You’ve set up your home base, found a little niche to build your business on, planned your website and researched your keywords. Now what? This is probably the most exciting part many people want to jump right into. It’s about getting paid for all your efforts. But before that, please skim through and make sure that you did everything right before proceeding.

As a website builder and content publisher, don’t limit yourself to traditional business model. Having your own product is surely a great way to monetize your website traffic. You can tap into other people’s products to offer to your visitors or customers. Better still, you get paid just by promoting them to your existing readers.

Think of it this way. No one is an island. If you are building a website about golf, chances are you write article about how to improve golf swing, tips to choosing a golf club, correcting slices, etc. If you are really good about it, or have some extra money, you can have an information manual written and offer it on the same site. What a good start.

But you may not want to start with that, considering the product development expenses, cost of advertising and other risks you need to take upfront.

If you are a home or micro business owner, chances are you don’t have a wide variety of products to sell. Think about how many orders can you handle at a time with limited human resources. Not to mention the time and risk you need to handle.

Online, you really are not limited to selling your own products only. You can offer choices to your customers, even for products you don’t own.

Enter affiliate marketing. It is a simple concept of which merchants pay you for leads or customers you refer to them. Certainly there is more to it, but that should explain it in a way that is understandable by most of us. So suddenly the kind of products you can offer is no longer limited to your manual, but also any golf related products that offer you commission for each sales and action you generate for them.

Brainstorm a few ideas: golf vacation, golf equipment, golf merchandise, premium golf training information, and so on.

Another option is dropshipping. As a retailer, you don’t keep inventories, but instead passes customer’s order and shipment details directly to whoesaler, which then dispatches the goods to the customers under your label.

Some affiliate programs are managed by affiliate networks like Commission Junction, ShareASale, BeFree and ClickBank. Individual partner programs are available from merchant site too. Great dropship information can be found on WorldWideBrands.com.

Contextual advertising such as Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, and many others allow you to place a snippet of code onto your web pages. When people visit your webpage, they will see ads related to the page they are viewing.

Usually the model for this type of program is revenue sharing. You get certain share from impressions or clicks generated from your site. What does it mean? Your existing content is an asset for you, of which you can immediately earn money from your existing traffic.

Sell advertising space. If you have certain amount of traffic, you can even sell your website space to interested parties. Depends on what kind of traffic you have, you may want to do this instead of joining the contextual advertising program.

Offer services. You love what you do, and have years of experience related to your niche. Building a website is a great way to reach and build a client base localy or globally.

Online auction offer. Link to your auction entries online. You can get your visitors see what you offer on eBay or other auction sites and purchase there.

Really, these should overwhelm you with so many ideas. But don’t fall into the trap to offer as much products as possible on your site. Do your own research, find what your visitors really want and offer that to them.

Nowadays, having too much choices is the problem. Your customers really appreciate if you can sift the pile of information and make it easy for them to decide.

By carefully selecting programs you join, you also increase your credibility. Help your visitors first, and the money will come after that. Avoid common website mistakes. Don’t turn off your visitors by offering bad products.

Planning monetization model for your website is important to make sure that you will get return on your time and money investment.