1. Sell your own products or services

If you already have something to sell, give it a try. If not, it's not hard to use your own images and/or text to customize t-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, or any of a host of other items to create your own unique saleable products. A number of sites exist to help you get started. Cafepress, Lulu, and Zazzle are some of the better known ones. In addition to enabling you to create your own products, these sites handle order-taking, shipping, etc. and pay you a cut of the revenue.

2. Sell other peoples products or services

Another option is to join an "affiliate program", which allows you to advertise the sponsoring company's products and/or services on your website and receive a commission when and if a purchase is made. Examples of companies offering affiliate programs would include Amazon.com (books/CD's/etc.), Dell Computer (computers and related items), and CDBaby (CD's by independent musicians). Your reward for referring visitors from your website to the website of the company running the program might be a fixed or variable percentage of any resulting sales or it might be a fixed amount for each sale, depending on the particular affiliate program.

3. Sell advertising Space

Google Adsense, Yahoo Publishers Network, and other such programs let you dedicate space on your website which the program will then use to run various advertisements. You get a cut of whatever revenues the ad program gets. In some cases this will be based on PPC (payment per click). In other cases it may be based on PPV (payment per view). Often this type of program runs "context-sensative" ads (meaning the ads relate to the content on your pages - that's generally a good thing as relevant ads will tend to produce more revenue). As with affiliate programs, there is usually not a lot of effort required on your part, although you will generally have multiple options you can experiment with in terms of ad colors and sizes to find what works best for your site(s).

4. Advertise Your Video (or even someone else's)

This category shares some of the features of selling your own products or services and some of the features of an affiliate program. Basically the business model is that Revver, Metacafe, and other sites will host your video and pay you a cut of the advertising revenue they receive. Revver even allows you to "share" videos of other Revver members and get a (smaller) cut of the revenue. It's a big market that is growing fast and likely to continue to do so for quite some time.

5. Advertise your own site(s)

Let's say, for example, that you have two sites. One produces a decent amount of revenue per visitor for you. The other does not. In addition to experimenting with variations on the preceding themes to try to get more revenue from the low-yielding site, one idea you might try would be to advertise the high-yielding site on the low-yielding site. You could put up some banners, try text links, etc. This strategy might have limits if the visitors on the low-yielding site are not interested in the high-yielding site or if their behavior once they get there is significantly different from the high-yielding site's existing visitors, but it's another thing to try.

You may have to experiment a little (or a lot) to find a good revenue source or (combination of sources) for any given site. Even after finding something that works well, you might want to keep experimenting. Just because you find a good way to earn money with your site doesn't mean there's not an even better method to be found. You'll have an easier task in a number of ways if your site(s) get a lot of traffic. First, at any given level of revenue per visitor you will, of course, make more money with a million visitors than a thousand. Second, a larger base of visitors will make it easier to measure with statistical confidence how well (or poorly) a given source of revenue is working for your site, allowing you to discard failed approaches faster with less risk that you are throwing in the towel too soon. Finally, it's just more worth your while to expend a given amount of effort to increase revenue if you have more visitors - Upping your yield by a fraction of a penny per visitor may be great if you get a million visitors a day. It's not much help if you get only 20. (If you need some ideas on increasing traffic, take a look at my article Growing Your Web Site Traffic).

Of course, before joining any programs be sure to do your homework! Read and understand the terms of the programs (consult a lawyer if necessary). Do some searching on the web to see what experiences other people have had with a particular program. Keep in mind that terms can vary widely among the different programs. Some pay once a month. Others pay once a year. Most require you to earn a minimum level of revenue before they will pay. There are commonly rules which you must follow or risk being kicked out of the program (in which case any unpayed earnings will typically be confiscated). A moderate amount of effort at this stage can save you a large amount of time/pain/frustration later.

I leave you with one final thought. Short-term revenue is not necessarily the ideal measurement of a successful strategy. Try not to drive off your visitors with with ads that are too intrusive or numerous. Put yourself in your visitors place - what would you think of your site if you were seeing it for the first time? Over the long haul, a site with a few low-key ads that only earns $100 a month but whose traffic and revenue will grow 10% every month will far outperform a site plastered with ads that earns $500 a month but whose traffic and revenue are stagnant or declining. Good luck!