Nine Ways to Create New Revenue Streams

Less than a month after launching FanFeedr, a site for sports fans, founder Ty Ahmad-Taylor realized he needed to diversify because ads weren't going to cover costs. He decided to work with an outside ticket vendor to connect his sports fans with unsold tickets. "I'm an A's fan living in New York City," he says. "It's valuable to me to know when the A's are playing the Yankees and when tickets are sold. We're delivering fans who don't know about this to marketers who don't know how to reach this audience." The service will launch in two weeks.

Be forward thinking: While you maximize your core business, try to think about where your industry is heading. Are you positioned to take advantage of it? Group SJR, a small PR, marketing and communications firm, saw that information consumption was moving away from traditional media. It also noticed that infrastructure was a hot area of interest. In February, with the help of editor Jebediah Reed, the company launched infrastructurist.com, a hyper-vertical micro news site about infrastructure.

With 150,000 monthly visitors and 1,000 followers on Twitter, "we believe it will monetize," says associate publisher Tom Blim. "Traffic is good enough to pay for its expenses. Reputation-wise, we are in the business to create brands and make brands more viable. The ability to create a brand out of ether demonstrates an agility and understanding of the changing market space that competitors can't match." An added bonus: It opens doors to potential new clients, like the Department of Transportation.