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 saas / web app
Start with the first two; add the rest as the audience grows. Only providers that would accept a property of this size are shown.
SaaS & Micro-SaaS Subscriptions Hard
Charge a monthly or annual fee for software: the highest-margin, highest-multiple revenue on the web, and the most work.
Software as a service is the subscription business model applied to a tool: users pay monthly or yearly for continued access, and you keep improving it. Micro-SaaS is the one-person version: a narrow tool solving one problem for one audience, often born from a free… Read the guide →
API Access & Data Licensing Hard
Sell programmatic access to what your site knows: an API with usage tiers, datasets, feeds and reports.
If your property collects, computes or curates something, other businesses may pay to get it programmatically: an API for your directory's listings, your price history, your rankings, your calculator's logic, your dataset of whatever you cover. Data licensing is the same thing delivered as files,… Read the guide →
Online Courses & Cohorts Hard
Package expertise as a self-paced course or a live cohort and sell it at $50-2,000 through a course platform.
An online course packages what you know into lessons, exercises and outcomes and sells it at a price only expertise can command: $50-300 self-paced, $300-2,000 for a live cohort with feedback. It runs on a course platform (Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, LearnWorlds, Maven for cohorts,… Read the guide →
Coaching, Consulting & Services Medium
Sell your time and expertise directly: coaching, consulting, audits, done-for-you work and productised services.
Services monetize the expertise the content demonstrates: coaching calls, consulting engagements, audits and reviews, done-for-you implementation, speaking, and productised services with a fixed scope and price ("I will review your landing page and send a video in 48 hours, $300"). For a large share of… 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 →
Paid Webinars, Workshops & Events Medium
Sell tickets to live sessions, workshops, summits and meetups, online or in person, and the recordings afterwards.
An event sells live access: a paid webinar or masterclass over Zoom, a half-day online workshop, a virtual summit with many speakers, a cohort of live sessions, an in-person meetup or conference. The ticket is the product; the recording, the slides and the sponsor placements… 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.