There is a new trend online (this forum members are directly involved in) - revenue sharing as a business model applied to forums, blogs, news communities, social networks, video sites, etc..

The idea is very straight and simple - whatever advertising revenues the site earns is split with the active community members.

The most common way to set up this is via contextual advertising accounts, such as Google Adsense, where a generic ad type is displayed and the publisher ID is dynamically assigned between site owners or members who actually created the content.

This model - to share revenue - is a model that empowers a basic idea of the internet as a democratic communications channel, and if revenues are shared democratically and fair, then you have a potentially very powerful system.

The problem is that any web project involves costs, but with so many established webmasters online able to leverage their assets towards revenue share, this is an economic model that is going to become increasingly popular.

Revenue share isn’t a new idea - About.com has been running it’s own form of revenue share with topic editors for years, but is performance based - so if you fail to attract the right amount of traffic and monetisation, you may be dropped as an editor.

But in a Web 2.0 world of User Generated Content (UGC), communities which offer chances for members to earn from their contributions provides possibility for visitors to become members, and members to become active contributors. Another advantage is using third-party contextual advertising programs - such as Google Adsense: Providing earnings from revenue sharing is the feasibility to pay members directly by advertising program.

Some examples of revenue sharing sites:

Senserely - revenue sharing community

Magnify.Net

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