Monetization Planner: Which Methods, Networks & Platforms Fit Your Property, Traffic and Niche
Tell the planner what you have (blog, newsletter, podcast, app...), how much traffic it gets and what niche it is in, and get a ranked mix of monetization methods with the networks and platforms that will actually accept you.
Your plan: 6 methods for a directory / listing site
Start with the first two; add the rest as the audience grows. Only providers that would accept a property of this size are shown.
Featured & Sponsored Listings Medium
Businesses pay to be featured, verified or ranked first in a directory, marketplace or resource list.
A directory, comparison site, resource list or job of any kind that ranks or lists businesses can sell them a better spot: a featured placement at the top of a category, a verified or claimed badge with richer profile fields, a sponsored result marked as… Read the guide →
Lead Generation & Selling Leads Medium
Capture enquiries, quotes and calls on your site and sell them to the businesses that want them, per lead or per call.
Lead generation turns a reader's request ("get a quote", "book a consultation", "call now") into a product you sell. A form or a tracked phone number on your site captures the enquiry; a buyer who wants that customer pays you for it. Insurance, mortgages, solar,… Read the guide →
Display Advertising Easy
Banner and responsive ad units sold by the thousand impressions: the default first dollar for any content site.
Display advertising is the sale of space on your pages to advertisers, priced per thousand impressions (CPM) and paid to you as a share of what the advertiser spent. You place a script, the network runs an auction for every impression, and the winning ad… Read the guide →
Job Board Postings Medium
Employers pay to post roles to your audience; niche boards charge $100-500 per post and sell featured and subscription tiers.
A job board sells employers access to your audience of potential hires: a paid posting for 30 days, a featured or highlighted post, a bundle, or a monthly subscription for recruiters. It works when your readers are a specific kind of professional that companies struggle… Read the guide →
Selling the Site, App or Domain Hard
The exit: content sites sell for 30-45x monthly profit, SaaS for 3-8x annual revenue, through brokers and marketplaces.
Every property on this site is also an asset that can be sold: a content site, a newsletter, a SaaS, an app, a directory, a domain. Buyers pay a multiple of profit or revenue for the future income, and brokers, marketplaces and auction sites exist… Read the guide →
Direct Ad Sales Hard
Sell your own banner, takeover and sponsorship inventory straight to advertisers at fixed prices, keeping 100%.
Direct ad sales means finding the advertisers yourself and selling them fixed placements: a leaderboard for a month, a site takeover for a launch week, a "presented by" sponsorship of a section, a listing in a resources page. You set the price, you serve the… Read the guide →
How the planner works
Each method in the directory carries the property types it suits, the traffic it needs to be worth doing and how passive it is; each network carries the minimum traffic it accepts and the niches it allows. The planner scores every method against your answers, drops anything your traffic cannot support yet, and shows the providers of each kind that would take you today. It is a starting point, not a strategy: read the guides, run the calculator for numbers, then check the deals before you sign up.