In search, some people are great at getting lots of traffic, while yet another group of people are great at turning traffic into cash.

In search, some people are great at getting lots of traffic, while yet another group of people are great at turning traffic into cash. It is a rare talent to be good at both, and I think many people in the SEO industry put too much focus on traffic and not enough on profits. I was certainly a member of the under-monetizer club, and have just recently started giving up my cool kids badge.

The three ways I have been able to do blend the free and paid models so far have been:

• Using the link equity from well-linked to pages to subsidize the rankings of pages that are commercially focused

• Splitting the content in half & making the first half free

• Launching for free, but erecting a barrier to entry after the content is well-established.

The first method is part of the classic affiliate model. You do something that is remarkable to pull in links, and the rising tide from that effort helps lift the rankings of all other pages on your site. If Google has to chose between ranking 5 approximately equivalent sites then the site which also has some well-linked content published on it will typically win.

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