This guest post is by Matthew Kepnes of Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.
Someone once told me that the only way to make money with a blog is to sell massive amounts of text links. "There's no other way," he said, and he was resolute in his opinion.
I couldn't change his mind, so I just listened and nodded my head. I didn't bother to argue, even though I knew he was wrong. I know plenty of people who make money online and they don't do it by selling text links. Yet lots of people seem to think that the only way to make money with a blog is through text link sales. When I hear people say this, I often think to myself, "You only think this way because you aren't thinking outside the box. You aren't being creative enough."
Don't get me wrong. Text links can be good money. I've sold text links in the past, and I know many sites that still do. Those sites still rank highly in Google, and they still have good PageRank. Sites that sell text links are controversial, especially after the JC Penny controversy, and I won't get into whether or not you should sell text links.
This post is about a larger issue: the idea that without text links, you can't make money online. I think that is a great fallacy and it is a line of thinking that is perpetually argued by those who are stuck in the box.
Outside the box
When most people think of the phrase, "think outside the box," they imagine a big boardroom of people brainstorming the next big idea. There's some guy at the head of the table going, "Come on, people, we need to think outside the box on this one!" and then everyone at the table looks around nervously at each other, unsure of what to do.
However, thinking outside the box, as contrived of a statement maybe, is the only way to succeed with a blog.
When most people think of monetization, they think AdSense, sponsored posts, affiliate sales, or text links. But the biggest sites in the world don't use any of those...
