiliate program on the Web. Today, a search at AltaVista for +link:amazon.com -host:amazon.com shows that there are over 32 million Web pages outside of the Amazon site with links to pages at Amazon. Those links are an important part of Amazon's amazing success and brand-recognition. Not all of those pages are part of the affiliate program, but many are.
To sign up, go to www.amazon.com, and at the bottom of the page, click on "Join Associates" and follow the instructions. (They call their affiliate program "Amazon Associates.")
You can link to their site as a whole or to particular items for sale at their site. When people who go to Amazon by clicking from a link at your site, you can earn referral fees that range from 5% to 15% of the sale price (up to a maximum of $10 per item). You get the highest referral fees when they click on a link for a specific product and buy immediately (and if that product does not have a high discount). If they shop around at Amazon before deciding to buy, you only get 5%. And if they come back another time to finish that purchase or to buy other things, you get nothing.
For example, I have been an Amazon affiliate for about five years. I currently get over 100,000 views and 30,000 sessions per month. I'm also an obsessive reader and have lots of content at my site related to books (including book reviews and lists of favorites). I have hundreds of links to specific books for sale at Amazon. In the first quarter of 2001, 2195 unique visitors clicked on Amazon links of mine and bought 85 items, worth $885, which earned me only $58. Maybe that's a slow time of year, so consider the quarter before that, which included Christmas. Then 2568 unique visitors clicked through and bought 86 items, worth $1586, which earned me $118. (You get paid quarterly.)
Take into account that my Amazon links are plain text. I don't use the graphics and banners that they provide. Perhaps that makes a difference. And also consider that once you set up a link, you don't have to do anything else -- your pages generate cash for you automatically. But don't expect to get rich this way.
For the last year, I've also participated in the AltaVista affiliate program. In that case, instead of a text link, I put a search box or automatic translation box on my pages -- providing a useful service to my visitors. I put the search box on a few of my most trafficked pages, with an explanation encouraging visitors to use it to find what they are looking for at my site (limiting their search to my site with the command +host:samizdat.com). I also put the search box on articles and presentations of mine related to the subject of Internet search. I put the automatic translation box on pages where I discuss the value and use of automatic translation for an online business. AltaVista currently pays two cents per click through.
In the first quarter of 2001, the pages with these affiliate boxes were viewed 50,923 times, and 22,788 times people clicked through to AltaVista. That's a ridiculously high 44.77% click-to-impression ratio, due to the closely related material on those pages, and probably boosted by some people using the translation and search boxes multiple times per visit. As a result, I earned $608 that quarter.
While I have focused on Amazon and AltaVista, thousands of other affiliate programs have sprung up, as well as companies that act as intermediaries, making it easy to signup for dozens of programs at a time and to keep track of many programs from a single site, rather than having to go to each and every one of them to see reports.
The terms differ widely and whether you get paid a percent of sales, or a flat rate per click through. And yes, it takes some time to sort out the details and add the appropriate links to your site. But once you create those links, there's nothing more for you to do. If people come and click, you make money.
So where do you go to learn more and sign up? First try intermediaries like BeFree.com, Linkshare.com, and Commission Junction www.cj.com. (FYI -- To sign up as an affiliate for AltaVista, you need to go by way of BeFree -- the AltaVista site doesn't seem to mention the program any more.) Each of those companies manages hundreds of affiliate programs. They give you all the information you need to get started, plus useful tips on how to make your affiliate links more effective; and they also provide complete and frequently updated statistics on how you are doing in the various programs. There is no limit to how many you can join, but there's a very close tie between the content of your pages and the businesses you are linking to, don't expect anyone to click through. Experiment, but don't go overboard. It takes time and effort to add affiliate links. Focus your efforts wisely.
Adding text links for an affiliate program is the same as making any other link on a Web page. Adding special graphics and forms/boxes can be tricky. After you've followed the directions for signing up and have chosen the look of the link/ad that you want to put on your pages, you will be presented with code that not only produces that look but also uniquely identifies traffic from that link as coming from your site, so you can get credit. Copy that code to your Windows clipboard. Then if you use Netscape Composer or an older version of Word, open your page, click on View Source, and paste that code into the page at the place that you want it. Once you have added affiliate code to one of your pages, avoid opening that page again with Word to make further edits to the page. Instead, make all your additional edits with Word Pad. When you do that, leave the existing code alone, and just add text. If you must open the page in Word again, or if you do so by accident, the affiliate code will probably be broken (doublecheck to see if the graphics appear as they should); if that is the case, then once again copy code from the affiliate program and put it on your page (with WordPad), deleting the old code that it replaces.
As described above for HumanClick, if you normally use Word 2000, save a separate copy of your page, then open this new copy in WordPad instead of Word. Look/search for the familiar text of your page amid all the strange code you see, and paste the affiliate code where you guess it should appear. Save the document, then open it as a local file in your browser to see how it looks. Experiment until you make the affiliate graphic appear where you want it, together with text to encourage visitors to try it.
For details about trends in affiliate selling and tips on how to take advantage of related opportunities, see the book Affiliate Selling: Building Revenue on the Web by Greg Helmstetter and Pamela Metivier, published by Wiley. They were guests on my weekly chat program in April 2000. You can see the edited transcript at www.samizdat.com/chat130.html
Surprisingly, companies with large successful affiliate programs (like Amazon and AltaVista) have little or no community-style interaction with their affiliates. They manage the programs with automated software that obviates the need for personal contact (except in rare instances), and don't make a effort to connect their affiliates with one another. On the one hand, imagine what a challenge it would be like to allow personal interaction among millions of affiliates. On the other hand, wouldn't you love to try?
To experiment in this direction, at low startup cost and with a minimum of hassle, first check the offerings at Yahoo Stores store.yahoo.com, Amazon's zShops zshops.amazon.com, and BigStep www.bigstep.com
Today at Yahoo, you pay a flat rate depending on the size of your store, with no per-transaction fee, no startup cost, and no minimum time commitment. For $100/month you can have up to 50 items for sale, plus unlimited related informational pages. For $300/month you can have up to 1000 items. Larger stores cost $300/month for the first 1000 items, plus $100/month for each additional 1000 items. You can register a new domain name through Yahoo for your store for $35 per year, or move your existing domain to your Yahoo store for $10 per year. For a revenue share fee (2% of sales, if your monthly sales are over $5000) you can be part of Yahoo's shopping destination, with merchandising benefits and use of Yahoo's express check-out service.
But remember, you don't just need a store front. You also need merchandise to sell. And from your experience selling through eBay, you now should have an appreciation of how much work, and expense can be involved in taking care of all the logistical details, including shipping, and record keeping, and collecting payment. Having to procure or produce the merchandise that you are then going to sell adds to the time-consuming details you need to be prepared to deal with.
Consider the Vstore alternative at www.vstore.com They provide
you with a complete store -- not just an online storefront:
"With Vstore.com, you can open a personally branded, fully stocked,
online store in minutes. Vstore.com provides the products, design, marketing
tools, and technology for free. All you have to do is customize the store
and keep the profits!
"Before Vstore.com existed, starting an online business required a big investment in Web site design and technological hardware. Entrepreneurs also had to negotiate with vendors, pay for warehouse and shipping charges, and set up banking relationships to run their business. Now Vstore.com will take care of those details and leave you to enjoy managing and marketing your store."
They host your online store, manage the credit card transactions, and let you choose which brand name products to sell. That vastly reduces your work and headaches, but it also reduces your margin from what you would expect with a store that you managed entirely yourself. The percent of your commission depends on the merchandise. The examples they show range from 5% to 25%. Like many affiliate programs, they pay commissions once a quarter.
Don't underestimate the work involved in successfully running and promoting a Vstore. Keep in mind that the service you depend on is in the business of helping your competitors sell online too. Your store -- built with Vstore templates -- will look just like hundreds of other Vstores, many of which will be selling the very same merchandise you are. Your only differentiator will be the audience you build.
Yes, all the techniques we've discussed for promoting any Web site apply here, and you could have abundant links from your main site to your Vstore. But if you've gone through all the exercises, you should realize by now that those activities are time-consuming, that they require dedication, and that results don't come automatically. If you've already built a loyal audience for your site, and you are confident that that audience wants to regularly buy the kinds of products you could offer through a Vstore -- go for it. This looks like a good way to try to generate revenue from the audience you've worked hard to build. But don't expect to go from having no online audience at all to having a successful Vstore overnight.
If you have the financial resources to become a big player in online sales, you should consider the offerings of Cross Commerce www.crosscommerce.com and Vitessa www.vitessa.com Basically, these companies provide you with an online supply chain. They give you access to the suppliers of merchandise (at good discounts), with a choice of hundreds of thousands or even millions of items to put on sale. They provide you with the online tools you need to serve your customers and manage your business, and enable you to design a store with your own look-and-feel. They also take care of order fullfillment and after-sale customer support. If you are already in the retail business in the physical world, and if you already have built a related loyal online audience, and if you would like ready access to a wide range of products you've never dealt with before, for sale online, this might be the perfect solution for you.
Don't expect to find price sheets for their services at the Cross Commerce and Vitessa Web sites. They want to talk to you directly, figure out if you are a likely prospect, talk about what you might want to do, and negotiate a price. The cost might be a percent of sales, or a startup cost plus a substantial monthly fee.
If you are interested in trying to generate cash in exchange for access to your audience by selling banner ads at your site, you should subscribe to the email discussion list online-ads@o-a.com and check the related Web site www.o-a.com There you'll be able to read the postings of and interact with 20,000 specialists in online advertising.
Advertising on the Internet probably has a bright future. But beware of depending on banner ads in particular. An abrupt drop in demand for banner advertising led to the demise of many Internet companies, some of which had huge audiences and excellent content.
The concept of banner ads was a natural follow-on to television advertising -- put your message in front of many people, who never asked to see it, and maybe enough of them will pay attention to give a boost to your sales.
Like television advertising, banner ads are an unavoidable nuisance. Yes, the advertiser can target particular messages to particular audiences -- by Web site, by particular Web page, or even based on the visitor's actions (like what they looked for at a search engine). But the banner ad takes up screen space -- that otherwise could contain useful information -- slows the loading of pages, and seeks to divert the visitor's attention from the main purpose of the page.
Unlike television advertising, banner ads invite you to go away. The Web site displaying the ad has gone to considerable trouble to attract this audience, and now the banner ad tries to get them to go somewhere else. (Imagine ads on television prompting you to change channels NOW!) Some sites are set up so clicking on a banner ad opens a separate Web browser window or a Java window, while the original page remains visible. But in any case, the ad is a diversion, intended to lead the visitor down a new path to additional information and different experiences.
Users eventually learn to tune out banner ads, as evidenced by the fact that despite ever more flashy, high tech, dancing and prancing versions, they generate fewer and fewer clickthroughs. And as you saw in Chapter One, many use special software that blocks out banner ads.
Web site owners lose traffic when people do click through, and lose advertising revenue when they don't. In any case, they need to invest in more powerful technology and faster Internet connections in order to effectively display ever fancier banner ads and still provide the user with reasonable response time.
And advertisers are disappointed by the results -- too few people pay attention to the messages.
So it's no wonder that banner ads are dying. The miracle is that they have persisted so long.
But the underlying capability of the Internet to inform and entertain and link people to people continues to be strong, opening myriad creative ways to present useful information and marketing messages.
One might say that the worst problem with banner ads was the fact that they worked too well to begin with -- diverting creative marketing and advertising people down that deadend path, when they could and should have been coming up new approaches that consumers would welcome and enjoy.
What, for example? Try javapuzzlecards. They recently launched their beta site at www.javapuzzlecards.com Hopefully, they'll still be in business by the time you read this book. Even if not, the example can still be illuminating. [Author note -- This startup, based on an excellent idea, has, unfortunately, died.]
At this site, you can turn any digital image into an online jigsaw puzzle. You can easily add text to the image, so you have to put the pieces together to read the message. You just click-and-drag the pieces to assemble then. You don't need to flip or reorient any pieces, hence the puzzles are doable in a reasonable period of time. When two pieces are once joined, they remain joined and move together when dragged (for smooth and pleasurable solving).
People can create puzzles based on photos they've taken and send email to friends -- like with e-cards. The email has the URL where you see the puzzle pieces and assemble them. You could also make links to the URLs for particular puzzles from any Web page. For instance, a family page with photos could have links to puzzles based on some of those photos. And an art gallery site could have links to puzzles based on works it has for sale.
Take into account that Javapuzzlecards is in its infancy and hasn't worked out its business model yet. Presumably, companies could "rent" their own branded space on the javapuzzlecard site. Then they could brand their puzzle creation area and include advertising messages, if they like. And when people create their own puzzles there, the email messages they send could be branded and include messages. And the puzzle assembly area could be branded and include messages and links.
Advertising isn't its main purpose, but it could easily be used that way by creative marketers. These companies could also create their own puzzles with their own images and include associated links in messages they send out over their opt-in email lists. Assembling such puzzles is fun, and, as you do so, you naturally pay attention to the associated words, as clues to how to put them together. The more pieces you put together, the clearer the message becomes -- perhaps including a surprise twist of language or a joke. In this context, you are far more likely to remember the message, than if you just saw it in a banner ad. For instance, you could promote sales of books with puzzles based on book covers, promote movies with puzzles based on posters, promote music CDs with puzzles based on the packaging, promote children's cartoons with puzzles based on cartoon characters and scenes, and promote video games with puzzles based on characters and screen shots.
Give it a try. Go to www.javapuzzlecards.com. Create puzzles using images and messages from your best print ads, email them to your colleagues, and get their ideas on how you might use this approach. Let your imagination run wild. Start taking advantage of the true power of the Internet.
Many newspapers have tried to sell their online content by subscription. But, today, even the New York Times and London Times are free online.
Others, like the Boston Globe, are experimenting with making current news available for free but charging for access to the archives. The Boston Globe www.boston.com lets you search for free, then charges when you choose to retrieve the full text of an article -- $2.95 per article on weekdays, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Time and $1.50 per article at other times. It's still unclear whether that approach will generate significant profit. (When was the last time you needed an old newspaper article so badly that you would have paid $2.95 for it?)
After numerous attempts to come up with a paid subscription model that would work, the Encyclopedia Britannica is now free on line, at www.briticannica.com
The much publicized, well-financed, and high-quality online magazine Salon tried and failed with a paid subscription model, then went free, and now is attempting a mixed model. Their regular edition is free, but they charge $30 per year for the "premium" edition. "Premium" means no banner or pop-up advertising, and extra editorial content (including "a weekly gallery of erotic art").
Well-respected sources of financial news have been able to go against the trend. Both The Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com and Barrons www.barrons.com offer a two-week free trial, then charge $59 for an online subscription ($29 if you already have a print subscription).
So how good is your content? Is its quality and reputation so great that you can expect people to pay for it when they can get the Encyclopedia Britannica and the New York Times for free? That might possibly be the case if you serve a very well-defined niche.
To clarify the alternatives in trying to make money from either content or audience, let's consider the case of a print newspaper with an online edition.
The news value of newspaper content changes over time, and the marketing value of content on the Web also varies over time -- but in different ways. Some newspapers now provide current news for free on the Web and charge for access to their archives. That model presumes that current news -- having inherent value, that people are used to paying for in the print world -- should drive traffic to the site. But, unless you go to great expense to build your brand name or unless you have the right partner agreements, no one will know that you have the latest story -- no one but the people in your traditional audience, who you can prompt with notices in your print edition.
The best way to capitalize on free current news to draw new traffic is in partnership with news distribution services, such as NewsEdge, YellowBrix, and ScreamingMedia. For instance, NewsEdge provides newsfeeds to Individual.com, which distributes them, tailored to individual needs, for free to individuals and Web sites. It's far more valuable to have your headlines dancing across the screens of thousands of users than trying to charge subscription fees for the latest content, like a subscription to a print newspaper.
But the revenue likely to come from charging for archived newspaper stories is very small, because only a handful of experts and researchers have sufficient interest in old news to be willing to pay for access to it. It makes much more sense to make the archives available for free, and use them to build traffic to your site -- storing all that text in search-engine friendly ways (e.g., as static Web pages, rather than in a database).
As for old news, a story from six months ago doesn't matter to very many people, but such a story would have had time to be included in search engines, to have been bookmarked by readers and linked to by sites devoted to that particular subject -- hence such a story could bring new traffic to your site.
In other words, while the news value of content declines over time, the marketing value of that same content increases over time. So it makes sense to use the old content as a marketing asset, rather than trying to sell it.
So what should you charge for? Perhaps not the old news and not the very latest, but rather recent news -- stories a day-to-a-month old. Those are the stories people pointed you to in email or that you heard about the next day or that you didn't get a chance to read on the day of publication. You know what you want. You know that you need it. You understand its value to you. And you'd be willing to pay to get it -- either by subscription or by the article.
But don't expect miracles. Live newsfeeds (through services like individual.com) and archives fully indexed by search engines can both boost your traffic. But, while you could make some money selling "recent" news, that's not likely to amount to major revenue.
You might consider giving away "base" level content, and selling a "professional" level. For instance, you could provide headlines and the first few paragraphs of each story for free; but charge (a la carte or by subscription) for the complete detailed story and related services (like tailored email news alerts). For this approach, you would want to have huge content resources available, perhaps including content you pick up from other newspapers in partnership deals.
Even if you provide free access to the content at your site, you might be tempted to force your visitors to register, because you could then sell mailing lists based on detailed demographic information you gather.
That model presents two problems. First, mandatory registration greatly reduces traffic, even when registration is free. People simply don't want to go through that hassle. Your traffic might drop to a quarter or even a tenth of what it is today if you suddenly added mandatory registration. And if you then sell those mailing lists, you could make lots of people angry, from all the spam they would get.
But you could make registration voluntary, and offer incentives for people to sign up (like the customer discount cards at supermarkets). Let people opt for email alerts etc. on subjects of concern to them, and also for email ads for special deals they might be interested in. Make people want to opt in. Then you can sell the mailing lists -- but only very carefully, so these people will only receive email related to the interests they have expressed.
This approach is a variant of advertising -- you are generating revenue by selling access to your audience.
Instead of selling your audience, consider offering them paid value-added services.
First strive to understand your global online audience, which may well be very different from your local real-world audience. Learn what they need and value, and build new businesses around what they want.
For instance, how many of your page views are for business-related stories? How many for sports? How many politics, etc.?
In terms of business, you probably have readers who are investment managers, investors, people looking for jobs as managers, people looking for companies to partner with, to sell to, and to buy from. Such people would probably value alerts (by email, to pager, to cell phone, etc.) when news directly affects something of importance to them. They might also value online events that put them in touch with decision makers and people with the reputation of being experts.
For teens, online interaction is probably more important that static content (and is probably far cheaper to generate). How many people in your audience, for instance, are teenagers who are into video games?
What value-added services might they be interested in?
Think audience. Then think how can you serve that audience. Your present content is an important element of the services you will provide (so long as it is searchable and alerts can be automated).
But once you have assembled such an audience, creatively consider the other ways you could serve them.
Also, remember this is the Internet. You don't have to do everything yourself. You could partner with companies that specialize in financial services or business information and research. Use incentive-based opt-in registration to glean good info about people's wants and needs. Then have other companies offer in-depth services to this audience.
Partner galore. Find people/companies who have services that would be of interest to the dozens of sub-audiences you already reach, and link those services to those audiences -- quickly and smoothly, with you taking a piece of the action.
First take a close look at iSyndicate www.isyndicate.com At their base level, their free "Express" service, they make it easy for their subscribers to link to your column (typically with new articles appearing once a week) from their sites. They also have a paid service by which subscribers buy the non-exclusive right to post your column at their sites. You might earn as much as $100 per month per subscriber. [Author's note: iSyndicate also died, and I don't know of anything comparable today, unfortunately.]
It's not easy to get paying customers this way. First you need to convince iSyndicate that you can produce consistently high quality material regularly for them to offer your content on a paid basis. Then you need to hope that their sales force will mention you (along with the many brand name publishers/writers that use this same service).
Also consider another creative syndication opportunity represented by Themestream www.themestream.com and The Vines www.thevines.com
Unfortunately, Themestream recently went under -- another victim of the dot-com slump, unable to get the venture capital it needed when it needed it, despite a huge audience and a very interesting business model. And competitor The Vines is facing such tough times that it just suspended its payments to writers. Hopefully, other companies will appear to fill the gap.
Themestream welcomed anyone and everyone to regularly post their writing at their site, where it appeared as "columns" in a wide variety of categories. You kept the rights to your work, and were paid solely on the basis of the audience you generated -- a few cents for every time someone clicked on an article of yours (similar to the rates paid by affiliate programs). Visitors who liked what you wrote could subscribe to your column so they'd see/receive it regularly. And you could use all your energy and creativity to spread the word about your column -- back articles as well as current ones. They had built an impressive assemblage of writers, and content on every subject imaginable. I only had the opportunity to publish through this service for a couple weeks before it went under, but in that time I got interesting feedback and a lead for a possible paid column for another site.
The Vines is similar in set up. But instead of paying per click, they have a revenue sharing business model. You get paid 5% of the revenue your pages generate, from advertising page-views etc. [Author note: Vines appears to have morphed into a music download site.]
One idea that looked very good when it first came out was the Amazon Honor System.
Piggy-backing on its own payment system and its customer base of 29 million customers, Amazon.com makes it easy for you to collect voluntary payments from visitors to your Web pages. In other words, you can make great content available for free, and request donations. This might work particularly well if your site serves a charitable organization.
Their system enables you to collect payments as small at $1.00, which visitors may want to leave as a "thank you" or as a vote of support for your efforts. Amazon says that you also could use this mechanism to "sell your digital content. Your visitors would eagerly pay for the MP3 music tracks, fiction, commentary, or artwork you offer."
They make online payments safe and easy for you and your customers. You don't need any software. The setup is similar to setting up for an affiliate program (putting their code on your pages).
Someone who clicks on an Amazon Honor System icon on one of your pages gets connected to your personalized PayPage at Amazon, where they get the information they need to make a payment decision, and then click a button to send you money. The customer pays Amazon by credit card (as if buying merchandise at Amazon), and Amazon transfers your earnings directly to your checking account. The maximum dollar amount per transaction is $50, and Amazon takes a fee of 15% of the total payment plus 15 cents per transaction.
This looks like a very good idea. I enthusiastically put these Honor System icons on a couple dozen pages at my site, including the online booklets of the non-profit Prescription Parents (which could certainly use some donations). But after a month, no one has donated anything. Perhaps you can find a creative way to use this system to sell your content.
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