At the core of every business lies the same principle. Customers must generate more revenue for the business than is required to remain in business. Easily said, yet more difficult to accomplish.

Many businesses have relatively simple business models. Customers enter the store, website, etc. and leave having paid for some items. Managing that business model relies on very simple factors.

• Constant flow of customers
• Profitable pricing strategy
• Effective conversion to purchase

Online, we have even more options. Of course we are all familiar with the ecommerce model made popular a decade earlier by Amazon. Yet, on the same website where we hope to produce product sales online, we have other options.

• Cross-channel revenue
• Passive-consumer profit
• Affiliate business

The first step in any online strategy is to define the primary goal of the website. However, this need not be to the exclusion of any ancillary monetization strategy. The beauty here is if you fail at your primary objective, you may still produce revenue from the site visitor by another means.