Passive and active monetization (that’s what we call it at Webentertaier) differs in whether the website visitor effectively has to pay something to the website owner.

Active monetization (below: upgrades, paywalls, memberships) is often used by online newspapers that want to spare their users from being constantly disturbed by advertisements (passive monetization).

Content Upgrades:

Content upgrades are content additions or other formats of your content, which the visitor receives by paying. For example, he can buy a 20-page blog article as a video so he doesn’t have to read it all.

Paywalls:

In German, you can compare this to a reading sample. You show only half of the content.  In order for the customer to read the rest of the content, he has to pay. 

Memberships:

Paid memberships can also be a good change. These can be used so that all association members can pay their dues in a fully automated way and the association always has full control over the association costs. Another advantage of this method is that no one has to worry much about the payments, since most of it is done by software here.

Online store:

Small boutiques that cannot rely on walk-in customers alone should consider selling their clothes online. However, SMEs that intend to present many products to their customers should consider an online solution with a search function to make life easier for their employees and customers.

Order forms:

For some products and business models, a normal online store is not very suitable. These require a more product-specific solution. Printers, for example, need to know what format the business card is, how thick the paper needs to be, and whether it should be double-printed or not. To put together prices (whether subscriptions or single prices), order forms should be chosen.

Fundraising:

Collecting donations online can be difficult. To make it easy, you can accept donations directly on your own website. Here, you can give donors the option to decide how much they want to donate or pre-defined amounts or even donation subscriptions. 

Now these were some of the most popular ways of active monetization. Most businesses can greatly benefit from a semi-automated online handling of their payment process and focus more on the manufacturing of their products or their customer support due to the relief (which this construct provides).

Likewise, scaling on the Internet is much easier (keyword: Facebook ADS, online advertising).