AIS (Alternative Income Stream) #1
This is the first in a series of posts showing how to reduce your dependence on Adsense.
Give away a Free Product
This idea can work OK - it will never be a great producer of income as human nature is such that paying for a product (after downloading and using it) is not usual.
I own a site which gives away a free product - it's basically a semantically coded menu. On the site I ask all users to provide a linkback from their site if they use the menu.
In addition to this, I offer a license for users to purchase which entitles them to remove the linkback. There are three levels of license; personal ($5), webdesigner ($25) and corporate ($50). Or, of course, they can use it free, with linkback to my site.
I generally make around $100 a month on this site.
And I am not at the mercy of Google-God.
Have a think about starting up a site which gives away a product. If you cannot charge (a backend license) for the product, then use the free product to create a mailing list.
For Fun
Have a guess at which is the most popular license? Corporate, Web Designer or Personal.
Comment by Empress — December 8, 2006 @ 7:50 pm
I'll take a stab at it:
"Web Designer" !!
LOL
Comment by IMF-Will — December 9, 2006 @ 12:37 am
What are the terms of the licenses? Who are the target audience? As a guess, I'll say "personal".
Comment by burt — December 9, 2006 @ 11:25 am
Any more guesses?
The license is fairly broad - once they pay they get to use the code on their site without giving a linkback. The "webdesigner" one allows webdesigners to use the code on multiple sites, the other two are "one site only"…
Comment by Eddy — December 9, 2006 @ 5:16 pm
I think perhaps it is the corporate license, big companies don't want a link back to your site saying they got their menu for free.
Comment by burt — December 10, 2006 @ 12:29 pm
Ed, you are correct. Even though the other licenses are cheaper, the corporate license is the most popular.