Um... I dont know where the idea came from that the 30DC is not focusing on content. It's the backbone of a valuable and well respected site (actually we haven't had an ED rant yet about the peanuts that spam up their blogs with crap rather than quality content). - Allison

Allison, sorry if I was unclear - I wasn't trying to say that the 30DC isn't about content. My question was if anyone is building a business where CONTENT is the PRODUCT, as opposed to selling an actual product. - Jen

I have a Parenting site Jen that is a Content site although we do monitize it via an ad Network. Creating a large content site is a massive undertaking that takes months of hard work. Much more of a long term project as opposed to the #30DC module. - Karen Kramer

Are you talking more about selling information products as opposed to physical products and is that what you mean by a "content focused site"? - Karen Kramer

Karen, thank you, that's exactly what I meant by "content focused"! Your parenting site sounds similar to what I'm doing, although in a totally different field. I have been working on it for months now and as you said, it is much more long-term than just 30DC which I only used as a starting point. How exactly do you monetize your parenting site? I'm struggling with that - I use several affiliate programs but conversion is terrible. Was hoping to get some inspiration from others who are going down the content site route... - Jen

Follow the steps. Get a Twitter :) - Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct

You can run ads in the sidebars. As you ad content you can also ad some relevant text ads inside the article itself. (I actually convert sales better this way than in the sidebars) - Brian McClure

By the way all of the content I don't actually do keyword research on. Just content that I think is relevant to the market. - Brian McClure

Are you asking about ways to monetize a site selling information products (digital products) - I think there is a WP plugin called wishlist member or something like that, you could make your site membership only, with different levels of membership having access to different levels of content, expert guidance, etc. You could start an exclusive club (on the lines of 'winning the web - winners circle') where there is some exclusive information/data rich content for exclusive access alone. - TrafficBug

@TrafficBug, I actually meant a site like Karen mentioned above: an actual content site, not one selling information products. I'm not really trying to sell anything but I'm building an authority site on a topic. Like a small Wikipedia for a niche - and I'm trying to monetize that somehow. Actually, I have found some affiliate products that could work and I'm going to try the text ads as Brian suggested. - Jen

Hey Jen... this is one of those do as I say not as I've done kinda answers but the best way to monetize a large content site is not on the site, it's through a list. Use the site to get people to an email opt-in and then market through the list. I wish I had taken that advice from the beginning. I do have an ad network that brings in some monthly income but you need a lot of traffic to make that model work at least 100,000 uniques a month. - Karen Kramer

I havent done it before, but you may want to be careful about including un-cloaked affiliate links as part of content, I heard google is able to detect and slap sites that do this, I guess you could have those links clearly labeled as ;'affiliate or sponsored links' but not mixed with the content... I am not sure about this so you may wanna double check - TrafficBug

I'm late to this conversation but if anyone knows about monetizing content site its me. Try podcasting, you can do a series of podcasts and sell as a package with intro podcast. Same for ebook content. There are other places to look for affiliate links. Go to google do a search for your topic and put affiliate. Hope these comments help. Yup, Karen is right too, a list helps - Karen Riedl

Thanks so much for all your comments. @TrafficBug, you are right - have dismissed that idea, esp. because it doesn't fit in with my general concept and it looks spammy. Will try marketing through a list instead, as Karen suggested. And now that my first ebook is ready, I hope that I will have some success selling that. Not sure if podcasting would work but I will give it some more thought - have a few ideas I picked up from 30DC Plus too. At least traffic is increasing steadily. - Jen