A business with a twist.

Here is a nice little way to bring in some extra money, especially from a blog that is niche oriented or even better focuses on your community.

Get yourself set up and go door to door.

Okay this may sound off the wall but think about it for a minute.

Have you ever gone to your online newspaper and seen all of the ads they have running? It doesn't matter if they are links or standard 125 * 125 buttons. The standard monthly fee in my area is $85.00 per month with a 12 month contract. That is awesome for several reason's.

First off, almost no one gets the paper any more, they go online.

So let's say you run a website or blog about the Tennis team's in your area. Okay, just an example but now everyone who plays Tennis on those teams may well be going to your site for schedules or contacts or other general information.

Whilst they are there maybe they are thinking that they need a new Tennis racquet....see where I am going with this.

So you call up (better yet go see personally) manager's of local sports shops that sell Tennis equipment and let them no for X amount of dollars you will put up a banner or a button or link on your site to go to their shop.

Now I know what you are thinking, you can easily put up SportsCheck or some other affiliate program and not bother with the personal side of it. But here's the thing. Affiliate commissions are easy to steal from other affiliates. I am actually running a test on my blog and on a friends blog to see which is more profitable and if it proves (even remotely) that something is amiss (i.e. theft is occurring) I am removing all of my affiliate links and placing local ads up at a set price.

Do the math, if I get 20 businesses to bite which won't be too hard as I know a lot of local business owners, and I charge $85.00 a month times 20 that is $1700.00 each and every month with no chance of affiliate commissions being stolen or lost etc.

Not too bad an income for about 15 hours of work, the time to walk and drive and meet and then set up the logo's etc.

Plus it is guaranteed income. No hit and miss.

If you decide to go this route I must stress however that you get documents drawn up for contracts etc by a lawyer to be 100 percent safe and legal.

I am pretty sure I will be doing this on another blog I have already set up for a local niche in Sudbury.

Any thoughts? Click and comment.

Photo from Flickr.